Fighters who disappointed you the most

Yes, Ayala is a good one.

 

150 days after his remarkable win over George Foreman, Tommy Morrison was knocked out in the first round by... Michael Bentt

 

Roberto Duran,if only man was motivated to win the second Leonard fight and not Chan Hee Park his way to oblivion.

 

Razor Ruddock
Poor managment, low ring IQ, lack of balance. Never could learn to relax in the ring enough to apply a gamplan.

Bert Cooper- he had a big win on national tv against DeWitt that put the division on notice. He let that attention and praise go to his head. Next fight Carl gave him the Truth!

Zach Padilla. He was there and then it was over.

 

Kinda funny that half the posts in this thread are ATGs. Oh no, some of the best boxers of all time didn't end up being top 10 of all time, what a shame for them, it must be so disappointing to have won all those world titles, have made millions of dollars, and become national icons. Silly.

As for the actual thread topic, I was incredibly high on Ginjiro Shigeoka prior to his fights with Pedro Taduran. Even after the first fight where he was stopped, I still thought he could rebuild and reclaim a title as long as he stayed away from Taduran for a while. I was utterly convinced that he would unify the division and reign over it for the rest of his career to establish himself as an ATG minimumweight and a P4P star. Seeing a man hit that hard at that size is a rarity, especially when they're as fast as Ginjiro. A dedicated body-puncher, a huge puncher for the weight, and a crafty technician with a quality amateur career to back up his credentials, I was in love with his style (and still am). Seeing him getting carried out the ring in a stretcher in the rematch against Taduran broke my heart and I hope he's still able to live a fulfilling life after the injuries he suffered. Seeing such a talented young man have his career cut short and nearly lose his life was awful, especially considering how much promise he had.

 

Lomachenko. Spent the first half of his career doing very little, spent the second half doing even less.

 

Carlos Monzon..I almost idolized him. Almost because God is the only idol in that sense.

Then he murdered his common law wife and I learned that he abused women.

I was also disappointed at Jake LaMotta when I saw Raging Bull when I was 13, Sugar Ray Robinson when I learned he too beat up women, Mike Tyson, Carlos Baldomir-the two latter whose autographs I had obtained- and any other boxer when they are accused of horrible things,

Edwin Valero obviously was another one. I had hopes that Venezuela had finally found their Gomez, Chavez, Monzon, Argulello, Cervantes, Jofre or Duran and just he fact itself that he was a POS murderer.

When I met Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. and Oscar de La Hoya in person, they signed autographs for everyone but both were super antisocial. Not even a smile on their face.

Thats it for me.

 

I get your point. However, many all-timers, despite impressive accomplishments, still never fulfilled their full potential. Don't you think, for instance, Benitez's career was disappointing?

 

I came to say this, shame that, I remember all the fret about the brain puzzles, traditional dancing for his footwork and this Soviet super soldier platonic view we had of him here for a bit, match ups with Duran etc and even widespread non fans saw him, couple of the everyman around my parts recognised him but really he looked flashy but mostly existed in the background and on highlight videos. Loma was mostly another Olympic “bust” but that’s relative to the hype.

 

Agreed, he did a helluva lot better in the pros than your average Cuban amateur wonder boy but compared to his actual ability, he did next to nothing. This might be a bit of a hot take on the forum nowadays but there's absolutely zero case for him being an all-time great imo, and his greatest achievements are all entirely a product of the era of too many weights and champs. His resume if you look at the actual fighters beat mostly sucks.

 

JCC Snr and De La Hoya I don’t think as a general thing are outgoing or “nice” JCC hung out with cartels his son’s wife is a cartels daughter isn’t she? - De La Hoya is a party boy with some real vulgarness to him despite the appearance, we all know De La Hoya’s nature now but I wonder what a shock it’d be back then that this boy band face was as crazy / outrageous as that Pitbull Mike Tyson? (Perhaps a bit darker…) Funnily, Tyson is the one who went above his past and has become an oddly Yoda like figure.

 

Nino Larocca

 

Probably Usyk.
I loved him when he came along and started beating up the giants, as I hoped someone would,
I thought everyone could finally accept that they just weren’t that great.
Be careful what one wishes for, Usyk has now been elevated in many people’s minds to goat position. I suppose it was expected. I just find it a bit silly.
I just need somebody a bit smaller than Usyk to beat him before he retires and we can come back to reality.

 

Tyson for not staying focused & committed after the Spinks fight & Mayweather jr. For focusing too much on the business side of boxing.

 

I totally agree. But in the 90s no one knew this side of JC or Oscar....