1984 US team - their pro careers

The most common theory was bad lifestyle habits, primarily drug use and lack of devotion to training. Apparently the Duva's who managed him pushed for the Tyson fight as soon as possible, anticipating that Tyrell was already starting to show signs of deterioration. After he was beaten and everyone had their money, they dropped him as a client. Biggs took a year off and started working with former contender Jimmy Young as a trainer.. He fought Damiani in October of 88 and lost.. Took another year off and then lost again to Gary Mason.. I saw him fight Ossie Ocasio in January of 1990 on the undercard of Witherspoon vs Sims, ( the same sims who broke Bigg's collar bone years earlier ) with Young in his corner. He outpointed Ocasio but looked very average in doing so.. He put together a small string of wins before losing to Bowe at the end of that same year, then worked out the rest of his career as a journeyman more or less. Someone posted an update on Biggs a while ago. I guess he's living with his elderly father and training teenage boxers, but is basically broke and unhirable... Sad story but one we've heard before. One thing I'll ad about Tyrell based on my observations of him was that he was a decent boxer with a good jab, but never really set down on his punches and never really improved his defense. He showed promise early and gritted it out to beat tough men in Snipes and sims. But never fully developed..10 years into his career he was still making some of the same mistakes that he made as an amateur. Now this is all heresaye but apparently he was well liked by some of his olympic teammates.. Pernell Whitaker spoke fondly of Tyrell on a few occasions from interviews I recall many years back.

 

Sorry for the delayed response. I save all my boxing forum posting for work and don't post much at home. I'd say Breland and Taylor had pretty successful careers as it was. Both were world champions who fought in big pay day fights and both have good wins on their records. In Taylor's case I think his mind and body failed him after suffering some bad defeats. He really took a lot of damage at the hand of Chavez and while he had moderate success at welterweight following that loss, was probably not well built for fighting above 140. I saw him look good against Aron Davis in 1991 then get pummeled badly by Terry Norris in 1992 which in my opinion marked the end of a fully galvenized meldrick Taylor. Breland retired at an early age to pursue an acting career and I haven't heard anything about him since.

 

Wasn't following the sport in 1984 and I haven't read any old reports, but I'm guessing the expectations were high for most of those guys. Hell nearly all of them were immediately grabbed by the Duvas and or other top managers right away.

 

Think you mean Steve McCrory... Glen was a CW world champion in his own right, went in with Lennox & sparred many rounds with Tyson who was in his pomp.

 

Probably yeah.

 

I don't recall them talking much about Tillman, but they wanted Biggs to be successful in the biggest way. They were pretty critical of his progress throughout his early development, however.

Whitaker was well thought of, but really the attention was on Breland and Biggs mostly. Holyfield too, but for him a lot of the attention had to do with him being so wronged in the DQ result in the Olympics, and people (and the press) were kind of pulling for him to do well.

On the whole, the one that really got the attention as a potential ATG then was Breland. Everyone else was a solid maybe.