BoxRec

It seems like winning a world title would give a fighter confidence he could build from and possibly help cattapolt his career to a higher leavel, but sometimes the opposite is true. Here are a few guys who's career went south after they won a title, all of them quite young at the time. Also all of them losing to fighters they should have beaten.

Sean Ogrady
Mike Rossman
John Tate
Davey Moore

David Reid is another one.

Jermaine Taylor may be heading in that direction.

Riddick Bowe is a classic example, who would have guessed that his peak was his title winning performance against Holyfield. It was slowly downhill for him from that point forward.

Holyfield always seemed to fight better when fighting for something then defending something......Or when fighting up to a challenge (Qawi, DeLeon, Dokes, early in his career.....Bowe II / Tyson late)

theone wrote:David Reid is another one.

Jermaine Taylor may be heading in that direction.

Yeah JT has had some tough fights early in his career but his been facing nothing but Top opposition As long as he stays with Steward I think he will improve little by little I don't if we will ever see Jermain at his best considering he want's to retire at a very young age..

Barry McGuigan.

Almost all British World champs or World title winners.

Leon Spinks.

Buster Douglas

..righto, decagon.....joe louis , for example...after he won the title he only defended it successfully for 25 times in the eleven years he held it....and let's look at the record...yep....three of those challengers even went the distance....

Al Singer, after win the World Lightweight Championship by one round K.O. over Sammy Mandell (July 17, 1930), lost his Title in the first defence by a first round K.O. against Tony Canzoneri (November 14, 1930)

Lew Jenkins, after win the same World Title by K.O. in three over Lou Ambers (May 10, 1940), in his following 20 fights, only win five, and lost nine consecutive bouts

Decagon wrote:Douglas always sucked. He simply exposed how one-dimensional Tyson was.

So you've never bought the "hyper motivated Douglas" vs the "over confident, lackadaisical,under trained" Tyson theory?

Jaclem wrote:..righto, decagon.....joe louis , for example...after he won the title he only defended it successfully for 25 times in the eleven years he held it....and let's look at the record...yep....three of those challengers even went the distance....

Lets not let the facts confuse us here.

Decagon wrote:Every World Heavyweight Champion ever, with the exception of Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes.

I would add Jim Jeffries, Gene Tunney, Max Schmeling, Joe Louis, Floyd Paterson, Joe Frazier

Decagon wrote:

Jaclem wrote:..righto, decagon.....joe louis , for example...after he won the title he only defended it successfully for 25 times in the eleven years he held it....and let's look at the record...yep....three of those challengers even went the distance....

Yeah, and in those 25 title defenses, he only faced two black guys. He fought bum after bum all those years.

BoxBuzz wrote:

Decagon wrote:Douglas always sucked. He simply exposed how one-dimensional Tyson was.

So you've never bought the "hyper motivated Douglas" vs the "over confident, lackadaisical,under trained" Tyson theory?

Undertrained? He was 220 pounds of solid muscle. Tyson was simply a frontrunner.

I'm not sure you addressed my question. Even if he was solid, he may have been undertrained at that time...the accounts I have read is that "he lost his rudder" in Japan. I am not a Tyson apologist but this theory has pretty popular support. What do you know that counters that thought? I sense your not questioning the hyper motivated Douglas portion of this.

Ok...I now go back to the accounts that Tyson was not focused, did not train, basically was partying and not being "Cus's boy" by then. Women Booze the sort of things that dull the edge of a champion.

I'm actually not arguing as much as Im trying to get feedback on this. The topic being did Douglas regress after this fight. Which I think is fair to say he did. I suppose it becomes even more true if he actually fought a fit and ready Tyson. EVen if we factor your "downgrading" of Tyson at his best.

If I have an disagreement with you it would be about Louis not Tyson.

..decagon's reply to my joe louis post was so predictable that i could have written it myself and saved him the trouble. ...pure nonsense, of course. buzzy...you don't have a disagreement with dee-cag.... disagreements are matters of opinion. with you and dee-cag, it is like if he said 2 and 3 equal 6 and you said no..two and 3 equal 5....which is a correction.

..i think decag is fulfilling another prediction of mine....he's suggesting that godoy and walcott really won their first fights against louis, although the misplaced pronouns are confusing.

if i'm right, then we must assume that louis got progessively worse but by some miracle knocked both of them out in the rematches...well, miracles did happen back in those old testament days when many folks think those fights occurred....