Timing - Guys who won and lost the Boxing lottery...

Alfredo Layne.
Carlos Maussa.
Trevor berbick.
Leon spinks.
Gerrie Coetzee.
Darrin Van Horn
Billy Backus..................All guys who won a ticket at the right time!!...

Ron Lyle.
Tom sharkey.
Tony Sibson..
Bennie Briscoe.
Cleveland Williams..........All guys who bought a ticket at the wrong time..

Education.......Hard work.......All great but timing is everything in life......If I hadn't of met my British rose.......I could be sipping cocktails in a Vegas casino....

With the best will in the world, I'd say perhaps Gerald McClellan.

Great puncher, of course, but so much of his reputation was built on blasting out other flat-trackers who stood bang in front of him - and that's not to mention that those fellas (Mugabi and Jackson, basically) were a bit long in the tooth and shopworn by then.

I couldn't believe that 'Fight of their Lives' quote in which some American writer apparently had the G-Man as his pound for pound number two by 1994 / early 1995. I think his war with Benn and the silly hearsay about Jones 'ducking' him has embellished his standing beyond what it should be, somewhat.

I agree Chris......He was a John Mugabi clone!!!....

You look at the way he was matched.. all stand up fighter like Jackson, Mugabi and Benn..guys who wouldn't have to look for..

Good pick........

What would you say about Barry Mcguigan ??........

Faded Pedroza.......I'd have picked Esparragoza to have beat him and an 82 Pedroza..definitely Azumah too....

I think McGuigan was a much better fighter than just about all of those names on your 'won the lottery' list, Truss, but I see what you're saying insofar as the amount of money he earned, fame he achieved and standing sometimes given to him in a historical sense all go way beyond what he actually did in the ring.

I've only ever see one fight of Esparragoza to be honest, and that was his draw against Villasana, so wouldn't feel totally comfortable predicting how Barry would have got on against him. But I'd definitely pick Nelson to stop Barry late on almost every time.

As you say, a faded Pedroza outboxed him for sustained periods (to be honest, I don't think McGuigan really pulled clear in that one until the thirteenth round onwards) and he couldn't lay a glove on Taylor until the sixth round, after which he basically sapped the American's soul - along with the heat!

Very good fighter but I doubt you'll find anyone in the past three decades who has done less to reach the 'great' or 'legendary' status, or the level of fanfare, that he is often afforded.

Although in fairness to McGuigan, he was a product of his times and that far-fetched but nonetheless appealing idea of him being some kind of peace symbol for a traumatized Ireland during the Troubles was always going to put extra emphasis on him, and it's not something he asked for, either.

Not sure I agree on McClellan. The Benn fight was very much seen as a stepping stone to a fight with jones, something considered a very live fight. He could box too, he was a very useful amateur and had beaten jones i believe, something they were using to feed the hype machine. As a pro, he liked to bang people out. Jackson wasnt shop worn first time round, Mugabi i agree was a corpse. Certainly he'd been matched with other bangers and we didn't get to see much of him against slicksters. Doesn't automatically mean he couldn't have handled them though. The only guy around with a serious chance of derailing jones at that time in my most humble of opinions

Jackson was terrible against Graham...Milky......

He was a plodder who could bang people out with either hand...

Whether by accident or design he was fed guys that would stand there...

But your opinion is welcome....If complete garbage!!

Oh, I'm definitely not suggesting that McClellan-Jones wouldn't have been a very viable and highly anticipated fight, Milky. Just that a lot of McClellan's standing to this day does seem to be based on what people think he might have gone on to do, rather than what he did. Long in the tooth and / or shopworn; if Jackson wasn't the latter, he was surely still the former? Good win for Gerald, definitely, but as the fresher and ever so slightly bigger man you'd expect him to overpower a stand in front fighter like Julian in most cases.

He could box a bit I agree, and showed glimpses of this in the Benn fight once he realised that Benn was a bit tougher and more resilient thatn he first thought, but I guess I just don't see enough on his record up until 1994 / 1995 to warrant being a major pound for pound player, and tend to think that a Jones, a Toney (then again, you know how much I love the ol' salad dodger!), a peak Nunn etc, all who fell just a little either side of him, would have exposed some flaws in his arsenal.

