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Ike Ibeabuchi – 1994-1999 (20-0, 15 KOs): Samuel Peter is known as today’s "Nigerian Nightmare," (a nickname first bestowed upon former NFL running back Christian Okoye), but for a time in the mid- to late-1990s, the nickname certainly would have applied to Ibeabuchi. At 6-2 and between 235 and 244 pounds "The President" was a muscular force of nature with boulders for hands, yet he could also work behind a snapping jab and skillfully blend combinations between head and body.

"Ibeabuchi captured the imagination of boxing fans like nobody since a teenage Mike Tyson," said MaxBoxing’s Tim Graham, now the president of the Boxing Writer’s Association of America. "People saw him as potentially unbeatable, the type of guy who could go 50-0 if he stayed interested."

A member of the Igbo tribe (the same tribe that produced middleweight great Dick Tiger), Ibeabuchi produced two signature wins: An action-packed 12 round win over David Tua and a five-round knockout over future heavyweight champion Chris Byrd. In the Tua fight, Ibeabuchi maintained a very high work rate and ended up throwing a CompuBox heavyweight record 975 punches. In fact, Ibeabuchi and Tua set an all-time record for most combined punches in a heavyweight fight with 1,730, 139 more than the previous record holder – Ali-Frazier III. Ibeabuchi dominated early and withstood a furious Tua rally to score a stunning unanimous decision over the previously unbeaten Tua, the man thought to be the best young heavyweight in the world.

"The win over Tua put Ibeabuchi on everybody’s radar," Graham said. "The sheer number of punches between two guys who could decapitate each other made for riveting action. Whoever won that fight was going to be the next great contender, and even the guy who lost was probably going to improve his stock. It was that kind of fight."

Against Byrd, whose defensive prowess was a constant source of frustration for opponents, Ibeabuchi demonstrated impressive patience. Even though he whiffed on most of his bombs, Ibeabuchi was never discouraged. Ibeabuchi began to break through in the third and in the fifth he decked Byrd with a monstrous left hook and finished him off with a flurry capped off by two more left hooks that prompted referee Ron Rall to call a halt.

"In the Tua fight he showed he could handle a slugger, and against Byrd he proved he could dominate a slick boxer," Graham said. "Ibeabuchi’s knockout of Chris Byrd established him as the man any champion would need to face eventually if he wanted to remain legit. Ibeabuchi was the fearsome, unpredictable menace out of Africa. He was prominent enough in the heavyweight conscience that dodging him would have elicited calls of cowardice from anybody who might have shrunk from his challenge."

The spectacular win put Ibeabuchi in prime position to challenge the winner of the Lewis-Holyfield rematch down the road but this Nigerian turned into a true nightmare away from the ring. A few months after the Tua fight, Ibeabuchi abducted the son of a former girlfriend and drove into a concrete pillar along Interstate 35 north of Austin, Texas. The boy suffered injuries to his legs and will probably never walk normally again while Ibeabuchi served a two-month jail sentence and paid a $500,000 civil settlement.

"Behind the scenes, people were afraid of him and for him," Graham said. "The smallest matter would trigger a trip wire in his brain. I recall the story Lou DiBella told me about the time Ike pulled a knife on him during a dinner meeting with Cedric Kushner at a Manhattan restaurant. There were the recurring stories about Ike and his mother seeing demons in their home. Today, he explains away the demon rumors as misunderstandings due to a language barrier. He said he was merely telling people he thought his home was cursed in a figurative sense because things kept breaking. But even if that’s true, people were geniunely scared of what was going through this guy’s head. People still had to be shocked when the kidnapping and the car accident and the Las Vegas escort incident went down. But the warning signs were there."

Ibeabuchi was sentenced to five to 30 years for the battery and sexual assault of an escort at The Mirage in Las Vegas. He was denied parole on August 24, 2004 and will not be eligible again until December 2007, when he will be 34 years of age.

"To guess where Ibeabuchi would be today had he not gone to jail is difficult," Graham mused. "The problem with trying to guess is he probably would have gone to the slammer for something else or gotten deported or murdered or who knows what. Like Mike Tyson, there were way too many X-factors in Ibeabuchi’s personal life to predict a long championship reign. I think his handlers would have been able to coax a world title out of him, but he was getting more and more out of control. Some very embarrassing things would have befallen him and the degrees could have ranged from trivial to tragic."

