Douglas and Ruiz both lost in their first challenge and won their belts off huge upsets and squandered their reigns. Who was the bigger disappointment? I have to go with Ruiz. He mightve been able to win the rematch if he didn't gain 50 pounds of blubber.
I always thought that Antonio Tarver´s championship run was pretty funny. Wins a couple of vacant titles because Jones moved up in weight. Jones then comes back down and takes from Tarver whatever belts he held at the time. Tarver then scores an historic and iconic KO over Jones in their rematch, cementing himself as legitimate champion and as the light-heavyweight champion. Tarver then gets stripped of his titles because he did the right thing and chose to fight Johnson, and of course Johnson beats him. Not only does Johnson beat him, he also takes fight of the year honors from Tarver. And that was it. The second Jones fight was the last time Tarver fought for one of the major 4 titles. He regained the lineal champion on paper, and held the Ring belt, but he finished his career 2-1 in title fights. Tarver achieved an historic victory and will never be forgotten by the fans, but in my book he was just a wrench in the sport. Just like Jermain Taylor, Tarver failed to hold onto his titles once he won them. We do not give enough credit to unified champions who keep the titles unified. I might be mistaken, but I recall Hopkins vs Shumenov in 2014 being the first unification fight after the titles got fully scattered in 2004. Edit: ****! Tarver actually beat Woods for the IBF belt in 2008, and then lost two fights to Dawson. Credit to Tarver for picking up another title, but this puts his record at 3-3. Oh well.
I'd say Douglas TBH because he basically gave up after the first hard shot he took off Holyfield and stayed down on the canvas when he could've gotten up. Ruiz was dumb coming in even heavier but atleast he showed no quit in him and he forced Joshua to fight a very passive fight to beat him over 12 rounds.
Wrong answer. Buster was 42/1 dog … Ruiz was a 10/1 dog when he won … I get what you’re saying but the magnitude of the upset itself doesn’t allow buster to lose this waste of a championship argument
Buster Douglas had the far better win. People forget Mike Tyson then was truly the number one. Not just HW boxing, but also in the P4P rankings.
Ruiz Buster may have come in heavy but he won his title from a great champion and lost it to an even greater one. Even if Buster came in at his best, Evander was probably still going to beat him. Ruiz lost it back to the same guy we know he was able to beat. He just didn't do the work. Buster was a little heavy, but Ruiz was a tub of goo.
I love history lessons like this, even though I already know (most of it) it is still fun to read a recap like this, good job and thanks!
Does Charles Martin count? Martin won the vacant IBF title due to a knee injury to his opponent and then got KO’d in his first defense against AJ.
Always felt tarver got hosed in the Johnson fight but did win the rematch His Dawson performance was very lackluster as was his "fight" with Hopkins
