Your Favorite Journeyman

There was an English middleweight journeyman from Liverpool in the sixties going into the seventies named Harry Scott who could give most a fight and on some occasions succeed.
His list of opponents from back then includes Emile Griffith, Ruben Hurricane Carter, Nino Benvenuti, Sandro Mazzinghi, Laszlo Papp, Alan Minter,Kevin Finnegan, Chris Finnegan.Tom Bogs,Bunny Sterling amongst other good British and European level fighters.
He fought Ruben Carter in ‘65 was ahead on points but got beat on cuts a couple of months later he outpointed Carter in a return.
The only other fighter to stop him was Griffith once again on cuts apart from his last fight.
A real tough guy.

 

Richard Dunn

 

I can't go along with Dunn. I think the extremely chinny and tall southpaw achieved too much as the British and European Champion to be classified as a journeyman. He had too many good wins over too many guys at the British and European levels. (London 2X, Ingo, Cooper, Bugner, Mildenberger, Dunn, Lucien Rodriguez, Lorenzo Zanon, Coopman, Evangelista 2X and Tangstad all got shots during the period from 1959 to 1986.) His qualifications for challenging Ali were adequate, in fact far more reasonable than what Evangelista and Leon had achieved at the time they challenged the GOAT. (Alfredo's shot at Muhammad was extremely controversial. His significant wins were all in the future. By the time of his shot at Holmes however, he was European Champion and on a good streak. Ultimately had a good career, and defeated five other HW Title challengers a total of six times. Leon of course earned his shot at Larry by knocking out legitimate heavyweights Evangelista and Mercado. Because of those two stoppages, I do not consider Leon Spinks to have been a cruiserweight.)

Ali was right when he said afterwards, "If I'd been in the same shape I was for Jimmy Young, Dunn would now be Champion." I don't think this was charity on the GOAT's part. He was in incredibly poor condition for Jimmy. To me, Richard Dunn proved that Ali wasn't diminished from Manila if he trained properly and was competitively sharp. After Dunn though, Inoki almost caused one of his legs to be amputated, then Shavers wrecked his timing forever by inflicting the neurological damage Holmes credited Earnie for wrecking him with. (Larry agrees with my long expressed opinion that Shavers was Ali's true Manila.)

Everybody Ali defended against either had achieved or would achieve too much to be considered true career long journeymen.

 

Bert Cooper and Emmanuel Augustus. Almost every fight they're in is pure entertainment win or lose.

 

Well, Jersey Joe Walcott comes first to mind.

As from that...

Jessie James Hughes
Jesse Ferguson
Johnny du Plooy
Mickey Ward

 

I've always been partial to Harold Brazier

 

In an interview with Jake LaMotta conducted by Curt Gowdy, Ray Robinson laughed off the idea of going into the heavyweight division if he'd beaten Maxim by specifically mentioning the deadly punching Satterfield, the turning to Jake as they laughed about it, and the Raging Bull nodded, having actually knocked out Bullet Bob in seven during 1946.

No way Satterfield was a journeyman.

 

I love George Chaplin, who I had the winner of both bouts with Page, and of course he retired Duane Bobick, not by blowing him out, but withstanding his body attack to halt him on cuts in six. (Duane lost an attrition bout for the only time and that's when he realized his had to hang up the gloves.) Was this orthopedic technician a TRUE journeyman though? Beat Earnie Shavers, Lynn Ball and Mike Koranicki (who knocked out Knoetze in his next bout) in addition to Duane Bobick.

Brazier a "journeyman?" I watched him too many times to think of him in those terms. No way a guy who goes 105-18-1 with only two stoppage defeats over 20 years can be labeled as such. He was simply too good.


Here's who I like as a journeyman. The wildly popular David Capo was only 2-18-1 in his professional career with just two stoppage defeats. But among his two conquests was Olympic Gold Medalist Leo Randolph in just his second professional outing (Jesus Esparragoza . In an early ESPN Main Event barnburner, he continually swapped with Freddie Roach over the ten round limit. During the final stanza, the timekeeper was so spellbound that he forgot to ring the bell at three minutes, yet Roach and Capo continued their ridiculous pace through what became a four minute final round. This one can now be found on YouTube.

