The Man Who Lived Upto His Name

When boxing conversations hit the office floor, or a pub conversation names like Sugar Ray Robinson, Roberto Duran, Muhammed Ali and Joe Louis are mentioned. Of course we want to talk about the best fighters ever, though lets give a few seconds to those who...weren't very good, in fact, the ones who were down right terrible. A fighter many rate as the worst ever has a record of 0-31-0-1, that's 0 wins, 31 losses, 0 draws and 1 no contest, almost certainly the worst record in boxing history. What makes it worse? He never got to start the third round of any fight, he fought for a decade and was only in 41 rounds.

After turning professional in 1993 with a 2^nd round loss to Joe Watts III things went from bad to worse with a loss to Angel Manfredy less than 3 months later in the first round. Funnily it would be the multiple title contender's first victory after losing and drawing his first 2 fights. Manfredy would later challenge Floyd Mayweather Jr, Stevie Johnston, Diego Corrales and Paul Spadafora to world title fights and lose (though he would pick up the lightly regarded WBU belt). With 3 fights the following year it was surely time where he started considering other career moves, the first fight was against John Vanham, in what would be his only professional contest (KO1) and the third would be against unbeaten Mike Jankovich (the two would meet again in 1997) which was another stoppage loss this time in 2. The second fight in 1994 however was against Rick Lanas and was the only fight that Crumbled didn't, excuse the pun, crumble against. The fight for some reason was ruled a no contest, however it appears details are scant as to why, what's worth noting is Lanas only fought once afterwards.

1995 would see him fighting 4 times and making it to the second round just twice ending the year 0-8 as he was set up to be another journeyman on the early record of future challenger Antwun Echols (who would challenger for the world middleweight titles on several occasions always falling just short). This would be the last fighter that Crumble would face who would go on to be a well known name in the boxing world, however in 1997 he would face Ralph Jones in February. In April of the same year Jones would face Ike Quartey in a WBA middleweight title fight, though Jones would lose the fight it's still worth noting.

The best chance for a Crumble victory came against a then 8-95-2 Donnie Penelton, Penelton would record his first victory in 5 fights with a KO in the second round against Crumble in what was the 19^th loss of his career. 12 more losses followed, the final one of which was to Matt Gockel a fighter who is still active with a record of 12-12-0-2, in 2003 in what appears to be the final fight of a now 42 year old Crumbles career (Eric turns 43 on December 10^th). Whether he was the worst boxer ever is up for debate (just), though he almost certainly failed to provide the rounds a journeyman is employed for, his status as boxing's ultimate tomato can will allow him a somewhat legendary status in the sport. Sadly he should be a sign to others who hopefully won't follow in his footsteps, if you can't take a punch, don't get in the ring...repeatedly. With a name like Crumble maybe it was just in the stars that he'd crumble in the ring, though no one would have thought that he'd do it so quickly and so regularly.