Wasted talent

[Anthony342]

Speaking of wasted talent, how about fighters who seemed to be more talented when wasted, being on some kind of drug, like steroids, coke, uppers. Who do you think would fall under that category?

[Rip Chudd]

Bowe
Emmanual Augustus
Ibeabuchi
Pavlik
Berto
Tyson
Valero
Santa Cruz
GRJ
Wilder

[GelfSara]

Watching old vids of Naz reminded me just how good he was and had he not turned into, well, a complete c**t, I wonder what heights he could have reached.


What fighters do we think wasted what god gave them, for what ever reason?

By far the biggest disappointment in my lifetime: Mike Tyson. He could have, and should have, gone 60-0 or thereabouts and become without question the greatest heavyweight ever. I am very happy Mike is in a serene place now, but it is hard to look back on his life without pangs of regret.

[QueensburyRules]

By far the biggest disappointment in my lifetime: Mike Tyson. He could have, and should have, gone 60-0 or thereabouts and become without question the greatest heavyweight ever. I am very happy Mike is in a serene place now, but it is hard to look back on his life without pangs of regret.

- -Being sick with a mental illness not the same As a wasted talent any more than Stanley Ketchel being shot in the back and killed.

Considering Mikes horribly abused upbringing, he far and away exceeded expectations, not wasted them.

[The Old LefHook]

What was so bad about Tyson's upbringing? He mugged people. That was traumatic for them.

[billeau2]

What was so bad about Tyson's upbringing? He mugged people. That was traumatic for them.

Fair point. I grew up in a hood like Mike did and went to school with kids like Mike: when in junior High school I pissed off an older kid, richard Miguello, a Brazilian Rican...He was so strong (a lot older than me also) he literally lifted me up against a lcker with one hand lol. Luckily I had friends that were also like Mike that threatened him lol.

Black families in the bad parts of brooklyn, and in other parts of NYC, and...Black families in big cities when Mike was growing up, had a lot of poverty induced issues. They did not seem to have the same support of spanish families which managed to hold together, despite a similar level of drug problems, social ills, etc.

BUT what I have since understood, leaving New York and seeing so many other places: Is that big cities have support systems that make them great places to live compared to the impoverished in rural areas. I can tell you that the poverty one sees in a little town in Louisiana, or eastern maryland...much less the apalachians, or reservations in this country, is much greater and much more instrumental to engineering failure than that which occured for kids like Tyson.

Kids in New York had access to after school programs, athletic programs, great street food...Zab Judah, who grew up under similar circumstances...as a ***, would go to ***ish delis and buy sandwiches. There was always great pizza, etc. Little things like that matter when you see families in even the rural parts of Baltimore, where years back, many appalachian families settled...And you could watch them eat total crap, and they had horrible health as a result.

Kids in New York were also exposed to great parks and museums. The projects were near Central park in my hood, so every kid had a back yard...Mike had Prospect Park.

Then when we go to parts of the world where it is even less accessible for a kid to get a decent meal, or compulsory education, we can start to understand that poverty levels vary considerably. Even the justice system. There are parts of the world where a kid who steals is maimed for life, in Brooklyn, in Mike's day kids were not tried as adults for crimes...

Lets go back even further to Sony Liston. A man born into such abject poverty that he had no access to anything as part of a sharecropper family with a horrible father. But Sonny was put to the penal system and allowed a chance...This happened in Philly and St Louis among other places. Floyd Patterson's family came from farmers in the carolinas to live in Brooklyn and again, even as a truant young Patterson was given access to things he would need to become great.

Some of these aspects are subtle. In New York there are always smart people and adults around who will take a kid and show them a ruse, a hobby, something constructive. It can be argued that young Mike became such a bona fide student of the game because of older men who would use the roof as a place to raise pigeons in the city. In my hoodit was the same: you always had guys around: back from Nam, out of Prison, ready to take lace a young man up about the ways of the world.

I would not make light of things that could have been done for Mike, but I have always felt that given a life of poverty better to come up in some areas, than others.

