All time great fighters who could have been even greater

imagine if George Foreman had? The Rumble wouldn’t have went down like it did.

 

I'm not sure but pretty much no way white people at the time watches them,I mean,back then you got to kneel as a black,those murderers never intended to.

 

Great post bro, but ATGs? Miske?

 

Roberto Duran
Ruben Olivares
James Toney
Mike Tyson
Wilfred Benitez

These guys were ATGs who were notorious for blowing hot and cold and not taking training seriously or were busy partying. Just imagine if they actually stayed consistent throughout their career.

 

RJ is the poster boy for this topic IMO. As massively accomplished as he was, he also left some sizeable holes in his legacy IMO by failing to settle matters in the ring vs. Dariusz & Rocchi.

 

Do we have any info on just how hard Ruben was partying in his hey-day? Was he actually drinking and smoking pot and banging his way through training camps in his prime, or did the training deviations come later, are they exaggerated, what? Are we to believe Ruben half assed it and still got those kind of results?

 

Olivares lifestyle was mentioned often by folks that were directly around him back on the Cyberboxingzone message board days. I'd imagine it got steadily more of an issue after he became World Champion...certainly after finally conquering the rivalry with Castillo. He looked ragged in his last few defences, obviously struggling with the weight by then, but not because he was also very young and big at the weight like Rose.

 

I'm completely unfamiliar with that board or what was said on it about him... what kind of things did they say? Any interesting tidbits you remember?

 

Whats wrong with Miske?

Just seeing this now for whatever reason.

 

I remember reading a magazine interview w/ Olivares (I forget which 1) in which he said that things began to slip around the time of the 2nd Castillo fight. Of course, that could just be a convenient way to excuse every 1 of his losses.

Having said that, I think Olivares' rep for being "inconsistent" gets overblown. he was undefeated in his 1st 60ish fights before finally losing for the 1st time under flukey circumstances (his head was split open by a butt in the very 1st round), & he avenged that loss in very convincing fashion. By the time he lost the BW title for good, he'd had 70ish fights worth of wear & tear on top of increasing struggles to make weight, which isn't an unusual circumstance for a fighter's prime to end - especially @the lower weights, where fighters used to burn out much more quickly.

 

Thanks.

 

Hector Camacho Sr.
Probably the most talented boxer of the 80's.
At the top of his game , I thought he'd challenge, Ray Robinson for G O A.T status.
Yes he was that good!
But his lifestyle, and a single right hand from Edwin Rasario completely changed the trajectory of his career .
( Mainly his lifestyle, and his ending was the ultimate result of it, gunned down on the streets of Puerto Rico in a alleged drug deal)
But his talent was another level.
Was more talented than the fighter of the decade.
Ray Leonard....

 

I've always taken the "inconsistent" rep thing to be 90% related to his Featherweight days. Whatever his training habits were, they obviously weren't affecting him visibly in the ring at Bantam until, arguably, those last few defences/non-title fights.

 

I can't remember specific comments, but it was full of older west coast guys that had been deeply involved in various ways while he was active and from the generation after...ex-fighters, managers, family members/close friends of various fighters, fans that attended cards regularly and watched these guys train at times, etc...There were tons of first-hand and second-hand stories of fighters from that era.

The message board got shut down a long time ago, but i'm sure there will be archived versions of it.

 

Ali and Louis … both had physical prime years taken away. Ali by the exile, Louis by WW2