Fighters you had the highest hopes for that fell short?

Well that and they had to defend against the GOAT.

 

Jared Anderson recently.

I was pretty young but I remember being super excited for David Haye and Tony Thompson v Wladimir Klitschko.

 

One loss doesn't kill a young fighter though, no? Bakole had the loss to Hunter and look where he is now.

 

Jeanne Pierre Coopman.

 

We'll see. It was a bad loss. In a time where seemingly every champ is undefeated when they win the belt and loses later on getting beaten early is not a good sign.

Yes but been 6 years and he still probably needs a win or two.

 

Yes, "seemingly", though I understand your point. The thing is that Anderson still has skills, and despite the devastating loss, he'd still do good against most others in the division. Bakole was a dip in performance, but it's better to lose to him and learn than to fight weak opposition and stay the same.
And yes, he still does need better names on his record.

 

Lamar Parks for the obvious reason.
Kelly Pavlik. The Ghost was poised for stardom.
Vivian Harris. Maybe not the highest hopes but they were fairly high after dismantling Diosbelys Hurtado.
Mike Jones had a bright future. Thanks a lot Randall Bailey.

 

Goyo Vargas looked like the second coming of Salvador Sanchez when he beat Paul Hodkinson then sank like a stone.

 

Of course. Duh!! It's been a long day. Thanks Swag.

 

While Meldrick Taylor had a very good career and didn’t exactly “ fall short “ I had hoped that he’d achieve a higher level of greatness. I was mesmerized watching him take apart Buddy Mcgirt and then later outboxing Chavez. I’m not embarrassed to say that I actually thought I was looking at the next Ray Leonard. Naturally I was wrong

 

To be Mr Pedant (as Dinner once labelled me) none of those three defenses being talked about were against the GOAT. The three defenses were all successful.

Spreadeagle had mentioned Ali earlier.

Sorry Swag LOL

 

Rodolfo "Gato" Gonzalez, the one who KO'd Vilomar Fernandez after which Fernandez claimed Gato punched harder than Duran and Arguello. Gato also had good wins over tough Norman Goins and Andy Ganigan. But he came up short against Claude Noel for the WBA Championship and slowly slid out of the top tier. Later he was imprisoned for a murder he said he didn't commit. I remember reading the boxing mags at the time and he was the all the rage.

 

I'm sort of going both ways on Lomachenko. I am extremely partial to the injury excuse against Lopez as he had surgery just after the fight. I also had him beating Haney, absolutely i did. There's some real intangibles involved. If he was given the decision, deserved IMO vs Haney he'd be right back on track. and have another notch in his belt.

Also fighting once a year isn't going to get it done for him in much of a hurry. He needs to follow up his Kambosos win. He and Davis were going to fight which would have been utterly perfect for both of them to potentially enhance their reputation but it fell thru.

Who knows when and if he gets in there again.

 

Engels Pedroza. Started 22-0, all by ko. Got stopped in the 9th when he got tired in a fight he was winning clearly. I thought he had learned his lesson when he rebounded but it was not to be. Why train when all you have to do is walk across the ring and hit the other guy?

 

I was very high on Julian "J-Rock" Williams when He was coming up. I thought He could do it all. There was one fight where He really put it all together and He became unified title-holder - but lost his titles in first defence against pretty ordinary opponent.
I still believe his skillset is excellent, but his chin wasn't particulary reliable - and He lacked tactical discipline as well. Well, I wrote it in past tense. He's still competing, but certainly won't achieve what I thought He could when I saw him on his way up.