[QueensburyRules]

- -Babe Ruth was placed in an orphanage as a young motherless, delinquent child his bartender father could not control.

Luckily the place was run by a religious Catholic order by highly scrupled priests prescient in molding malleable minds for future productive release. Cus fulfilled that function for Mike.

Satchel Paige stuck in a delinquent state run home run by scrupled overseers that allowed him to age out straight into pro sports just like Babe.

Today both would be diagnosed with ADD and placed on Ritalin without any discipline or oversight before aging in confused drug dependent adult.

In short, they could never be Babe or Satchel. Asking Mike while on Prozac to fight for Don King who stole his 50 million retirement fund to return to his previous high level becomes impossible.

[billeau2]

- -Babe Ruth was placed in an orphanage as a young motherless, delinquent child his bartender father could not control.

Luckily the place was run by a religious Catholic order by highly scrupled priests prescient in molding malleable minds for future productive release. Cus fulfilled that function for Mike.

Satchel Paige stuck in a delinquent state run home run by scrupled overseers that allowed him to age out straight into pro sports just like Babe.

Today both would be diagnosed with ADD and placed on Ritalin without any discipline or oversight before aging in confused drug dependent adult.

In short, they could never be Babe or Satchel. Asking Mike while on Prozac to fight for Don King who stole his 50 million retirement fund to return to his previous high level becomes impossible.

This is also a fair point. I had a discussion with my mother and learned how naive I am. I was born in 1964 and was under the impression that these ADD type drugs were not prevalent. She told me they were every where. I was saved by an IQ test... But she fought for years to validate my boredom in classes.

Somewhere down the line we decided that certain responses to a diseased environment, where the actual disease...what a horrible mistake! And on cue Karma came a knockin and showed us what real social malady looks like...the rates of Autism that is.

QueenB in essence, people like Babe, Liston and Satchel, even when they had little social status as children, came of age in a society that did not simply prescribe something that would make them be like the rest of the sheeple. They were mentored and lo and behold they showed the world great talent.

My Kindergarten teacher told my mother there was something wrong with me because I could not tie my shoelaces and was not diggin classes. There was no attempt to look at a kid as an individual AND ITS MUCH WORSE NOW! should have seen that old bag's face when the test results came back Priceless.

I can't look my own kids in the eye and tell them to just do what they are told in school. I would have been in jail if I grew up in this generation...I don't believe in hypocracy so I toe a real line raising my two boys...well got one through the system, just one more to get through Public indoctrination...er education.

[QueensburyRules]

- -It's The Public School Industry now where they extort public tax monies to support a failing system in a failing culture in decline.

[Anthony342]

This is also a fair point. I had a discussion with my mother and learned how naive I am. I was born in 1964 and was under the impression that these ADD type drugs were not prevalent. She told me they were every where. I was saved by an IQ test... But she fought for years to validate my boredom in classes.

Somewhere down the line we decided that certain responses to a diseased environment, where the actual disease...what a horrible mistake! And on cue Karma came a knockin and showed us what real social malady looks like...the rates of Autism that is.

QueenB in essence, people like Babe, Liston and Satchel, even when they had little social status as children, came of age in a society that did not simply prescribe something that would make them be like the rest of the sheeple. They were mentored and lo and behold they showed the world great talent.

My Kindergarten teacher told my mother there was something wrong with me because I could not tie my shoelaces and was not diggin classes. There was no attempt to look at a kid as an individual AND ITS MUCH WORSE NOW! should have seen that old bag's face when the test results came back Priceless.

I can't look my own kids in the eye and tell them to just do what they are told in school. I would have been in jail if I grew up in this generation...I don't believe in hypocracy so I toe a real line raising my two boys...well got one through the system, just one more to get through Public indoctrination...er education.

Autism huh? Being as they say "on the spectrum" or what they used to call Asperger's, I can relate. I found most classes to be boring af, except for most English, art, music and gym classes.