Biggest overachiever in heavyweight history

I know, I was just airing my frustrations.

As for Willard, perhaps he overachieved when he beat Johnson, but by god he should have been taking care of business against the rest!

 

Tommy Burns is maybe worth considering.

 

There's no such thing as an "overachiever".
It's impossible to achieve more than what you're capable of.
The concept make no sense whatsoever.
It's usually brought up by people who either can't grasp how someone achieved something, or explicitly predicted that someone wouldn't achieve what they did.
It's also often a patronizing term, almost an insult, put on people who didn't stay 'in their place' and actually made the most of themselves.

It has no place in boxing terminology.
In boxing, we judge the men by what they do in the ring. If they did better than we expected, we were simply wrong. And we often are. So most of us don't bet much money on the fights.

 

It should never have got to the stage where his title aspirations depended upon beating Schmeling.

He should have beaten Jack Dempsey, and failing that, he should have made a clean sweep of the other top contenders.

Guys like Risko and Heeney had a fraction of his talent, but he allowed a situation where they were equally valid picks as title challengers.

However he obtained the title, he should never have lost it to Primo Carnera.

Overachiever?

Very much the opposite I would say!

 

I would agree, Hart was a far superior heavyweight, and a bad stylistic match for him.

 

You must be watching different footage to everybody else, if that is how you would describe Sharkey.

Pretty much every word that you wrote is wrong here.

My point is that if his head had been screwed on he would have beaten Dempsey.

He would have beaten guys like Risko.

I don't know whether he would have beaten Tunney, but by god he should have been in the ring instead of Tom Heaney.

He was a more capable fighter than Carnera, and had the talent to beat him.

By that logic you could argue that he should have won the title in his first fight with Schmeling by TD.

That is what would have happened today.

 

Sharkey had already beaten Carnera

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John Ruiz, and maybe Floyd Patterson.

 

I am sorry but Sharkey was not a pressure fighter, he was a technician.

If you think that he was a pressure fighter, then you don't understand boxing styles.

His principle weakness, was that he was not very good on the inside.

I understand that, but the point is that he probably could have beaten Dempsey.

He was winning the fight, and he lost his head.

Again, my point is that he could and should have done better.

Compare his performance in the first Carnera fight, to his performance in the second Carnera fight, and then tell me that he was not capable of putting up a better fight.

 

Braddock. Over-achiever in the sense that he won the heavyweight title as an older fighter without much talent in comparison with other champions.

 

Look if Sharkey was at top of his game for every fight, he be one of the ATGs in the ring. But he is a oddy, he beats Carnera the first time, than Carnera knocks him out in the rematch, draws with Walker, losings his head to Dempsey and Schmeling,
than losing to the likes of Risko, Levinskey. Sharkey was a up and down kinda of fighter. I mean how many ATGs heavyweights gets a draw with a middleweight? Walker really had no right to climbing up the ranks as high as he did. but Sharkey allow him to do it.

 

I like Unforgiven's post about how there's no such thing as an overachiever. It's that we were wrong.

In that light, guys who exceeded my initial expectations:

Buster Douglas - HORRIBLE the first time I saw him in a cable-tv fight. Don't remember which fight it was.

Larry Holmes - Ranked in the middle of the top-10 when I started following boxing in 1976. But based on what I'd read, I didn't expect him to become an ATG.

John Ruiz
Chris Byrd
Trevor Berbick

 

I think Walker was pretty lucky to get the draw, from the bits of footage and reports I think Sharkey should've gotten the decision.

Though I think Sharkey should've put it on Walker, and was far too passive.

 

Sharkey should of blasted him like Schmeling did. Sharkey was not a very consisted fighter.

 

You can never say that one world class fighter has no chance against another.

Sharkey was strong in some of the key attributes that Tunney relied upon, so he might have made a more dangerous challenger for him than Dempsey.

Do you think that Heaney was as talented as Sharkey?

If not, then that rather works against the narrative of Sharkey being an overachiever.

Carnera definitely improved between the two fights, and Sharkey clearly got worse, but that is not the point.

Sharkey was a more capable fighter than Carnera, with a higher potential ceiling.

He should have taken care of business against him.