Among those Capo pushed to the limit were Juan LaPorte 2X (only losing via MD in his pro debut and SD), Jose Nieto 2X (the first as an amateur) Carmelo Negron, Azumah Nelson, Johnny "The Heat" Verderosa (as an amateur), and Julian Solis. The combined records of his opponents at the time he squared off with them was a crazy 234-21-2. One scribe described him as "an epileptic road runner" and having seen him in action multiple times (including against Randolph and Roach) I agree.

David Capo is a classic example of how utterly deceptive a seemingly dismal record can be. He was vastly superior to what 2 (KO 0) 18 (KO by 2) - 1 would suggest. Watch him against Roach.

Along with the well televised Freddie Roach himself, if you're looking for journeymen with fine winning records (Freddie went 40-13-0, pushing Camacho the distance and Chacon to a majority decision) another fine journeyman who became a noted trainer was Kevin Rooney, who went 21-4-1 with some televised wins before getting one punched by Arguello as Alexis made his debut at 140 in preparing for Pryor I (the only time Kevin was ever counted out - Bronx Davey Moore avenged an amateur defeat to Kevin via seven round TKO for the then 15-0-0 Rooney's first defeat). Currently, I don't see any of Kevin's other bouts on YouTube aside from Arguello bombing him out with that devastating right cross.

 

Hi buddy.
Good call on Scott, might I just mention a british fighter that didn't scale the heights of your pick, but was a very good journeyman in his own right, that being Billy Waith, a LWW come WW of the early to mid 70s he fought : Watt, McCormack, Revie, Rhiney, Batten, Jones, Morrison, Richardson, Steyn, Angell, Hayes, Green, Hansen, Acraries, Palm, Tshinza, and many more, a true blue collar boxer.
stay safe Cecil, chat soon.

 

I guess it’s an eye-of-the-beholder thing. I’m not aware of George ever being ranked, so I don’t think we can call him a contender (perhaps he was somewhere along the way but it would have been fairly lowly and brief). And while he definitely had some nice wins on his ledger, he also lost frequently enough in step-up-in-class bouts.

My first exposure to Chaplin came like the week our local cable company added ESPN. This was before they were working with Top Rank or any major promoters with a weekly show — Chaplain (14-1-1) fought Wendell Bailey (13-2) in a 12-rounder for the vacant Maryland state heavyweight title. Two decent prospects head to head in basically a good club show … and I was like ‘This is the kind of boxing I want on my TV! Not just championship fights and contenders like we get on the networks, but the upper minor leagues where we can see guys developing and on their way and maybe promising younger guys on the undercard to see what they’ve got.’ Not a ballyhooed fight at all, but two guys with a little something on the line (their futures as well as that Maryland belt) and a low-key TV stage to raise the stakes a bit more.

Chaplain won over 12 and I tried to follow him thereafter. I was disappointed he didn’t get the nod in either fight vs. Page but he had Greg’s number.

Found out years later, George was a pretty accomplished amateur — he fought twice vs. Russians (and won both times) in international competition. Maybe it was the USA and Russian B or C teams, but that’s still pretty good.

 

Marcos Geraldo.... got destroyed by absolute schmucks in the early rounds... goes the distance with Hager and Leonard

 

I remember Billy Waith but didn’t see much of him.

 

Billy Marsh

 

Hearns-Geraldo was among the most flagrant dives I've ever seen. Marcos Geraldo was as crooked a pimped tanker as there was during his prime. He had to be getting paid much more for lying down for Hearns, Caveman, Nunn and Hill than he ever did for SRL, Hagler and LoCicero.

 

When I really first got into boxing there was a group of journeymen who were gracing every top dogs record. They were George 'Scrapiron' Johnson, Lou Bailey, Charlie Polite and Manuel Ramos. Man, they fought everybody. Also, a couple of more journeymen who could spring that upset if you weren't paying attention. And they are Ralph 'Tiger' Jones, Eddie Pace and Teddy 'Red Top' Davis.