Who were some of the best heavyweight fighters that weren’t from the United States?

Yeah, I just found some interview where it says his mother stabbed his fathers girlfriend to death! In another interview he says his dad was in the “Irish mob”. Whereas Wiki says Tommy’s father was mostly Scottish ancestry.

Personally I always thought Morrison gave the goody two shoes interviews, and had a real articulate “jock type” schtick that he carried off far better than Mike Tyson ever did in his early public relation days.

All these bad boy stories (that were obviously true) only made the news after the wheels came off off the boy next door stuff.

At the time, The first “wild man” article I read about Morrison was when he was in Hong Kong for that heavyweight card that was cancelled. I remember thinking “oh he’s a bad boy now is he?” After he’d been giving it “all American hero” until then, or so it seemed.

I just found everything about his image hard to believe.

 

That's right. His Mom went away for awhile for aggravated murder. It's funny, but I remember his managers saying that he was actually kind of shy (when not bombed) and hating doing media, yet he was really well spoken and charismatic when prompted to do so. I wonder if the reason he disliked being interviewed was that he knew was not actually the image that he was trying to portray. The seedy/abandoned upbringing was really at odds with his "All American" image. His Dad was a conman so dying the hair and alluding to John Wayne was all part of the con I guess. It's sad but this is someone who had some pretty amazing physical gifts but the partying off hours and substance abuse really eroded those gifts. I don't know if I actually believe this but apparently Tommy told a prison counselor that he had been HIV positive since 1989?! He apparently knew enough to avoid fighting in Nevada because they were one of the first states to test for HIV. He then signed a multi-fight deal with Don King and was faced with having his health status known when King lined him up for a tune-up fight in Las Vegas. Maybe he thought he could somehow con the commission? Who knows? Also, at the beginning of his career he knew nothing about nutrition and use to gorge on pop and donuts before training and morning runs. He still won 250 fights as an amateur/underaged toughman contestant and gave Ray Mercer a tough losing bout at the Olympic Trials. All while poorly trained and possibly HIV positive. Bill Cayton signed him early in his pro career and got him proper sparring and training but his trainer Tommy Virgets said that whenever they would try and ramp up training a bit more, he would get sick. Virgets also said he was really only truly in boxing shape for the fight against George Foreman, because he was scared shitless of him! I think there is a great book/movie to be made about Morrison one day. The 30 for 30 documentary was harrowing to watch, especially near the end when an aged and very sick Morrison was being interviewed for a pre-trial motion. He looked like a hard living 60 year old man and he was mumbling and incoherent. So many things about his life Morrison kept to himself (drugs, lifestyle, upbringing, HIV). He was boxing's ultimate con man.

 

Yeah. Just about anything can be true or untrue. The bare facts are he was in a Hollywood movie and was also a very talented, legit fighter who went to prison and died of AIDS which is all pretty dramatic stuff. Anything else could also be true. The guy had an outlandish life that’s for sure.

 

Frans Botha once called himself an African American. He was in fact not American.

Heavyweight boxing in the USA is nearly finished. The last really good was was Riddick Bowe. Over 30 years have past since he went professional.

If one had to put together an all top USA list heavyweight list, post 2010-current, jaws would drop.

 

Wilder, Jennings, Ruiz, Arreola, Chambers, Scott, Mansour, Cunningham, Breazeale, Washington, Kownacki... err Jarrell Miller.

Yeah, not great reading.

 

I was trying to be generous. All those guys listed above had been in the top ten at some point (maybe not Washington).

 

I don't think this was ever proven to be true.

 

According to the threads title he doesn't have to be.

 

Funny, he didn't look Eurasian, though maybe the blond hair altered his overall look and hid some of his more Asiatic features. If Joseph Parker died his hair blond he might pass for a white guy as well.

Neither here nor there really, just interesting how genes work.

 

Wlad klitschko
Vitali klitschko
Lennox Lewis
Bob Fitzsimmons
Tom Sharkey
Sam Langford
Peter Jackson
Max Schmeling
Ingemar Johannson

Just testing my memory now.

Coetzee
Berbick
Valdes
Farr
Walls
Brion
Gains
Ruddock
Bruno
Tua
Ibeabuchi
Chagaev
Ibragimov
Peter
Knoetze
Sanders
Maskaev
Hide
Fury
Joshua
Ruddock
Renault
Weinert
Rojas
Uzcudun
Heeney
Neusel
Mildenberger
Carnera
Godoy
Whyte
Parker
Goddard
Burns
Slavin
Maher