Fighters who were managed poorly

Completely disagree about Cooney. He was managed right into being a multimillionaire. I see nothing wrong with that brand of guidance whatsoever.

The reality of it is that Cooney had certain personality flaws and frailties that no general seasoning in the ring or gradual climb up the rankings until his proposed flowering by 1984 or whatever could ever solve. In other words, with Cooney it was a matter of strike while the iron was hot. He was probably going to implode no matter how his climb up the rankings went.

 

That's certainly another way to look at it but I think any further attempt at seasoning him would have been too great a risk.

 

David Ried seemed to be rushed into big fights to soon. Then again, I have read that Top Rank was pushing him because they knew his eye was going to be a problem and that he would likely have a short career because if it.

Zsolt Ederi is another guy that comes to mind for different reasons. He made a lot of money fighting in Hungary for a European promoter but never fought Jones, Tarver, Dawson, Johnson or Hopkins. He had the talent to beat some of those guys. He was an excellent amateur that had a respectable pro career but never got to prove himself against the best of the divison.

 

Pretty much every pre Louis fighter

If you look at Luis Firpo's boxrec he fights someone whos like 25-2 and gets knocked out in the first round. It was his 2nd fight. Just dumb honestly

 

Corrie Sanders was very inactive fighting in South Africa 2 times per year. His promoters/manager wasted about 5-7 potentially best years of his career that way

Oleg Maskaev was horribly mismanaged

 

Before you can answer the question, you have to get clear on what you think a manager should try to make happen for the fighter.

 

Tim Witherspoon. In one of his fights don't remember which.
He was supposed to get a multi million dollar payday.
By the time Don and Carl King were finished with him,
he ended up with about $100,000. And had to pay
his corner out of that.

 

That may just be an incomplete record though.

 

It’s such a complicated question because all we know is what happened — not necessarily why certain decisions were made, what the fighter was going through, what the fighter himself wanted, what fell through for this reason or that, etc.

A few for-instances:

Corrie Sanders didn’t like to train and liked to party and play golf. He didn’t seem particularly dedicated. So he beats Wlad and I would assume he had some offers, but did he tell his manager he was taking time off and didn’t want to fight again right away? Would it have been wise for the manager to schedule a fight knowing he probably wouldn’t prepare himself? Hard to say, but I think working 3-4 months out to try to schedule a title fight off the Wlad win in some stadium in SA would have been a wise move, which obviously didn’t happen.

Gerry Cooney was a big drinker and IIRC druggie (cocaine I think, please correct me if I’m wrong here) and also had severe self-confidence issues. He scheduled a bunch of smart fights and then pulled out claiming a shoulder problem. Now if he was legit injured, would it have been smart to let a fighter with a $100M+ ceiling fight when he was one-handed, when one defeat might have derailed him? What if those wacky managers knew he had been on a bender and made up the injury excuses rather than let him get beat because he was on a bender? Plus they did have an agreement for him to fight Mike Weaver for the WBA title but the WBA ordered Weaver to fight third-ranked James Tillis instead of No. 1-ranked Cooney. Is that management’s fault? He was supposed to fight Earnie Shavers on the Hearns-Cuevas undercard — but pulled out with a torn muscle and Tex Cobb stepped in. Should he have fought injured? Or was there maybe more to the story?

Tyrell Biggs to me is a very complicated one. This is a guy with enormous potential who was flushing it down the toilet (or stuffing it up his nose) due to his drug addiction. It’s easy to say the Duvas did the wrong thing rushing him into a title fight with Mike Tyson, but what if they don’t do that and Biggs just goes further down the hole of drug use and ends up on the streets, ruined by what he did to his own body? Was it better for him to at least cash that big check so he had something to fall back on? Or would he have been better off maybe if he didn’t have that kind of cash to indulge his addiction? Hard to say. But to say ‘they should turn down the fight until he cleans his act up’ assumes that he would actually clean his act up and not end up in a pit of drug-addled misery, and boxing aside it’s certain that not every drug addict ever turns that corner and gets better.

Then there are certain managers that simply don’t have the resources to guide a fighter. No promoter was going to spend a lot of money to build up young Mike Weaver, who started late and didn’t really begin training seriously and showing potential until he’d racked up some losses. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to get a lot of offers to fight opponents who were 1-2 or 3-7 ... he was the guy who was going to get offers on a week’s notice to fight a guy with a lot better resume. Better to not accept those and not fight at all? Go to the promoter and say ‘This guy looks like Hercules, granted he isn’t dedicated and he doesn’t have much experience, but how about invest in him and bring in soft touches so we can build him up instead of investing in these guys who have amateur credentials who show up to work every day?’ You’d get shown the door really quick by any promoter at that stage.

And if you’re managing a guy with maybe a bit of potential but not a sure-fire future contender or champ and he says to you, ‘Hey, my rent is due and I’ve got mouths to feed, I need a fight this month for the biggest payday you can get me, I’ll fight anybody.’ Are you a good manager if you say, ‘No, just don’t pay the rent and let your kids starve and you’ll get by, but I’m going to pass on these offers and maybe you’ll get less money in a couple of months for an easier fight’? In what way are you doing a good job if you let him get kicked to the streets or let his kids go without food or electricity or whatever?

 

Gerry Cooney though friendly did not have it in him for a professional fighter. Like a well respected poster eluded to, he was managed by multimillionaires for potential success, also by the media. He was freakishly tall and gangly. But he appeared very clumsy, his victories were against escapees from the Boxing Rest Homes, Ken Norton and Jimmy Young. After those victories, he thought that he hit the jackpot, he could conquer the world. His management tried to keep him safe from people like Tim Witherspoon or a Greg Page, both not old enough to collect Social Security. He was badly exposed by Larry Holmes in 1982.

 

How do you decide what is too cautious? How do you determine the proper level of competition?
Are you willing to take fights for "experience " that may get him beat? Do you pick his opponents to not only stay undefeated but to make sure he looks good every time? How big of a financial tradeoff is it?

 

Talking from a position as a fan of Roy Jones, not a guy who's trying to keep him undefeated or make him the most amount of money possible, I'd have done things very differently to make him as great as could be.

If have tried to get fights with Nunn, McClellan, Kalambay, Benn, Eubank, Barkley, Michalczewski, Calzhage in the 2000s, Littles, Liles, early 90s McCallum, a B-Hop rematch and I'm sure there's more I can't think of off the top of my head. I'd have loved to see him vs Gomez, Jirov and Mormeck at CW, too. Basically just replace the subpar opposition he faced in his actual career with the names I mentioned. Extend his stay at 160 and shorten his at 175, then accommodate for any weight jumping which makes some of these inconsistencies possible. I have no doubt he'd pick up a loss somewhere, but I also think he'd a top 15 all-time career, be much more well received than he already is. Plus, how cool a career would that be for boxing fans at the time to follow? Whether he was winning or losing. I'd also have advised him heavily to retire after the third Tarver fight.

I'm not saying Jones was mismanaged. He wasn't. I'm just saying that the lack of talent on his résumé in comparison to the era leaves a lot to be desired.