Who In Your Opinion Had The Saddest Descent From Boxing?

Jimmy Wilde
Johnny Owen

Jimmy Bivins' experience was awful, but he did manage to come back from it, thankfully.

http://www.wcpn.org/specials/when64/when64-2.html

It's a happy ending of sorts, at least.

 

hamed...was boo'd in his last fight

 

Co-Sign:deal

 

all of those mentioned plus wilfred benitez , sandy saddler , ike williams , ezzard charles, randy turpin , benny lynch etc etc
there are more bad endings than good

 

please tell me more

 

Interesting to see film of Barkley nowdays... He was boxing in Melbourne, 1995, and the opportunity to watch him train and have a chat with him was more than available. IMO, his personal health is actually improved in the last 14 years... Whilst in Melbourne, his speach was extremerly un-intelligable, and he slurred like a punchy old fighter. In this partciular interveiw, Barkley sounds coherrent, and interested in his platform to chat. A spark remains in his brain. Good to see.

 

"The crown of Thorns" fits all heads, at all weight classes.

 

Michael "second to" Nunn
impressive win streak + james toney left hand = life in prison.

 

I thought he spoke pretty cearly also ,but I wasn't sure if Barkley always spoke in such a relaxed manner until I found this '92 interview with Hearns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcB8IAt7fyA


Barkley has always seemed to speak in the same relaxed manner like he does in the Pavlik-Taylor analysis.


THOMAS Hearns however sounds pretty slurred back then & I wouldn't doubt if he were now suffering Dementia from all of the Boxing trauma. Has anyone heard about Hearns health?

 

Davey Moore has to rate in there somewhere.

 

Kid McCoy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_McCoy

The below cited from above link:

Unfortunately, by the early 1920s McCoy was broke, addicted to alcohol and out of the movie industry. At this time however, McCoy was involved in a romance with a wealthy married woman, Teresa Mors. Apparently he swept her off her feet, for she filed for divorce from her husband. The Mors divorce was acrimonious, and dragged on until she was killed, in the apartment she shared with McCoy, by a single gunshot to the head on August 12, 1924.
The next morning, a disheveled McCoy robbed and held captive some 12 people at Mrs. Mors' antique shop, and shot one man, who was trying to escape, in the leg. He also had forced at least 6 other men to remove their trousers, after divesting them of their money. McCoy was apprehended and charged with the murder of Mrs. Mors. His trial took place in downtown Los Angeles, and was the media event of its day. McCoy claimed Mrs. Mors committed suicide, while the prosecution claimed he murdered her for financial gain.
McCoy testified in his own defense, and apparently put on quite a show as he demonstrated Mrs. Mors final minutes. Contending he had tried to wrestle a knife away from her, McCoy and his attorney actually wrestled and rolled around on the courtroom floor, for the benefit of the jury, press and courtroom spectators. After Mrs. Mors allegedly took her own life, McCoy claimed he became faint and could not remember anything further, including participating in the wild crime spree the following morning.
Apparently, the jury was split between first degree murder and acquittal. In what is believed to have been a compromise verdict, McCoy was convicted of manslaughter.
McCoy was sent to San Quentin, but was paroled from prison in 1932. Even his death was enigmatic. He died from an overdose of sleeping pills leaving a suicide note behind. His suicide note read, among other things: "Everything in my possession, I want to go to my dear wife, Sue E. Selby... To all my dear friends... best of luck... sorry I could not endure this world's madness."

 

Louis' story makes me sad, ****ing IRS. Langford died poor and blind from what I've heard. Greb was a tragedy. Ketchel was breaking down physically and had reportedly decided to quit boxing when he was murdered. Billy Miske died of Bright Disease. Billy Papke killed himself and his wife also.

Probably the least sad cases I can recall would be Schmeling and Dempsey. Just to lighten the mood, they lived crazily long lives and were pretty well off financially and physically for most of them.