Stanley Ketchel – 1903-1910 (53-4-5 with four no-decisions, 50 KOs): "The Michigan Assassin" is still regarded as one of history’s greatest middleweights though his career lasted just six years. Standing just 5-9 and weighing around 154 pounds at his best, Ketchel fought with a savage fury that mirrored his chaotic life outside of the ring. He was orphaned at age 14 and after running away from his adoptive family he lived the life of a hobo, traveling the rails through Canada and the West Coast of the U.S. While living in Butte, Mont., he worked as a bouncer and fought unsanctioned bouts at a local theater against anyone brave enough to step inside the ropes. His first recorded pro fight, a one-round knockout of Kid Tracy, took place in Butte.

Of his first 48 fights he only lost twice, both times to Maurice Thompson (L 6 and L 10). Just about everyone else ended up being pulverized. After losing to Thompson for the second time, Ketchel went 31-0-4 with 30 knockouts, which included 14 in a row.

"He was a very determined guy with an incredible fighting heart and a great chin," Kaplan said. "As I look at his film he was not the greatest boxer or the most skilled boxer. With Ketchel the biggest thing about him was his determination. That is very, very important because a lot of fighters who weren’t that skilled won their fights because that kind of determination can take the heart out of his opponents. He was the kind of guy who was never going to quit, and if you weren’t ready to fight then you might as well have jumped through the ropes and go back to the dressing room."

Ketchel won the middleweight title on May 9, 1908 by knocking out Jack "Twin" Sullivan in 20 rounds and defended against Billy Papke (W 10), Hugo Kelly (KO 3) and Joe Thomas (KO 2). In the rematch with Papke, the challenger sucker-punched Ketchel while at ring center to shake hands before the fight. Ketchel never recovered from the punch and was stopped in 12 rounds.

Ketchel and Papke fought again six weeks later and the vengeful Ketchel unleashed his full fury. He stopped Papke in 11 rounds to become the first man to regain the middleweight title. In a 10-round no-decision bout against Philadelphia Jack O’Brien in March 1909, Ketchel absorbed a frightful beating in the first six rounds but came back to deck O’Brien four times in the ninth and 10th rounds. Had it not been for the final bell, O’Brien would have been a knockout loser. In their rematch 75 days later, Ketchel officially polished off O’Brien in three rounds.

"Most of his middleweight fights were life-and-death affairs," Kaplan said. "He made great fights with everybody because he wasn’t necessarily too difficult to hit. He wasn’t a great defensive fighter, but his determination and aggressiveness allowed him to neutralize the skills of a boxer like O’Brien. As young as he was, he was able to hang in with those kind of guys because of that."

After decisioning Papke over 20 rounds four weeks later, Ketchel challenged heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in Colma, Calif., on October 16, 1909. The 6-1 ¼ Johnson towered over Ketchel, who weighed just 170 ¼ to Johnson’s 205 ½. After a cautious first six rounds Ketchel began to let his hands go while Johnson landed enough punches to bloody Ketchel’s face, but no more. In the 12th, Ketchel decked Johnson with a right that glanced off the top of the head. Enraged, Johnson rushed at Ketchel and landed two right uppercuts that not only knocked Ketchel unconscious but broke off several of his teeth.

Ketchel returned to the ring five months later and resumed defending his middleweight title as he scored a six-round no-decision over Frank Klaus. After a six-round no-decision bout against Sam Langford and a non-title three round KO over Porky Flynn, Ketchel notched the sixth and seventh defenses of his second reign by polshing off Willie Lewis (KO 2) and Jim Smith (KO 5). Ketchel wanted another shot at Johnson, but in the meantime he stopped at Conway, Missouri to get in some training. It was here that Ketchel’s story came to an abrupt end when a farm hand shot and killed Ketchel because he thought the fighter was trying to steal his girlfriend. The farm hand, Walter Dipley, was convicted of first-degree murder and served 23 years in prison.

Though Ketchel died at a very young age, Kaplan believes the career of "The Michigan Assassin" was close to running its course.

"I have a feeling that Ketchel was peaked out," he said. "I don’t think he would have become much better as a fighter if he had continued for two, three, four years longer. He wasn’t going to learn any more and he wasn’t going to get any better. In each successive fight you get beaten up and that takes a toll. There has to be a balance there. In every fight you are becoming less physically but you maybe get smarter mentally. But how do you put it together if you don’t have the physical ability to take advantage of it? He just fought too many wars early in his career."

