Ike Ibeabuchi

[Lazy Man]

in one sense you're correct. he never beat a reigning champion and didn't clean out his division of all time legends, which is of course the only way to not be considered overrated.

that said it's easy to bandy about labels and accusations, so to me lennox is overrated because he never fought prime versions of tyson or holyfield, and ducked wladimir, byrd, and ruiz.

so there it is.
easy isn't it?

It's all opinion.

 

[DavidHungus]

Ike would probably have been an Earnie Shavers level fighter, in other words, a handful for anyone and potentially a title holder for at least a while.

Too bad he's batshit crazy.

 

[evian2324]

He had major legal problems between his fight with Tua and his fight with Bird.. apparently he drove into a wall with a family member in his car on purpose..he was trying to kill himself or something.. He did some time for that, but they must have kept it hush because at the time I didnt hear anything about it..The first time I found out he had problems mentally was after he got locked up for the second time.

 

[Crazy Canuck]

I disagree about ike not having very good power, he blew byrd up with one punch and it took wlad dozens of shots to get there.

I can see him beating both klitschkos, especially back then and if lewis had an off night beating him as well. he definitely would have been problems for an older holyfield and john ruiz so a alphabet title would have been probable.

what a waste of talent.

Oh I fully agree that he had good power. I think you are referring to my post where I say he didn't have devastating power, but had "some". I guess I was ambiguous but absolutely, he could put away guys no problem. I think the more durable fighters like Vitali would have been too much for him to finish.

 

[djacobox372]

I put Ike at about the same level as Samuel Peter, a good contender, but he would have never been champ.

 

[Master Bison]

He was later diagnosed as being bipolar and schizophrenic, both would have preexisted the Tua fight.

Ike was bipolar and schizoaffective not schizophrenic.

How good could Ike have been? No one knows so there is no reasons to speculate.