Does anybody remember Courtney Burton he beat a shopworn Angel Manfredy and called out Floyd Mayweather but seemed to struggle in fights with Augustus,Elder, and others.
Yep. A number of those bouts were on ESPN. He had talent but not upper echelon talent. I remember the controversial win over Augustus well and if I remember correctly, he was beating Elder until Elder caught him and finished him in the last round.
Outside of the Manfredy fight he never impressed me don't why he was on ESPN and Shobox so much. Augustus really was robbed in the first fight before stopping him in the rematch.
Always seemed to be a good regional fighter but not a guy who could compete with gatekeepers or good solid fighters.
Pretty much though his name will always be brought up when worst decisions in boxing history comes up.
Augustus beat him twice. Just because it happened in Michigan doesn't mean Augustus didn't clown him.
I met Ebo when he was a kid. His father was his trainer and took him to amateur fights. Seems like he had 200 or more. Built like a brick wall but really fluid with his combinations. I remember being at a matchmaking sit-down before an amateur show (all the coaches come together with their guys’ ‘books’ — where their fights are logged — to make matches). You give a short description of your fighter and look for someone who would be a fair match. His dad was pretty funny. Of course everybody know who he was and that he had Ebo. And he said something like, ‘I’ve got a kid, 16 years old, 125 pounds … he’s not very good and he’s stubborn, won’t listen to his corner … about 100 fights, won a few tournaments.’ And everyone laughed (including me). I was flattered that after he saw my best guy fight (165 pounds, probably 15 fights at that time but he beat two nationally-ranked guys in that span and actually won two novice divisions in the same USA Boxing regional tournament; 165 the first night and there was an unmatched 178 so we weighed about 167 the second night and beat him, haha) the father cornered me and asked a bunch of questions. My guy wasn’t a big puncher but he was explosive as heck and he wanted to know what kind of training we did to get that explosiveness (answer, he was natural but we also did a lot of bounding … basically jumping) and he asked me to bring the kid over and demonstrate. I asked him a lot of questions too, of course, and was surprised to find Ebo lifted weights five days a week including the day before fights. Ebo was as polite as a kid could be and so was his dad. High marks from me for both of them as people — they were the type who considered it sport rather than having some kind of spite toward everyone like we’re on opposite sides in a war, which is how I always approached it.