Oh, plenty. Some have relatively very little amateur experience - take Tyson. Others were just Godawful amateurs and decent Pros. I think Johnny Nelson was sopmething like 1-13 as an amateur. He went on to be long time WBO CW champion, beat some decent fighters along the way.
Johnny Nelson only won three of thirteen amateur bouts - he was scared to fight. Junior Witter didn't win many more than he lost either.
Didn't evander holyfield lose a whole lot of his first amature fights in a row before going onto big things as both an amature and a pro?
Keep in mind the Amateurs are basicly hard sparring sessions, the judges rarely know what a legal scoring blow is and honestly the Amateur system needs improvment in areas, meaning the coaches clinics and such should be enforced. The judges need to be better educated on their scoring especially when they are new, but all to often they show up for one clinic for a couple of hours and the next day they are scoring fights or are a ref for the fights, it shouldnt be that easy for these guys they should have to put in more than a four hour day to get this type of privlage.
My clinic lasted 8 hours for officiating, and I wasn't allowed to judge or ref a live fight until I had practice judging sessions and showed I knew what I was doing.
They are doing a great job where you are at, infact out here we had long time ref don livingston who been with the sport for almost two decades, turns out he was a ******, and he was using his sons information to avoid being foiled, his son had the same name. but they did find out and he is no longer with USA boxing infact they sent out a newsletter to everybody saying that Livingston is not allowed near any of the events. that is how bad its gotten out here no real control over the sport.
Ray Mancinni had only 40 odd amature fights, and was not highly regarded. About 2 years after he turned pro he went almost 14 rounds with Alexis Arguello, and the first 12 were very competetive.
