There comes a time in any competitive pursuit when the near misses add up and what once was mere disappointment gives way to heartbreak. In Tevin Farmer’s in-ring interview following his majority decision loss Saturday night to William Zepeda – his second straight against the favored Zepeda by a narrow margin, and his third consecutive defeat overall – you could hear the heartbreak.

“I came into the boxing game at 18 years old, had 16 amateur fights, I’m an overachiever, I’m competing with guys that started at five years old, 300 amateur fights, and I’m competing with the best,” Farmer said. “And, I can’t get the decision. I don’t have a big promoter, so what the hell I’m going to do? … So, at this point, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I’m seriously – ’cause I can’t keep going into camp and doing all this shit and not getting the decision, getting robbed.”

Not many observers would agree with Farmer that he was “robbed” in Cancun this past weekend, but the sentiment reverberates all the same. He keeps falling just short when it matters. The close decisions never seem to go his way anymore. And it didn’t help that he was inactive for three-and-a-half years, beginning with the Covid shutdowns and continuing for a couple of years thereafter, during his physical prime, right after his lone alphabet title reign ended.

Let his career play out a hundred times, and in the majority of them, the crafty Farmer probably posts a better record than his current 33-8-1 (8 KOs). But in the actual timeline he’s experiencing, that is his somewhat ugly record and he’s now 34 years old and looking like a longshot to get over the hump and snag another title.

And that makes him the latest in a long line throughout boxing history of hard-luck fighters.

It’s not quite the same as the oft-noted designation “best never to win a title” (partially because Farmer did hold a title). The categorizations are similar, but you can be an excellent fighter who never won a title without bad luck serving as a major factor.

For example, David Tua was perhaps the best heavyweight of his generation never to win a title, and there’s some irony in noting how many men he defeated claimed titles themselves, but nothing about Tua’s career was particularly unlucky.

The same goes for Donovan “Razor” Ruddock a half-generation before him; he gave Mike Tyson a couple of tough fights, but the whole of Ruddock’s record suggests he was never quite championship material.

Sticking with heavyweights, Gerry Cooney doesn’t quite fit either. He got a couple of lineal title opportunities, against Larry Holmes and Michael Spinks, and found his level. Could he have taken an alphabet belt off a Mike Weaver or a Pinklon Thomas? Perhaps. But it’s still difficult to look over Cooney’s career and say he got unlucky or came along at the wrong time.

In a way, as rough a run as he’s been on in the 2020s, Farmer was also somewhat fortunate prior to that. After all, he got the opportunity to take on fringe contender Billy Dib for a vacant 130-pound belt in 2018 and acquired the strap.

What follows is a list, mostly chronological, of harder luck fighters than Farmer – guys who never held a “world” title and were truly unlucky on some level not to.

Surely, some names are missing from this list, and it skews modern (mostly the last 50 years or so) because boxers who never won titles are destined to be forgotten once the fans and reporters who watched them are gone.

Nevertheless, here goes with a hard-luck history prior to Farmer’s recent heartbreak:

Harry Wills and the early 20th century black heavyweights

Among a group that includes Sam Langford, Sam McVey, and Joe Jeannette – all of whom held what was known at the time as the “World Colored Heavyweight Championship” – Wills came closest to securing a title shot, but couldn’t quite get across the color line drawn by Jack Dempsey and/or his management and/or various outside forces. They were boxing’s most blatant examples of fighters who were born at the wrong time.

Charley Burley

The racial barriers facing Burley in the ‘30s and ‘40s weren’t what they had been a couple of decades earlier, but he is widely regarded as the most ducked contender ever and was famously described by Hall of Fame trainer Eddie Futch as “the finest all-around fighter I ever saw.” From Henry Armstrong to Sugar Ray Robinson to Marcel Cerdan to Billy Conn, all were accused during their championship reigns of avoiding Burley – who, in non-title fights, went 2-1 against Fritzie Zivic and 1-0 against Archie Moore.

Jerry Quarry

We celebrate the 1970s as the greatest heavyweight era ever. And in some ways, that makes its top contenders who never became champs the unluckiest heavyweights ever. Quarry lost twice to Muhammad Ali, twice to Joe Frazier, and once to Ken Norton. Wins over the likes of Floyd Patterson, Earnie Shavers, and Ron Lyle suggest Quarry was capable of winning the title – or at least a piece of it – in most stretches of heavyweight history other than the one in which he peaked.

Earnie Shavers

If these were rankings of hard-luck fighters, Shavers would come in below Quarry by virtue of his KO 1 loss to him at Madison Square Garden in 1973. Still, Shavers is arguably the biggest puncher in boxing history, his two title shots came against all-timers Ali and Holmes, and you can’t come much closer to knocking out a great heavyweight champ without in fact knocking out that great heavyweight champ than Shavers did against Holmes in ’79.

