70s HW Contender with the best resume who wasn't champion?

Shavers, Quarry, Lyle, maybe Bugner.

 

Probably Jimmy Young or Earnie Shavers.

 

Young or Quarry.

 

Young i reckon.

 

Resume rather than potential? Quarry had notable wins over Mac Foster, Jack Bodell, Larry Middleton, Randy Neumann, Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers, and (ahem) Lorenzo Zanon, all when they were doing pretty well.

Young had his two wins over Ron Lyle, beat Garcia, and had his amazing win over George Foreman. We also have to count the close ones with Ali and Norton.

Shavers... the wins over Ellis and Norton were impressive, as was the quick kayos over ranked Smith and Clark.

Lyle had a nice run, except for the Quarry fight, until losing to Young the first time.

But overall I have to give the nod to Jerry Quarry.

 

I’m going to say Quarry. More notable wins than any of the other non-champions and didn’t have any losses to journeyman or trial horses like many of the others did. Unless we want to include his defeat to Ron Cranmer in the 90’s but that would be pretty ridiculous.

 

Quarry was the most consistent of the lot and ranked highly for a large part of the 70s. There's a reason Foreman was ducking him and how he cleared the board of contenders such as Mac Foster, Lyle and Shavers so that Frazier would face Quarry again instead of them.

 

Those who posted before me have listed Shavers, Lyle, Quarry and Young. Based on the question asked I would go with Quarry as well. That being said, what makes this group of four interesting is that any of them could have beat any of the other three on any given day. This was a very high quality group of second bananas.

 

Quarry is first followed by Lyle. I’d say Ellis but he did his damage in the 60s as well as Bonavena. So to answer the ops question Quarry and Lyle

 

In the 1970s, Ron Lyle defeated Jimmy Ellis, Oscar Bonavena, Earnie Shavers, Joe Bugner, Buster Mathis, Larry Middleton (twice), Gregorio Peralta, Jose Luis Garcia, Vicente Rondon ... the fringe guys Scott Ledoux, Jack O'Halloran, Boone Kirkman ... he also fought and lost to Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jimmy Young (twice), Jerry Quarry ... and Ron was signed to fight Larry Holmes in 1978 but Lyle was arrested for killing a guy again and was replaced by Earnie Shavers (who Holmes defeated).

That's pretty much everyone but Frazier and Norton.

 

I left out Young, just the one title challenge vs Ali, well beaten on day per cards, but did decision Lyle twice and Foreman once, that was it for him although you could argue he retired Foreman for ten years. Foreman's comeback proved he was clearly a level above Young if not on that one night in 77.

 

Quarry

 

Most of Quarry's big wins were in the 60's as well. But Ellis held a title, so he wouldn't count anyway

If we're looking at fights held only in the 70's, it's probably Young. If other decades are allowed as well as long as the fighter in question was a contender in the '70s, it's probably Quarry. If we're also counting contenders who held a belt but never was lineal/undisputed it's probably Ellis.

 

Quarry, and he is probably the standout.