Not a hype job or anything of the sort, just a wee bit overblown for my liking.

At the end of the day....He got beat up by a slightly below world class Benn who lost to Malinga, Watson and Eubank...

They say styles make fights but Benn's style shouldn't have been a surprise to him....

Hardly beat up by benn, truss. Clearly something wrong with him from quite early on the fight but he was ahead on points. Jackson was getting on a bit, but still only had that 1 defeat to Mccallum on his ledger.

Came across this a short while ago, quite interesting background on the g man from manny steward


"When he started at the Kronk he was very much a Tommy Hearns clone, trying to box and move like Tommy but definitely needed some tweaking.

"Tommy had been his hero. Unfortunately for Gerald I had Tommy, I had Michael Moorer, Michael Bentt, I had Oba Carr, Leonzer Barber and all those guys, John David Jackson, Gaby Canizales, Dennis Andries - how much time have you got? Even James Toney.

"I spent most of my time working with Tommy and Michael Moorer. Gerald started taking guys out and he had demons inside from his father, so when he started taking guys out he fell in love with this power he never realised he had because it was like a release.

"It wasn't a case of me leaving him to do his thing. I was simply too tied-up with working on Tommy's preps for the (second) Sugar Ray Leonard fight and actually didn't work with Gerald for one second before his loss to Dennis Milton because Dennis Andries employed me and paid me and had an important WBC world title fight.

"In hindsight, Gerald was a 21-year-old kid with no rounds under his belt going in with an experienced and slick pro (Milton) who had beat everyone as an amateur, so it was wrong and the guy I had looking after him, Stan Johnson, was wrong for him because he was a 'yes' man.

"We started afresh in 1990 and I became quite personal with Gerald. Gerald was a lost soul after every one wrote him off following his losses, he also needed abit of a father figure.

"He stayed with me and it's true I tooted him as the best of the lot. But in hindsight that was wrong because he didn't have the mentality, every time he got in the ring he saw his father so it was a chore for him to stick the jab and wait for sneak punches like Tommy.

"We always had disagreements, he was always wanting to work on footwork based on closing in and not even finding openings but making openings. Everything else was a chore for him so we never got along boxing-wise and training-wise. But he had almost unlimited potential physically.

"People mistakenly seem to think he was a fighter who came forward recklessly throwing big right hands. His move was feinting the jab and bringing down the straight right, and his best punch was the left (hook) to the body - that was the real effective one. He was one of the best jab artists I've seen, let alone worked with."


"The fight he had with Roy (Jones) in the 1988 Golden Gloves was tremendous, he was the only guy who could get close to Roy in terms of speed and made up for Roy's slight edge in speed with his timing and reach and so what you had then was a very competitive fight.

"Gerald had Roy hunched over, wincing from a bodyshot to the abs. That was early on and from there Roy seemed scared to stand his ground.

"Roy was backing off, which I never saw Roy do in the ams. Gerald was unschooled at cutting the ring size down back then and so just came forward and opened up, simply relying on speed, timing, reach and athleticism.

"Roy was countering him well and having the last word in exchanges, but then Gerald would take a little jump back and leap into another assault! You could see the fear in Roy's eyes.

"He (Gerald) deserved the win because Roy couldn't stand with him and almost accepted defeated in that respect.

"This was before Gerald came to Kronk and got quality sparring followed by quality tutorship, and before he truly realised he had these heavy pair of hands. So who knows if he fought Roy with me in his corner.

"Who knows? That's all I'm saying."

Now let's decide....

Should I read Milky's post... or.... War and peace ??

good rebuttal Milky!!............

However rumor has it that Page was owning Tyson before Douglas....and Khan frequently got on top of Manny in sparring....

Whilst it also maybe true Hearns did leave the Kronk gym.......

Read that Errol Christie gave Tommy a rough time as well....

