Greatest waste of talent in boxing history?

According to some it was his boxing style too. Once he took over, Joe Frazier totally mishandled his development and career.

 

Masao Ohba should've been the king of the flyweights. I don't want to sound fruity but I get teary eyed thinking about Ohba.

 

Bowe is still an ATG despite that.

 

Damn!

 

All Time great? No he didn't come close to that. I followed his career as a prospect as Futch polished into an excellent heavyweight but was gone from the scene in a flash. At his best he had all the tools to beat just about anybody.
Not keeping his life together and not fighting Lewis both class A felonies.

 

Interesting thread. There can be boxers who did not reach their full potential for whatever reason, and then there are boxers who wasted their talent for whatever reason. The two can be interchangeable I guess, because in most cases if you waste your talent you probably won’t reach your full potential.

But then again, you can reach your full potential at some stage of your career, but then wreck it all with drink, drugs, crimes etc, therefore wasting your talent by not remaining on top when still in your prime years due to a terrible lifestyle affecting you physically, mentally or legally.

So I can definitely agree with some of those who name some World champions as having wasted their talent especially if their reign at the top was cut short prematurely due to their own foolishness.

I’ll go for Ike Ibeabuchi. He had the talent to be a belt holder at least, but his lifestyle outside the ring led to him not even challenging. A true waste of talent.

 

Haha! Credit where it’s due…it was funny!

 

I wrote about Marvis Frazier and you wrote about Joe Frazier; I do not understand...

 

Had Rogan Josh last night,put in in my belly !

 

The reason his talent/potential was wasted was because of the way his career was mismanaged by his father.

 

Naseem Hamed

 

Yes he did, he's top 10 all time or top 15 in the worst case scenario.
He became champ and only lost once, and that was questionable.

And that is what makes him an ATG.

Those things means he cannot rank very high on an ATG list, but he's an ATG nonetheless.

 

Harry Simon.He had a good unbeaten record before he went to jail,beating the likes of Winky Wright and Hacine Cherifi.He killed 3 people in a car accident in 2002 .When he resumed his boxing career 5 years later in 2007,but he was regularly inactive.He fought only stiffs that nobody had heard of before retiring with an unfulfilled undefeated record in 2018.