Bernard Mays 1978-1985 (26-1-1, 15 KOs) – Of all the great champions who have walked through the doors of the Kronk Recreation Center in Detroit, Bernard Mays had the potential to become the greatest of them all. His blend of speed and power was such that the nickname "Superbad" was eventually bestowed upon him. One story had it that his awestruck fellow boxers gave him the memorable moniker but Emanuel Steward, who handled Mays when the fighter was between 12 and 18 years old, tells a different story.

"The first guy that everybody was crazy over at Kronk was Ray Leonard, who trained there for about a month in 1976 when he was trying to win a spot on the Olympic team," he said. "The nickname was really for Ray Leonard but Charles Davis (who was to later manage Mays) remembered that and gave him the nickname when he turned pro. But ‘Superbad’ was what he was."

Mays, however, wasn’t a natural talent like Leonard; his skills came as a result of intensive one-on-one instruction from Steward that lasted months.

"The most naturally gifted kid I’ve seen was Ray Leonard at 15, but that wasn’t the case with Bernard," Steward said. "I had a Golden Gloves team that won the team championship but in 1971 six members of that team joined the Marines. There was nobody at the gym and I was working at Detroit Edison as a lineman. I stopped by the area between the swimming pool and the locker room and I saw Mays sitting there waiting to go swimming like the other kids. I remembered him because he was a friend of Louis Holland, one of the boxers from that team, and I asked him if he wanted to learn to box. I wanted to teach somebody to box and I started picking him up every day.

"When he first came in he was not super-talented, but I gave him my full undivided attention for seven to eight months with nothing but me and him when I got off work from Edison," Steward continued. "We spent hours and hours in the gym and I taught him every little trick I knew. It was a situation that never happened before and hasn’t happened since, and I developed a tremendous fighting machine. When he had his first amateur fight, everybody was shocked at how good he was. He was a 12-year-old that was knocking out 16-year-olds. Every kid in the city and their parents were coming to Kronk because of this one kid I taught. Hearns and the other kids came coming in because of Mays."

As an amateur, Mays was a terror. According to Steward, Mays was 114-2, and the two losses came as a result of a bad decision and a retirement after Mays broke his right thumb during a fight.

"He was a child amateur star and he and Leonard used to go to tournaments and people would crowd in just to see them fight," Steward recalled. "Leonard even loved to watch Bernard and I’ve never seen a 12- or 13-year-old that was as big as he was; he was attracting 2,000 people as an amateur. He was a combination of Joe Louis and Ray Robinson; he could box and punch and didn’t waste motion. He could slip a punch by half an inch on either side and then nail you."

As a 14-year-old, Mays won the 106-pound national Junior Olympic title and two years later he won another one at 139 pounds. He also won two Ohio State Fair titles in 1976 and 1977, and the later title came despite having not trained for the better part of a year.

"He won the Ohio State Fair, took off a year, and came back in 1977 in the open class," Steward recalled. "He hadn’t been in the gym no more than a week and he won everything down there. He stopped Kevin Rooney in one round in the final and was named the most outstanding fighter."

But while he was spectacularly successful inside the ropes, his out-of-the ring behavior was far less so. He began drinking beer and smoking at age 14 and his father, Prince Milton, left the household.

"By the time he was 17, he was like a lot of kids going off to do other things," Steward said. "Bernard was a superstar at age 12 or 13 and he experienced a lot of success early in life, but when they get a certain age they may lose their desire or discipline. He kept things away from me and he quit coming to the gym for about a year. When he showed up, I was surprised and I couldn’t believe he good he looked after a year off."

Despite his damaging nocturnal habits and difficult home life, he continued to shine in the ring, destroying every opponent placed before him. Not long after he won the 1977 Ohio State Fair, he crushed the European amateur champion. He was too young to try out for the 1976 Olympic team and decided not to wait for the 1980 Moscow games.

Mays turned pro in 1978 without Steward, who had hounded him about his drinking. ("He knew it would be a problem with me, so he ended up signing with my friend," Steward said.) In his first pro fight he smoked Sammy Myatt in two rounds and from then on it was off to the races. His best wins came in consecutive fights against Ralph Moncrief (W 10), former middleweight contender David Love (W 10) and onetime junior middleweight champion Oscar "Shotgun" Albarado (KO 9) – all of which took place over just 56 days.

