Merciless Ray Mercer, the greatest wasted hw talent?

[jabsRstiff]

I believe Andrew Golota was the biggest waste. Perhaps Gerry Cooney also.

Good job of sticking to the script.

[RubenSonny]

A top level boxer would always own Mercer as long as he didn't fall apart. Not nearly the greatest waste of hw talent.

I don't know whether you considered LL a top level boxer but if you did he definitely did not own Mercer.

[Scott9945]

I don't know whether you considered LL a top level boxer but if you did he definitely did not own Mercer.

I would consider Lewis a top level fighter, but not as a pure boxer. In other words if he was a light puncher he would have had a mostly forgettable career. I was referring to technically advanced boxers like Holmes or clever boxers like Ferguson. It is my belief that Mercer would have had a bad time against Jimmy Young or Chris Byrd.

[RubenSonny]

I would consider Lewis a top level fighter, but not as a pure boxer. In other words if he was a light puncher he would have had a mostly forgettable career. I was referring to technically advanced boxers like Holmes or clever boxers like Ferguson. It is my belief that Mercer would have had a bad time against Jimmy Young or Chris Byrd.

Understood, I can agree with that.

[nomadman]

He wasn't even the biggest wasted talent in the 90s. Golota, Tyson, Tua, Bowe, Ibeabuchi, McCall and Sanders were all guys with more potential who, through laziness, craziness, ******ity or out of the ring exploits, never fully capitalised on their talents. Golota's by far the biggest one I can think of out of that list. He would have had two wins against Bowe had he not schized out and let his insatiable appetite for ball fondling get the better of him. He flat out quit against Grant, a fight he could have won. He was also reputedly given an injection of lidocaine before the Lennox fight which messed him up when his body had a bad reaction to it. Which isn't to say he would have beaten Lewis that night had he been healthy, but if true he was hardly given the best opportunity to do so.

[joseph5620]

He wasn't even the biggest wasted talent in the 90s. Golota, Tyson, Tua, Bowe, Ibeabuchi, McCall and Sanders were all guys with more potential who, through laziness, craziness, ******ity or out of the ring exploits, never fully capitalised on their talents. Golota's by far the biggest one I can think of out of that list. He would have had two wins against Bowe had he not schized out and let his insatiable appetite for ball fondling get the better of him. He flat out quit against Grant, a fight he could have won. He was also reputedly given an injection of lidocaine before the Lennox fight which messed him up when his body had a bad reaction to it. Which isn't to say he would have beaten Lewis that night had he been healthy, but if true he was hardly given the best opportunity to do so.

Which means he didn't have the potential if he flat out quit. Just sounds like excuses to me. I believe fighters generally go as far as they are meant to go although there are exceptions. And that includes every fighter on your list. They all had limitations in one area or another. Mercer was limted. Tua always looked like **** against fighters who boxed him and avoided his left hook. Bowe had a poor defense and foolishly took too many hard shots. Tyson was destined to burn out early with his style. Sanders never beat any top fighters other than Wlad. Golota's career speaks for itself. Ibeabuchi looked very promising but we'll never know for sure. The fact that he was crazy gives me doubts about his career.



Heart, intelligence, work ethic/dicipline and determination are a part of what makes a great fighter. If you are seriously lacking in any of those areas then you are not a complete fighter and it well eventually show.

[RubenSonny]

Which means he didn't have the potential if he flat out quit. Just sounds like excuses to me. I believe fighters go as far as they are meant to go. And that includes every fighter on your list. They all had limitations in one area or another. Mercer was limted. Tua always looked like **** against fighters who boxed him and avoided his left hook. Bowe had a poor defense and foolishly took too many hard shots. Tyson was destined to burn out early with his style. Sanders never beat any top fighters other than Wlad. Golota's career speaks for itself. Ibeabuchi looked very promising but we'll never know for sure. The fact that he was crazy gives me doubts about his career.



Heart, intelligence, work ethic/dicipline and determination are a part of what makes a great fighter. If you are seriously lacking in any of those areas then you are not a complete fighter and it well eventually show.

Absolutely agree, it takes an active will not to quit, they were what they were same with someone like Michael Nunn.

[nomadman]

Which means he didn't have the potential if he flat out quit. Just sounds like excuses to me. I believe fighters generally go as far as they are meant to go although there are exceptions. And that includes every fighter on your list. They all had limitations in one area or another. Mercer was limted. Tua always looked like **** against fighters who boxed him and avoided his left hook. Bowe had a poor defense and foolishly took too many hard shots. Tyson was destined to burn out early with his style. Sanders never beat any top fighters other than Wlad. Golota's career speaks for itself. Ibeabuchi looked very promising but we'll never know for sure. The fact that he was crazy gives me doubts about his career.

Heart, intelligence, work ethic/dicipline and determination are a part of what makes a great fighter. If you are seriously lacking in any of those areas then you are not a complete fighter and it well eventually show.

Oh definitely. If a fighter doesn't possess the heart or the intelligence or the dedication to reach the top and stay at the top then physical potential means very little. But whereas physical potential or attributes can't really be changed, your mental state can, for better or for worse. That's why it's always more tempting to speculate about the skilled nutjobs than it is to talk about the dedicated but limited fighters whom most agree reached the peak of their potentials during their careers.

Golota definitely had something wrong with him upstairs. Perhaps quitting in those fights was as inevitable for him as the sun rising. Perhaps when he reached a certain point in a fight his brain just shut off and refused to function logically. It's infuriating however to think of what he threw away during his career, especially in the Bowe fights when he had no earthly reason to do what he did.

I will agree with you about Tua. Tua never really had the intelligence or boxing brain to capitalise on his enormous physical gifts. That's never something that would have changed. He did have a lot of bad luck in his career though, and it would have been nice to see him at least win a major belt at some point. Bowe and Tyson both burned out early, but it was at least partly due to their out of ring habits and a focus on certain aspects of their style in training that caused this, and not an inevitability. Sanders was a part time fighter for much of his career and had a number of distractions and occupations besides boxing. But even undertrained he still possessed phenomenal physical gifts.

Don't think I'm making excuses for any of these fighters. I agree that in most cases, most of these guys deserved what they got due to their life choices, mental makeup etc. But this rather fatalistic, "What is meant to be will be" mentality doesn't really make for very interesting discussions does it?

[Mugwump]

Which means he didn't have the potential if he flat out quit.

Qutting is an offence against the fighting code of ethics. But the act of quitting doesn't automatically mean a fighter lacks what it takes to make it to the top. No one SHOULD ever accuse Roberto Duran of lacking "an active will" just because he struggled to cope with one of the greatest fighters in history - in ONE BOUT - after he beat the very same man in an earlier encounter.

[Scott9945]

Qutting is an offence against the fighting code of ethics. But the act of quitting doesn't automatically mean a fighter lacks what it takes to make it to the top. No one SHOULD ever accuse Roberto Duran of lacking "an active will" just because he struggled to cope with one of the greatest fighters in history - in ONE BOUT - after he beat the very same man in an earlier encounter.

I've always felt that quitting should be looked at on a case by case basis.