Heavyweight contenders who you thinks should have been better

I think Gerry C00ney could have gone further with the right adjustments.. He went into all of his biggest fights coming off extended layoffs which is terrible. Ad to that the lifestyle outside the ring and you had a lot of wasted talent.

 

Corrie Sanders. Give him a top trainer and promoter with connections. He had neither.

Jimmy Young, clearly mismanaged early in his career.

 

Corrie Sanders is a good pick, another for me would be Razor Ruddock, the guy had a great jab and defensive abilities for the first part of his career and then he fell in love with his "smash" and totally changed the way he fought.

Granted he became a much more exciting fighter after he decided he could knock anybody out, I just think he could of been far more successful if he made defense and winning rounds more of a priority.

 

Agree with this. George Chuvalo trained him for a spell and did an excellent job. I saw him beat Mike Weaver with Chuvalo in his corner and looked the goods. But like you said, the next time I actually saw him he was employing that big left uppercut and abandoned all else.

 

Sanders for certain.

Pinklon Thomas is another. Once he got to the top, he stopped doing the things that got him there. And he went downhill as faster or faster than his rise up. Early on they threw him in with Coetzee and not many were expecting him to come out of that one. consensus was he'd get stopped. But he did have that good set of whiskers early on but like everything else, they soon disappeared. Just so much to overcome for the former drug addict to rise to the level he did. And it just is not a forgiving sport & he really didn't get to the big payday's part of things.

 

You're right, Floyd Patterson was with him for a while ,he couldn't get him to forget about that smash and in the end you only have to look out for one punch when you're facing someone with that obstinate mind-set.

 

Yes Sanders had real potential.Jeff Merrit? Johnny Boudreaux? There was another called Al Jones,Roy Williams showed some promise.

 

Dokes main problem was COCAINE.

He laid off from late '85 to late '87 because of it, but rumours of him having a coke problem go back to 1982.

I think Tony Tubbs should have done more. He had really sound fundamentals and speed. He was also pretty elusive defensively, when in shape.

Even faded, he was able to almost beat a pre-peak Bowe and beat decent competition like Bruce Seldon and Jesse Ferguson. He also beat Alexander Zolkin.

If he had stayed in shape after he beat Page for the WBA title, he could have had a good prime. Instead he blew way up in weight and had management problems that resulted in several lengthy periods of inactivitiy. He also had a COKE problem.

 

Baer should have been more successful he wouldn't have lost to Braddock if he'd took it seriously.
Witherspoon's managerial problems took alot of desire out of him.
Ibeabuchi would have won a title.

 

His management clearly went for the short term big bucks, proper development be damned.

He should have fought better competition before facing Holmes, but his management did not want to risk it. This probably affected his confidence as he seemed fairly intelligent and probably sensed they didn't seem to have full confidence in him.

 

Title says contenders my mistake.

 

Tubbs had a lot of talent his hand speed was incredible even more so because he was so fat and poorly prepared for his fights.What would he have been like if he trained properly?.

 

I've never understood how a guy like Tubbs, whose specialty was speed, could come in consistently overweight. I mean all the time! Man should have been 218 lbs or so. I can't even imagine how much more effective he'd have been. Smart guy in the ring too.

If we're limited to talking about contenders & not champions, Carl Williams is a big one for me. His problem was just the fact that he had such a bad chin. Maybe if he'd tightened his defense up it would've helped. He had great size, a killer jab, good speed, & decent power. Give him Pinklon Thomas' chin & he could've done a lot.

****ey should've gotten a belt at some point. He fought a good fight against Holmes & just disappeared.

Maybe Quick Tillis? I've only seen a few fights but he seemed pretty talented.