Unlucky Fighters

Just watched Kassim Ouma's record today .
Then reminded this thread checked he was not mentioned yet and posting this.

Sanderline Williams rightfully mentioned.

(Too) Many fights have a fixed judgemental bias secretly arranged since before their occurrence.

Therefore many fighters which do not get to act the main character will lose the decision if they get to it , or sometime not even they "take it out of the judges' hands" like in McClellan-Benn , Andrade-Bute 1 , and don't remember which one , but one of the two Dempsey-Tunney.

And then you have the eternal heroes of the sport which are allowed to foul : Hopkins , Holyfield , Ali , Tyson . Just be the main character and get the rules bent in favor of yourself is the message , the question is whose promoter is the stronger and this is not a new invention of the last 3 decades.

 

Herol Graham seems to fit the bill, when you have to fight a crafty old vet like McCallum, a slick boxer like Kalambay, and a murderous puncher like Julian Jackson, id say that classifies you as unlucky, particularly when guys in and around your weight class like Nardiello and Malinga are capable of winning a title.

 

:good robbed with dela hoya, robbed with vargas, robbed definatly with forrest

 

Vargas beat him clear as day.

But I do agree he could have had it go much differently for his.

De La Hoya could have gone either way, and he beat Forrest clearly, I thought.

 

I agree with you on this, I felt Vargas won, was a excellent fight to watch imo.

I do think he beat Oscar and Forrest, obviously Forrest more so.

 

I give it to Oscar, because of how I personally saw the fight, the last round sealed a razor thin win. But I do recognize that Ike has a great arguement too. Close fight, either fighter can be called a winner, no robbery.

Ike won 7 rounds off Forrest. Period.

Vargas I thought won 8 rounds off Ike.

And of course, Wright won 11.

How did you score his barn burner with Lopez? Really fun fight, I thought. Ike really shows he had championship heart.

 

Agree, no robbery.

I personally thought Lopez just nicked it, by maybe a round.

 

I don't know if I'd call him unlucky or just not that good but Frank Bruno comes to mind...

he fought well vs. Bonecrusher Smith (LKOby10 of a 10 rounder), Tim Witherspoon (LKOby11 for the WBA HW Title), and even Lennox Lewis (LKOby7 for the WBC HW Title) before being stopped in all 3 fights. How different would his career have been had he managed to win one of these fights?

 

I believe Bernard Hopkins got the wrong end of the stick in three major fights - Taylor I, Taylor II and Calzaghe.

I scored the first Taylor fight a draw, had the second one to B-Hop by 2, and had the Calzaghe fight to Bernard by 4 or 5 if I remember rightly.

He lost all three.

It is unquestionable that he landed the cleaner, better punches in all three fights, and it is unquestionable that he did the most damage in all three fights, but the judges went against him every time.

I believe this is in part due to the flaws of the "10-point must" system, which is a bad system and should not be in use, as I see it. It is also due to the extreme overemphasis on 'workrate' which has afflicted many judges in the 2000s (leading to the ridiculous scoring of the recent Alexander-Kotelnik and the utterly insane 119-110 card that one judge turned in after the Williams-Martinez fight) and the extreme disregard for clean, effective punches landed.

In another era, Hopkins would (rightly) have emerged 2-0-1 instead of 0-3.

 

Vargas beat him clear as day? The majority are OK with the decision as it stands but nobody but the biggest Feroz fans think he won it walking away.

Had Quartey won, some fans (mostly those from Mexico or Oxnard) would surely call it a robbery...but it would not be the consensus view. That one could have gone either way depending on the panel of judges on the given night.

De La Hoya lost narrowly to Quartey on any reasonable and educated scorecard.

He did beat Forrest quite clearly, and well past-prime no less.

The only person to ever beat him clear as day was Winky - and they had no business in the ring together. Or rather, them being in the ring together was nothing but business.

 

ok quartey clearly beat lopez and oscar de la hoya. those fights were the definition of close but clear

vargas i did think clearly beat him but quartey, while still very good, was past his best

 

He was never more than a B or C level fighter any way you slice it, though. He was just a flashy showboat, which seemed to throw off the impression that he was capable of being world class had he actually put his foot down, which I don't agree with having watched a lot of his fights.

 

Laszlo Papp, in a different way than the others. Couldn't start his career because the Hungarian government wouldn't let him and wanted him to keep competing in the Olympics. Then he was on the cusp of a title shot when the Hungarian government made it illegal for their citizens to compete in sports professionally. At 38, I doubt he would have accomplished too much more anyway, but considering how rare good southpaws were back then, it would have been interesting to see how he would have fared against Dick Tiger, Emile Griffith or Nino Benvenuti.

Not an ATG or anything, but Delvin Rodriguez has been extremely unlucky over the last few years. Should have wins over Jackiewicz, Hlathswayo and Theophane and should have been a titlist. Flat out robbed in two of those fights, and I haven't seen many non-Poles who thought he won the Jackiewicz fight.

Also recently, Kassim Ouma has had some pretty bad luck. Four of his last five losses have been very questionable. And it's certainly not good luck to get forced into the Ugandan military as a child.

 

No one who had 3 title shots can be called unlucky unless they got robbed in all three. Fact is, he just wasn't good enough.

 

Obviously only Graham is responsible for how his career turned out but its true he was unlucky in a few of his fights.His loss against Mcallum was a razor thin decision and he never got a rematch to that fight.He had brewer down twice in a world title fight before he was eventually stopped himself.He was also outclassing Jackson before he got stopped with that hayemaker of a right hand