Fighters who you thought would be the next big thing who turned out not to be

Got too be Greg Page for me:smoke

I recall The cartoon page of the Ring mag back then in the early 80's by Scoop Malowski showing a "Crossroads Sign" pointing too "The road too Greatness" in one direction & nowhereville down the other, with the caption of Discipline/Dedication? hanging over a pondering Greg Page head:verysad

Swaun O'Sullivan & Willie DeWitt were the 2 bright young things in the mid 80's that SRL played about with as their promoter in his 2nd phoney retirement that got mashed:smoke

 

Gerrie Coetzee.

 

duncan dakwari
michael dokes
howard davis
zab judah
james buttler

 

Danny Williams after he smashed Kali Meehan in a matter of seconds, but after the Keith Long fight I had my doubts.

 

Gatti was on a roll. Boxing nicely, still blasting heads out. I figure if Castillio could do it with pressure, surely Gatti with superiour power and new found skills could be as if effective if not more.

Annd I was wrong. Very wrong.

 

Fast Eddie Hopson :!:

 

Another good call, although it's funny, but when Douglas dropped him with a jab and eventually stopped him, I started to think of him as being a viable opponent for Tyson to face at some point, which I wasn't quite as a surprised as a lot of other people were when he pulled off the upset.

Davey Moore (80's version). Looked awesome against gaining the title, and in defeating Charlie Weir and Ayub Kalule in title defences, and it looked like he might reign for a while. Then he ran into Duran, and...

 

*I actually won 1k on this fight... this one fella thought Ed Hopson walked on water... for some reason, i knew he would get killed fighting Patterson... man, what a blowout.
*For me, Amir Khan was going to be the best thing since chewing gum... he was going to be the real deal... i saw what he did in the olympics and WOW... he was a sure thing...still, he might do well, but no where near what i thought.
*We have to go back really far for this one... but there was a guy name Richie Sandoval... i thought that guy would be one of the all time greats... he fought Canizales and :hi:..it was over...
*both Sandoval and Hopson took brutal beatings... both retired soon afterwards... for Sandoval, he never fought again.

 

chad dawson, jeff lacy, shawn o'sullivan, and finally lloyd honeyghan after his performance against curry he was bound for stardom and then he went and lost his title to jorge vaca.

 

I thought Mancinni would do more than he did.

Johny "Bump City" Bumpus; bought the hype big time.

Bobby Czyz: He was good, but not exactly "the next big thing."

I watched Pavlik come up through the ranks, and knew he was going to beat Taylor a year and a half before he did it. I expected a long and glorious title reign. ****!! Oh well, he's in treatment, and only 28, so it ain't over yet.

 

Ike Quartey

 

jeremy williams thought he was going to be special but never paned out

 

Gustavo Ballas
Proclaimed as the Argentinian Sugar Ray Leonard.

Alfonso Zamora
The Zarate fight ruined him.

Howard Davis
CBS thought he would be bigger and better than Ray Leonard.

 

ESPN used to do a marvelous job "pushing" fighters and making me believe.

John Wesley Meekins for one, and Charles "The Natural" Murray for two.

 

Clubber Lang
Couldn't handle boxer-punchers.

Mike Quarry
34-0-0,, Then Bob Foster BOOM!