Coulda been an all time legend. Ferocious Quick handed Power Stamina Chin Damn shame he was a psychopath
He wouldn't have been shit. He had a fight with Bradley already scheduled at the time. Bradley would have 100% exposed him for the fraud he was.
Hard to reconcile some of the gym footage and stories with occasionally very crude, clubbing attack but he had undeniable power and though you might expect him to be susceptible to being outboxed at least in spots, he was good at closing the distance, with the caveat of mediocre competition. I would have liked to have seen the Bradley fight, maybe he would have been one of those guys who ups his level based on competition.
This happens all the time with athletes who die young (or get injured or go to prison early). People exaggerate and talk about how he was going to be one of the all-time greats of the sport. Yeah maybe, or maybe he would’ve been like 99% of other guys who don’t reach that level . Valero and Ibeabuchi in boxing, Len Bias in basketball, Sean Taylor in football, etc…Although Taylor looked like he had more potential in his sport than Valero in boxing.
Yes, he was a bad finisher. Probably tied with Jermain Taylor for worst finisher of the last 25 years.
I watched a documentary on Bias recently, he looked the goods to me, from my admittedly limited basketball knowledge. Sad story.
He would have been a star for sure. He's considered probably the biggest "what if" story in American sports history.
Yep. Think of the amount of highly touted prospects in sports from years past that did not come close to their supposed potential for one reason or another. Now imagine if any of them had their career cut short way before they could get going. Those same guys would would be on the list.
Valero was a good boxer. Besides hitting hard, he was good at turning his opponent and countering with impeccable timing.
Valero was pretty good, but he never looked like the special kind of talent his groupies claimed he was
He looked like he had potential but it’s hard to know if he would have been a truly elite fighter. On one hand he was quite talented with dangerous power, quick hands, underrated boxing ability, and was a nasty finisher. But on the other hand he still had a crude caveman-like style that was bound to get exposed by an elite level boxer at some point. His best wins was Vicente Mosquera who dropped him and Antonio DeMarco who was limited. Exciting fighter but still a murdering POS. Personally I think he would have been beaten handily against Pac, Marquez, Bradley. Hell I think even an rising Broner might have beaten him soundly as well.
I was impressed with him too…I just think there’s always a question mark in cases like this The UNC-Maryland game from January 84’ is a good watch. One thing that stuck out to me was how high he got on his jump shot. It would have been hard to block. I wonder how the 86-87 and 87-88 Celtics would’ve done (Bird suffered the serious injury early in the 88-89 season). The 87’ Celtics were clearly banged up and lacking depth when they faced a great Lakers team. Bias doesn’t have to be great, but just being a solid player at this point could have made that series different and perhaps closer to a 50/50 matchup.
If you stretch it out to 30 years, we can add Andrew Golota. So many big victories he could’ve had if he could finish hurt opponents
