Yaqui Lopez - light heavyweight contender, always losing close decisions Jesse Burnett - same as above Fres Quendo - heavyweight contender always losing close decisions Jimmy Young - needs no introduction the world over. Spoiler extraordinaire and loser of close decisions.
Lopez,OMG! fought his ass off and always seemed to loose, what a great fighter. Hard to believe he never won a title. Screw the title, that guy was great! Same with Young!
On that list i would go with Lopez, some guy's just can't catch the breaks, just like in the grind of the 8-5 working World, something always seems to screw them one way or another.. Ken Norton would get my vote ahead of all these dudes, he WAS CLEARLY ROBBED, in a fight that most considered fix 1976 Yankee stadium against Ali, he should have gotten the nod in the 2nd fight too:deal.. And to pour salt in the wound throw in his razor thin loss to Holmes, a lot of guy's thought he won this one too.. Point being it seems for some reason or another Norton was always getting screwed, or maybe he was just a guy who was born to have constant bad luck, in 1986 he almost died from a car accident in LA, and always suffered from health problems..
I agree about Norton. I didn't include him just because the Yankee Stadium fight has been discussed ad nauseam on here already. But if any guy had his LEGACY damaged the most by bad calls, it's Ken Norton. Being a big fan of his in the 70's was an exercise in heartbreak.
Just to give equal time to Burnett, he really was a hard-luck fighter. Always fighting in the other guy's backyard and dropping hometown decisions. Every so often he would pull a rabbit out of his hat , ergo some nice wins over Victor Galindez, Yaqui Lopez, Tony Mundine, Bossman Jones, Lonnie Bennett and 'Windmill' White. But the hard-luck was there. -Appeared to have well-beaten John Conteh only for the Brit ref to call it a draw. -Lost to Bash Ali when one of the judges admitted she mixed up the two fighters. -Robbed badly against Leon Spinks -In his only title fight he is called upon in 48 hours notice. It takes him 24 hours to get from Calif. to Monte Carlo and is so jet-lagged he has nothing against Miguel Cuello (but still managed to drop him early).
Yes, very hard luck guy. I saw the Spinks fight on TV. They were both exploring the new cruiserweight division, and Jesse completed schooled Spinks, but got robbed because people wanted to see Leon fight for a title in that division. A very obviously bad decision, which disgusted me...and I was a Spinks fan.
No shout outs for Oquendo? This guy has gotten the shaft so much it's insane. Deserved the wins over McCall, Mormeck, Toney, Byrd and possibly Holyfield. Then in fights he was winning as soon as he got hurt the hook was pulled by the ref vs Tua and Ruiz (he was trailing but close)
imo You make your own luck and Young wasn't prepared to go the extra mile.He did not have a champions mentality.
Yeah, Oquendo. I kept wanting to see him catch a break and accomplish something, but he kept coming up short. He's an underrated guy with a good chin who seemed to edge Byrd for a piece of the title, but got screwed. He's too old now to really get another shot.