Maybe you're right who knows.............but they fed him the same diet....and maybe he got complacent.

Great piece there, Milky. Thanks for sharing.

Going back to the article, I'd say that Meldrick Taylor, on the whole, got a bit of a raw deal from boxing. So much talent, and his achievements are still considerable outside of that, and yet he's basically remembered as that guy who nearly won a Super Fight.

A lamentable mix of bad luck and horrendous management left his career a little bit unfilled, I think.

Terry Norris at 150......was a real bad piece of matchmaking..

Ha truss... Not a rebuttal really, as it shows Good and bad about McClellan, just an interesting inside take.

Agree on Taylor Chris... Probably the fastest hands I've ever seen... And seconds from immortality!

I honestly have no idea what Duva was thinking on that one, Truss. Norris was a slick, big, strong and pretty hard-hitting (and very genuine) Light-Middleweight who, in the early nineties, was considered to be part of a three-way shootout along with Chavez an Whitaker for the title of the world's best fighter pound for pound in some quarters.

Taylor was going some just to compete as a Welter!

If he'd have stayed at 147 lb a little longer there were some good fights for Meldrick on the horizon; McGirt, who he'd already beaten as a Light-Welter of course, Brown, who Taylor had all the tools to outbox just as Blocker had done for long periods, Blocker himself etc. Not sure I can see Taylor with some wind still left in his sails losing to Espana, anyway.

Must have seen a good payday and chucked him in....Maybe they thought Meldrick was getting past it..but it was crazy 1 2 3..

Norris was bigger, punched harder, about six inches taller.. and probably at that stage just as quick.....

Tyson has to be, he won 300 million and has nothing to show for it.

Tyson seems happier now than when he had it....now the leeches have gone..

Like Louis he'll always be a VIP.............so he'll always get by..

Don King made the sport for the fans (because it would line his own pockets) but the heavyweights he ruined in the process is criminal. Easy access to drugs, this culture of doing whatever they felt like and eschewing discipline. I think anyone who king touched means bad timing

Brilliant article there Milky.

Trevor Berbick was (not known for his brains) was one of the few that turned the tables...

He had signed to fight Tyson but was worried how much money King was going to take for "Expenses"..

So a month before the show he phoned King to say Cooney had approached him for a fight and Tyson was off!!.......King panicked and Berbick said well if you promise not to deduct expenses I'll fight Tyson!!..King agreed..

Cooney never contacted Berbick..........

There's something endearing about Berbick, somehow. That story with King, the way he actually dared to try and take the fight to Tyson and really give it a go despite being hopelessly in over his head and, of course, his legendary "Money don't make a champion, don't make a man!" rant against Larry Big Pants.....Before immediately relinquishing the moral high ground by saying he wanted a street fight in which he'd "break every bone in his (Holmes') body!"

A very average Heavyweight champion when all's said and done but, for whatever reasons be they right or wrong, he'll be remembered more than some of those other early to mid eighties titlists.

88Chris05 wrote:There's something endearing about Berbick, somehow. That story with King, the way he actually dared to try and take the fight to Tyson and really give it a go despite being hopelessly in over his head and, of course, his legendary "Money don't make a champion, don't make a man!" rant against Larry Big Pants.....Before immediately relinquishing the moral high ground by saying he wanted a street fight in which he'd "break every bone in his (Holmes') body!"

A very average Heavyweight champion when all's said and done but, for whatever reasons be they right or wrong, he'll be remembered more than some of those other early to mid eighties titlists.

I think hes got that Gavin Rees thing - where he makes the most out of his talents and seems not to realise that he's in over his head.

Like Willard he'll be remembered for starting the reign of a transcending star......

He was a preacher........and yet went to prison for r***, forging documents and was then kicked out of the USA and Canada........

I'll remember him as being the only guy that fought Holmes, Ali and Tyson.....

One of the few guys that wasn't scared of Tyson in his pomp..

Endearing not sure...............Certainly charismatic.............

not everyday you see two Heavyweight kings brawling on the road.........