Fighters whom we never saw in their primes

yeah lyle

 

George Foreman

 

:good

 

Fully concur Mac. I firmly believe we missed the complete Ali in that 3 years, 7 months lay off.

 

Sanchez, Lyle is a good call, I think Mike Dokes. Maybe even Jimmy Young. Gerry ****ey. There must be so many of them

 

Liston.

 

boom!

 

I'm divided on this one, i am a believer that once Foreman's aura of invincibility was shattered (By Ali) he was never ever going to be the same force. He was struggling a bit post Ali. I still reckon he would have been at or near the top of the tree but i think his awesome best was gone.

Amazing that he could come back and jag a title so much later. This Foreman however was about 9 levels under the one that devastated Norton and Frazier.

 

John Henry Lewis anyone? Eyesight problems definitely reduced his abilities and he still accomplished a lot even while going mostly blind in one eye.

 

Luther McCarty was very young at the time of his untimely death, yet he was already generally acknowledged to be the best of the 'white hope' heavyweights. It would have been interesting to see how his career would have developed and how he would have fared against the likes of Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey.

 

For me, Sugar Ray Robinson at 147.

I had heard there is not a lot of film of him at that weight which people say was when he was at his best.

 

Manny Pacquiao.

Kept climbing up weight classes too soon in search of greatness and sacrificed some of the speed and power advantages he had in his natural weight class.

 

We didn't imo see SRL at his absolute peak. I reckon he was peaking right about the time of his first retirement. He was surely hitting the top of his game.

 

Greg Page, Davey Moore, and Salvador Sanchez.

 

Would have been fantastic if he had managed to stay hungry and preferable also avoid the retina injury.

A rematch against Hearns at 154, a shot at Hagler with both still in their primes would be the obvious fights to hope for, but there are so many interesting possible match-ups that could have happened before he started to age and decline. Curry, Jackson, Mugabi and McCallum to name some. Just the thought of such fights...