Re: Who disgraced boxing more: Clinch-ko or Chicken Floyd?
I used to like floyd and hate klitchsko and somewhere along the way, that was flipped.
I'll precursor this by saying its hard to judge solely on inside the ring. With regards to how a person does things outside the ring, I'm not talking about the domestic abuse, or the tax evasion stuff, or stuff in someones personal life. But I will include how a person conducts themselves regarding the sport outside the ring. That includes negotiating, promoting, and interviews etc.
With that said I pick Floyd. He used to be one of my favorite fighters. Fast hands, decent pop at the lighter weights and good footwork and stayed calm and could outthink his opponents. Then as he went up in weight he looked for any advantage possible (weight on marquez, gloves on maidana, some would say age on Pac --though i had him picked to win even if they fought back then because of pacs predictability, --and more) I can allow the head games on 24/7 as fighters throughout history have done (except for the racial epitaphs which were just added for shock value associated publicity). The biggest offense here was his attempt to make boxing his private playground. He didn't give a damn about fans or the sport or any of the other stuff he claimed. He did this purely for profit. He took personas from the biggest names in other sports emulated and magnified it to boost his personal publicity to gain the popular vote. He used that to manipulate sanctioning bodies, networks, and other players in the sport into letting him skew the playing field. He was a professional cheat, protecting a fabled "0" in the loss column. He fought smart for someone with no pop at the higher weights, but he fought with little honor as his selection of opponents, his cheating before the fight even started, the drug test demands etc were all just ways to keep the wins going and keeping his marketability profitable. This is his legacy and it has tainted many of the fighters that are left. It can already be seen in other fighters demanding more than their worth, splitting hairs over weights (the 155 lb division), demanding drug tests of people their afraid of. Pussing out on rematches or creating obstacles to the fight for the sake of letting things "marinate"... All of this is under the guise of fighters suddenly coming to the epiphany that the should be paid millions of dollars for 2 months of work (1hr of work if you only count the event) because they're risking their health.
Truthfully risking your health by getting punched in the head for various amounts of money is an apple to oranges comparison. If your health was that important, you wouldn't be risking that damage for any amount of money and You're in the wrong sport. You have no business calling it the "hurt game" if you are playing it like the "get hurt" game. The guys that have done it and have been the best ever, have won and lost on a champion's heart and a warriors spirit... not a lawyer, not prefight stipulations, not money or ppv buys. As long as today's fighters follow his lead, we will continue to see more or this crap continue through the sport. Look at the danny jacobs situation. A fighter than hasn't accomplished a lot, had his clock cleaned before, but wants to rewrite the rules/ percentages on how much he should receive for his shot at the brass ring after postponing his shot for a year because he wants ready for it yet. Yet, he believes his color is the reason he doesn't get enough accolades. Robinson would have fought for the predetermined rate, and wrote his own check every fight afterwards. Jacobs appears to be negotiating his price for losing... These are the types of fighters the money legacy breeds.
When it comes to Klitchsko, he's had his bell run several times. I wont include claims that he lost the brewster fight due to some kind of conspiracy, I can recall if he subscribed to fix theories- "vaseline clogged his pores and killed his stamina". Aside from that his fights were never barn burners, and it was fairly obvious he was trying to avoid taking shots because his probably had doubts about his beard. His conservative style was not based on protecting a zero and he managed a number of KO's and avenged a loss... but i still think his effort against fury could have been better than staring and flinching. I think many people feel that he had the physical gifts to be a monster. Perhaps with such an opposing size, he just needed the heart of evander, the ferocity of Tyson and ring generalship of Ali. I prefer to see it this way. Like many other fighters, he was what he was... he was successful (but overly grabby) because he was protecting his chin... He had a better trainer and listened to the game plan. He had a simple advantage over most heavyweights in that he was in better shape than 98% of the division but i don't blame him as much as i blame a heavyweight division that lived at IHOP most of the time.
They want your @$$ beat because upsets make news. News brings about excitement, excitement brings about ratings. The objective is to bring you up to the tower and tear your @$$ down. And if you don't believe that, you're crazy.
Roy Jones, Jr. "What I've Learned," Esquire 2003
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Originally Posted by Pastor John
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