Many fighters are fed a diet of bums to create a nice shiny record and oft associated hype. Their team knows the guy is simply not good enough but there is money to be made if they can keep up the hype train. Others build a nice record based upon proper matchmaking and incremental improvements, not flat out protection until it's cashout time. In other words their team has full faith they're ready for the deep end of the pool. What about the flipside? Who are the guys who management/promoters perhaps had too much belief in that could have had a better career if moved along more slowly? (Not talking about cases where a guy had a potentially career ending problem (Reid) or some outside the ring issues that necessitated a cashout)
Leon Spinks... Turned Pro @ 23-24 Years of Age, After 180+ Ammy Fights and Olympic Gold in '76... 7 Fights in His 1st Year, Including a DRAW w/Scott LeDoux... Fought Ali in His 8th and 9th Fights (a Win and a Loss), KO'ed in 1 Round by Gerrie Coetzee in His 10th Fight...Spinks was Effectively DONE By This Point, But He Faced Larry Holmes in His 15th Fight and Got His Ass Kicked yet Again, Just for Good Measure... Spent the Remainder of his Career as a Punchline and Name Brand CANNON FODDER... REED
Lomachenko definitely cimes to mind. Edit: on second thoughts, not really since his career won't be defined by his early loss to Salido considering how well he rebounded
Lemieux wasnt thrown to the wolves per say, but facing GGG in an unification fight directly after winning his title was a bone head move. He should have faced and blasted a few mid.levels guys to increase his popularity and bank account
Veeraphol Sahaprom had faced two of the most dangerous bantamweights of the era in his first five fights.
Jimmy Ellis - in his first 20 fights he was tossed in with Hurricane Carter, Georgie Benton, Don Fullmer, Henry Hank, Holly Mims (twice), Rory Calhoun and Wilfie Greaves.
On a similar note i remember reading an interview with Vito Antuofermo and he said only his team would have had him make his first defense against Marvin Hagler.
If Vargas had been given the Tank Davis TLC treatment and not thrown in with Trinidad his career might have turned out differently.
Vargas basically DEMANDED the tough fights. And Main Events obliged because not only was Vargas intending to retire at 26, but he was apparently a trouble maker outside of the ring so they wanted to keep him busy. David Reid applies because by the time he faced Trinidad he had only 14 fights but it’s unlikely he would have improved significantly enough to beat Tito.
Im not so sure Reid applies. He already struggled and was floored by mediocre fighters, and his eye problem wasn't getting any better
It doesn’t necessarily apply to the title, but Sean O’ Grady’s father didn’t want him to have the pressure of trying to keep an undefeated record. After matching him up with soft opposition, he threw him in there with Danny Lopez. Lopez won, so Sean’s “0” was gone, and then he went back to fighting soft opposition for awhile. Yeah, Vargas was a known knucklehead. He had recently faced charges for beating someone up with a golf club. Main Events probably was worried that he would self destruct outside the ring, so they figured they would get as much money out of him as possible. With Reid, maybe his management team was worried that he would lose to a lesser fighter due to his flaws and eye issues. He had that struggle against Kelly a couple fights before Tito.
Hard to come with some good examples... The ones I can think of, it s either because they had 0 hype behind them and needed to take the (relatively) tough fights from the start or because you just cannot refuse a huge payday ( a la Grant). Neither really fit... Vargas and Spinks are probably the best examples so far (though not sure Leon wouldn't have self destructed no matter what).