In his next fight two months later, Mays fought a 10-round draw with Ted Sanders but rebounded with a solid 10-round win over Lamont Lovelady. On November 21, 1985, the 25-year-old Mays fought Matthew Lewis at the Great Western Forum. A heavy right to the side hurt Mays badly and the fight was eventually stopped. The years of drinking had finally caught up with Mays as his damaged pancreas had inflamed. The examining physician told Mays that he would be risking his life by continuing to fight.

"I never managed him professionally and I never saw him fight as a professional," Steward said. "Bernard’s reputation as a pro was never as good as it was when he was an amateur."

Mays lived with his mother Victoria until she died about a year later. Broke, he moved into the New Light Nursing Home in Detroit, and approximately a year after doing so his condition began to deteriorate. He suffered from diabetes, chronic pancreatitis and chronic malabsorption syndrome and Mays died on March 1, 1994. He was just 33 years old. Before then, Steward saw Mays one last time.

"After I heard that he was sick, I stopped by his house and asked his mother how he was," Steward recalled. "That was the first contact I had with him (since the days at Kronk). We sat down and talked about the old days, and he was laughing and rocking in his chair. I was out of town at a training camp when somebody told me that he had died. It was hard to believe. I believe that he had the ability to be right up there with Leonard as one of the all-time greats; he was that good. Even today, I’ve psychologically blanked it out because it’s too painful."

Gerald McClellan – 1988-1995 (31-3, 29 KOs): Like Mays, McClellan got his start at the Kronk and like several of his teammates of the past he developed into a spectacular offensive force whose fireworks were worthy of a highlight reel. "The G-Man" possessed explosive power in both hands and is still regarded as one of the most fearsome punchers in middleweight history. His 30-second destruction of Jay Bell was the quickest middleweight title fight until Bernard Hopkins broke the mark with his 24-second icing of Steve Frank.

"He was a combination boxer-puncher, but a very good puncher," said trainer/manager Emanuel Steward. "He’s one of the few natural punchers that I’ve been involved with. He hit hard with both hands and he was a very good body puncher."

McClellan received the benefit of excellent sparring from a host of world-class athletes at and around his weight class, and because of that it was difficult for McClellan to make a real mark among his Kronk teammates.

"At the time of his heyday, I boxed Gerald with guys like Frankie Liles, John David Jackson, Tommy Hearns, Michael Moorer, Leoonzer Barber and James Toney," Steward said. "I had other fighters like Michael Bentt, Oba Carr, Dwight Davison and Jemal Hinton, so it was difficult for him to be a standout in that group. He did OK in the sparring sessions but he wasn’t anything super-special. A group like that is like having a gifted basketball team with guys like Shaquille O’Neal and all those top players in a group."

Following a successful amateur career that included a victory over Roy Jones in the semifinals of the 1988 national Golden Gloves, McClellan turned pro with a first-round knockout of Roy Hundley in August 1988. McClellan quickly rolled up 10 consecutive knockouts to start his career, all of which came in the first two rounds. But McClellan then experienced two surprising setbacks when he lost consecutive decisions to Dennis Milton and Ralph Ward, forcing Steward to become more personally involved in his training.

"I was not training him in 1989 because I was so focused on the rematch with Tommy Hearns and Ray Leonard. I had an assistant trainer working with him," he said. "He wasn’t training properly and I was so focused on other things at the time. I realized after the two losses that I had to spend more time with him myself and I got more involved with him personally. Not to fault anybody, but I saw that certain guys can be trained only by a certain person."

With Steward back at the helm, McClellan was back on track and he rolled up 12 consecutive victories (10 by knockout) to set up a fight for the vacant WBO middleweight title against John "The Beast" Mugabi in November 1991. Naturally bigger and a superior one-punch hitter than even the formidable Mugabi, McClellan scored three knockdowns before stopping him just 2:51 after the opening bell. McClellan never defended the WBO belt, instead knocking out four more opponents before meeting WBC champ Julian Jackson in one of boxing history’s most high-octane pairings. McClellan was well aware of Jackson’s power and opted to show unusual respect in the opening segments.

"Julian was a big puncher and Gerald was a little on the cautious side in the beginning," Steward recalled. "It was a big-time fight for Gerald. Even Mugabi wasn’t as big a fight because Gerald was just too young and strong for Mugabi and he physically overpowered him. Jackson had been known for coming on to knock out guys in the late rounds. Gerald had more physical size but he decided to be a more careful boxer here."