Jimmy Young

The last of the 1970s heavyweights on this list, the slippery Young had a style judges didn’t often care for – as evidenced by his unanimous decision loss to Ali in a title shot in ’76 that was vociferously disputed at the time. Another bad bounce followed the next year when he dropped a split decision to Norton in a title eliminator – good news for the fans who next got the thrill of Norton’s classic fight with Holmes, but a tough pill for Young, whose talents got the job done against Foreman and twice against Lyle but never with a championship at stake.

Pierre Fourie

You can’t spell “Fourie” without “four,” which is how many light heavyweight title shots the South African got in the 1970s. In the first two, both against Bob Foster, the only hard luck came in the form of the guy throwing punches at him being the great Bob Foster – although, impressively, Fourie lasted the 15-round distance both times. But against Victor Galindez in his third and fourth title tries, both decision defeats five months apart in 1975 were close and controversial – particularly the latter.

Yaqui Lopez

Let’s keep the ‘70s light heavies rolling. Lopez is best remembered for his 14th-round stoppage loss to Matthew Saad Muhammad in the 1980 Fight of the Year. But in title tries before that: He lost to John Conteh by two, four, and four points; he lost to Victor Galindez by one, two, and seven points; and he lost again to Galindez by two, two, and three points. Nobody blew Lopez out in his prime. The game-as-could-be Mexican was within sniffing distance of glory every time during a strong 175-pound era, but always finished in second place when it counted, despite a victory over Mike Rossman, who had earlier won the WBA title.

Harold Weston

For starters, it takes some kind of luck – good, bad, or just plain weird – to fight to draws four times in an eight-fight span, as New York welterweight contender Weston did in 18 months from ’75-’77. The last of those draws came against undefeated prospect Wilfred Benitez, giving you an idea of Weston’s ability. In title challenges, he lost to Pipino Cuevas, retiring with a jaw injury, and to Benitez by a narrow decision in the future Hall of Famer’s hometown of San Juan. In his next fight, Weston was competitive with Tommy Hearns until suffering a detached retina, and just like that, at age 27, his career was over. 

Herol Graham

It’s hard to believe “Bomber” Graham never claimed a “world” title in his 20-year pro career, and all three of his unsuccessful title challenges were heartbreakers. First the clever southpaw lost by split decision by a single point to Mike McCallum, a point deduction ultimately proving critical. Then came his unforgettable KO 4 defeat to Julian Jackson, in which Graham was pitching a shutout but had one lapse against a pure puncher and paid the price. And last was his career finale against Charles Brewer, a fight in which the 38-year-old Graham had scored two knockdowns and had a title upset within his sights before being hurt suddenly in round 10 and stopped on his feet.

Oba Carr

If Jerry Quarry suffered for coming along in the wrong heavyweight era, Carr is his welterweight equivalent. He lost three times in his prime, all in title challenges, against Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, and Ike Quartey. Had he been born a decade later, “Motor City” Carr would have had the likes of Ricardo Mayorga, Cory Spinks, or Carlos Baldomir to face for a championship. But there were no remotely soft spots for snagging 147-pound straps in the mid ‘90s.

Emanuel Augustus

There was a lot more than just hard luck that kept Augustus, who finished his career 38-34-6, from becoming a champion. But the bad run-outs along the way didn’t help. The tough non-title fight he gave Floyd Mayweather in 2000 offered a glimpse of what he was capable of. In the 2001 Fight of the Year against Micky Ward, Augustus didn’t necessarily deserve to win, but the scorecards were such that he was beaten before it started. Same with his 2004 split decision loss to Courtney Burton, in which Augustus somehow lost a point for spinning out of a clinch. Some of his disappointment was his own doing, but in hindsight, the boxing establishment was simply never letting “The Drunken Master” in the door.

Rocky Juarez

Counting “interim” titles, Juarez got six opportunities to fight for belts – which tells you he was plenty fortunate in terms of having connections and in terms of competing in an era with an excess of alphabet belts. But the scorecards tell you how achingly close Juarez came without ever winning one. He lost to Humberto Soto by four points total across three cards. He dropped a one-point split decision to the great Marco Antonio Barrera (a result announced in the ring as a draw). In the rematch, it was unanimous, but still just by two points on two of the cards. Juarez’s challenge of Juan Manuel Marquez was more one-sided. But that was followed by a unanimous 114-114 draw against Chris John, and then a competitive unanimous decision loss in the rematch. Juarez was 0-5-1 in title tries, and perhaps deservedly so, but at a certain point, you’d have thought one of his shots would rim in.

Matthew Macklin

When you think back on Macklin’s career, you probably think to yourself, Oh yeah, he was a solid middleweight titleholder from the 2010s, in that mix with Darren Barker and Daniel Geale, a notch below Gennady Golovkin and Sergio Martinez. And your memory would be spot on – except Macklin was never a titleholder. He got robbed against Felix Sturm by split decision in Germany in 2011. Then he got dropped and stopped late in a close fight against Martinez. And soon after that, he took the mother of all body punches against “GGG,” and that was pretty much that. Give Macklin one more decent scorecard in the Sturm fight, and he has a different legacy.

But, hey, that’s boxing. This sport can break your heart – when it isn’t flattening you with a body shot.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.