Back to back bad

Ring $afety more like. Leave your donation in a brown paper bag on the table and the rest will be taken care of — and in most cases afaik (especially WBA) it had more to do with the managers of the challengers greasing some palms so their undeserving fighters got title shots and they collected a decent purse (with little or no investment in the fighter since they had little or no careers).

In other cases it was probably a bit of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ — Manager A has a champ and gives a title shot to an undeserving fighter handled by Manager B, and Manager B likewise has (or maybe had) a champ and does/did a favor by giving a title shot to someone handled by Manager A with a ‘you owe me one.’

Of course I’d argue that the alphabets were merely upholding a long boxing tradition of corruption, as it is well known that the mob controlled much of boxing and had unhealthy dealings with commissions and the NBA (the boxing one, not the basketball one) was basically a criminal organization. So the WBA, WBC, IBF and so on were hardly paving new ground.

 

My mistake, Saintpat, Rocky Lockridge and Ruben Olivares, who was a fossil when Pedroza got his foul infested mitts on him. But truthfully I have heard of Alfonso Zamora, who starched Pedroza in round 2 of their encounter on April 3 1976. Besides the others mentioned like Juan La Porte, Patrick Ford, Olivares and Lockridge, Eusebio Pedroza mostly defended his WBA title against the Never Were's of boxing, never heard of Cecilio Lastra or Ernesto Hererra. In Salvador Sanchez case, I heard of Danny Little Red Lopez, Ruben Castillo, Wilfredo Gomez, the then undefeated WBC Super Bantamweight Champion, Pat Cowdell, Roberto Castanon, Juan La Porte, Jorge Rocky Garcia and Azumah Nelson, only Ford and La Porte fought both Sanchez and Pedroza.

 

Not remotely in the same stratosphere.

Terry Daniels lost 25 fights after challenging Frazier. Ron Stander lost 20.

The only who were worse may have been Manuel Ramos (who lost 23 fights after Frazier and finished with a losing record) and Dave Zyglewicz ... who Frazier also defended against. But they weren't back to back.

It's difficult to find four heavyweight title challengers as bad as Manuel Ramos, Ron Stander, Terry Daniels and Dave Zyglewicz.

Manuel Ramos, Ron Stander and Terry Daniels had a combined 80 losses between the three of them when they retired.

On the other hand, Eric Molina fought for the heavyweight title twice, and Chris Arreola fought for it three times. Even Gerald Washington fought his way back into an IBF eliminator.

Daniels and Stander were off the hook bad.

 

Just messing with you, but to me I’d put Cowdell, Castanon and Garcia in the same category with some of Eusebio’s ‘unknown’ opponents. Outside of them fighting SS, I don’t think I would be familiar with them. Nelson became known when he gave Sanchez a hard fight and went on to a HoF career, but nobody had heard of him when he came in as a late substitute challenger for Sal.

Part of it was Sal’s defenses were pretty much all televised in the U.S. (I think Gomez was PPV? And Nelson was on Don King’s attempt to do monthly PPV or CC fights) so we saw them, while many of Pedroza’s weren’t.