But the caution came to an end when Jackson hit McClellan with a low blow.

"The thing I remember most is that he was hit with a low blow, and instead of taking the five-minute break he said immediately ‘I’m OK,’" Steward said. "I knew by the way he said it that the careful boxing was going out the window and he was going to end it with a one-punch knockout. He knocked him out with what I call a ‘clean-up’ left hook. I’ll never forget the way his head hit the floor on the side of the ring. The wild streak came out of him and it exploded. It was one of the very special wins because after two losses virtually everybody gave up on him but I believed in him still. He was a personal project of mine who I spent a lot of personal time."

The knockout of Jackson unleashed a beast within McClellan and he became obsessed with producing awesome displays of power. Ignoring his boxing skills entirely, McClellan would rush out of the corner and overwhelm his opposition with sheer force. The results: A record-setting 23-second knockout of Jay Bell, a 97-second stoppage over Gilbert Baptist and a repeat knockout over Jackson that took just 83 seconds. McClellan was a man in a hurry, and Steward was not pleased.

"He had a real attitude about knocking out somebody quick," he said. "He felt if they went four or five rounds that they deserved to win and that he was supposed to knock people out early. Tommy Hearns would operate behind the jab; he was a very patient fighter and he would wait, then catch them with a sneak punch. McClellan would try to make the opening; he didn’t care about boxing at all. He just wanted to create the KO while Tommy waited until the time it would happen. It was getting to the point where it made Gerald start to go backward because I knew if his opponents would get through four or five rounds he would have been in trouble."

McClellan’s uncompromising mindset had both benefits and consequences, and both sides of the equation came to fruition when he challenged Nigel Benn for his WBC super middleweight title February 25, 1995 in London. McClellan nearly ended the fight in the first minute when he knocked Benn through the ropes. Though Benn was able to scramble back into the ring, French referee Alfred Asaro held off McClellan for several crucial seconds, giving Benn valuable time to recover his senses. Benn managed to survive McClellan’s opening assaults and gained momentum with each passing round.

Before and during the fight, Steward saw several troubling signs.

"Against Nigel Benn, I was surprised that he weighed only 165," he said. "When he was a middleweight he weighed right on 160 and on the morning of the fight he would be 170. It was hell making the weight, so I was surprised he was so light. He went all out for the knockout in his typical way. Had I still been managing, I would have known that the referee would have been all wrong and I wouldn’t have let him work the fight. Gerald gave a tremendous, all-out effort but he was getting fatigued. As I watched the fight something was bothering me. I noticed he had problems holding the mouthpiece in. It was the same mouthpiece he was wearing his whole career. I was watching that continually."

Though McClellan scored a knockdown in the eighth round, "The G-Man" fought unsteadily and following a clash of heads in the 10th he took a knee and allowed Asaro to count him out. At the time of the knockout, McClellan was ahead by one and three points and even on the third card.

"When I saw him slumped on the canvas, I knew something serious had happened," Steward said. He was right; McClellan suffered permanent brain injuries and has virtually no hearing or sight. He requires constant care from his family and will need assistance for the rest of his life.

McClellan’s almost supernatural punching power had fans salivating for dream fights against Roy Jones and James Toney among others, and Steward believes he would have matched up well with the two future Hall of Famers – provided he adopted a more balanced approach.

"Everybody thought that he would bowl over Roy Jones and James Toney, but I don’t know that for sure," Steward said. "By that time he was too dependent on the early-round KO and that would have been a problem against Toney. Toney was becoming a very balanced fighter, and though Gerald had great one-punch power he was becoming more one-dimensional. It remained to be seen.

"Gerald was a tremendous puncher and there was nobody else out there to challenge Roy Jones," Steward continued. "In the semifinals of the 1988 Golden Gloves he beat Jones in a very good, competitive fight. Roy was very fast and very good but Gerald punched a little harder. He landed a body shot that made Roy wince and he was just heavier handed. Those two would have been a super, super fight. It would have been a competitive match between Jones, Toney, any of them. He was a talented fighter who deserved to be right there with the other two."

For more information on Gerald McClellan, visit http://www.geraldmcclellan.com/

The third and final installment of "Boxing’s Might Have Been Men" will profile four more fighters for whom fate did not smile.