Ran prime ATG Gus Lesnevich to an SD at 17 years old, ran Jimmy Bivins to an SD at 19 years old and stopped Lou Nova at 19 years old, the latter 2 examples was above his natural weight, it looked like the only way was up from this point. Where did it all go wrong?
Probably a combination of things: Being good at a young age doesn’t guarantee that one will progress from that to greatness. All prodigies do not become master musicians or mathematicians or whatever it is that they’re prodigies at … sometimes they just hit a ceiling pretty fast and that’s about it. Some of the best football prospects out of high school and college don’t become great NFL players, or even make it on a roster. He seems to have outgrown light heavyweight and possibly outgrown whatever edges he had with it. He got knocked down a considerable number of times by pedestrian fighters (and good fighters, too), which suggests he had a limitation that was going to really catch up with him fighting at heavyweight. What we can’t know (or at least what I don’t know) was whether he was super dedicated up to a point in his early 20s and then began to burn out a bit or discover girls or just get bored with boxing/training and kind of coast on his ability, which catches up with even the most gifted fighters sooner or later. How dedicated was he in the gym after he found out that he wasn’t going to rise to the very top and stay there and was going to have to really work for it just to compete with top fighters?
I wouldn't call Lesnevich an ATG, he was more of a very good-to-great fighter IMO. Exactly. He was a top contender @LHW, missed out on 2 attempts to win the title (once possibly the result of a bad decision), & then established himself as a top HW contender. Nothing appeared to be "wrong" w/ his career progression until after the Louis fight. If he'd stayed @LHW, he would've run into Charles & Moore, which likely wouldn't have worked out much better for him than the Louis fight. I don't see any indication that he accomplished any less than could be expected of him, except perhaps that the 1st Lesnevich fight could've gone his way.
Maurielo had never been knocked out before Louis, so maybe it broke something in him. He also started weighing too heavily for his frame, seeing that he carried the same power at 185 as he did at 197, the extra weight can't have been good for him. Perhaps a sign that he was losing focus. In any case, his record after Louis is abysmal, whereas before that fight he was the best heavyweight contender or top two in the division. His record is filled to the brim with guys who held a ranking at some point in their careers, and he was going toe to toe with some of them as a teenager. Wins Gunnar Burland ×3 Buddy Knox ×3 Tony Musto ×2 Red Burman Lee Savold ×2 Lou Nova ×2 Lee Oma ×2 Bruce Woodcock Steve Dudas Close SD losses Gus Lesnevitch Jimmy Bivins Draw Bob Pastor
