Who were the most undeserving challengers for the heavyweight championship?

Let's just keep the discussion to credible versions of the championship, where there was a champion who was generally considered the champ. No ridiculous alphabets, like WBO or whatever, or vacant alphabet farces, like Seldon-Tucker for example.

WHICH FIGHTERS IN HISTORY WERE THE LEAST DESERVING OF A TITLE SHOT?

Preferably, looking for fighters with awful recent form, or fraudulent records, AND a severe lack of ability.

I think Pete Rademacher must be considered among the least deserving, since he was an amateur with ZERO professional fights !

ChrisP and JT will mention Billy Miske, so I'll mention him first. Miske's recent record going in to the title shot with Dempsey was 1-2-2, and on top of that he was sick with kidney disease !

According to the record books, Alfredo Evangelista "earned" a shot at Muhammad Ali with a points LOSS to Lorenzo Zanon ! In an 8-rounder ! The guy had never gone over 8 rounds in his career, and beaten no one of note in 16 fights. He went the distance with Ali, mind you.

Leon Spinks went 15 rounds with Ali and beat him, to his credit. But did he deserve a shot ?

Ali has a few bad ones. Even George Chuvalo didn't really deserve a shot, coming off a loss against Eduardo Corletti.

I think Abe Simon was coming off losses to Lem Franklin before BOTH his fights with Joe Louis !

Joe Louis must have a few more bad ones too.
Larry Holmes to some extent too.

I actually think standards rose with Tyson, Holyfield, Lewis over who it was - and was not - acceptable to give title shots to.
Tyson wasn't lining up defences with such men as Wimpy Halstead and Bobby Crabtree.
The worst on Holyfield's defences are Bert Cooper, a THIRD CHOICE substitute, and Vaugh Bean.
Lewis fought Botha, who was 1-1-1 in his last three, and Golota, who was coning off two DQs. I dont think Golota deserved it all, no fighter should be rewarded for that level of fouling, but Golota had looked like an elite fighter against Bowe so there's a case for him on ability rather than desert.

There are obviously fighters with impressive win-loss-draw records on paper who never came close to championship quality who were given shots. Maybe like Tom McNeeley, Scott Frank.

 

George Foreman was one of the least deserving fighters to challenge for the championship in 1994 against Michael Moorer.

When Foreman won he repaid the favour by finding some rather undersving challengers to give shots to. I still dont know who the hell Crawford Grimsley was !

 

I dont believe that. How many losses did Miske have ?
Roper had about 40 !

 

Braddock was coming off a 15-round decision over Art Lasky, who I believe was a ranked contender.

Actually Braddock was coming off 3 solid wins over good fighters, I think.

 

Does this include NO DECISIONS ?

Boxrec lists him as having 73 wins out of 104 fights, meaning the most he could have lost is 31 !
But boxrec also states only 16 losses, the remainding being draws or no decisions I assume.

Obviously, boxrec is probably incomplete. But where did you get your info from ?

 

Jersey Joe Walcott got a shot at Ezzard Charles on the back off a loss to Rex Layne, who was a big underdog.

All these guys getting shots on the back of losses is not only often ridiculous in a sporting sense, but a little bit suspicious too.

 

Thinking about Evangelista, I think it's funny how American World Heavyweight Champions in those days used to import European heavyweights for easy fights.

I think the sanctioning bodies used to have a rule where European champions got automatically ranked, precisely so the Americans could get easy defences and to appease European fans, I assume.

Of course, being "European champion" didn't mean you were the best in Europe any more then than it does now. But still, the quality of European heavyweight fighters in the 70s and 80s was poor.

Evangelista got TWO SHOTS.
Zanon and Rodriguez also got shots at Holmes.
Ali fought Richard Dunn and Jean-Pierre Coopman as champion as well, maybe others.
Spinks had Tangstad.