Quote Originally Posted by THE PHILOSOPHER View Post
Oh that old one. Well if that's the case then the lower weight classes in boxing are losing out to european football or 'soccer' as the yanks name it!

So by that logic Wlad can thank his lucky stars that Lebron james prefers not to get his face punched for a living and Mayweather is undefeated because the Lionel messi' of the world prefer spot kicking?

LW 2 time Olympic gold medallist Vasyl Lomachenko is evidence of whats to come in the future in the lower divisions too IMO. Some of the greatest amateurs ever were smaller EE's.

Laszlo Papp
Boris Lagutin
Aleksei Tishchenko (still active)
Oleg Saitov (The greatest amateur boxer of the 90's)
Jerzy Kulej
Vladimir Yengibaryan

Imagine had these guys turned pro? More Tszyu's and Lomachenko's will come trust me! Problem is these guys are not westernised and don't speak english! A lot of them shun americana too. It's more to do with culture rather than the lack of talent in the smaller fighters! K2 are the catalyst.
Your statement in bold might be 100% correct. I don't know the statistics. Do you?

It's a fact that bigger American athletes now more frequently play football and basketball than they do boxing. Think about it. How many colleges offer scholarships for boxing in the United States? I believe 1 and that's Northern Iowa (could be wrong). How about offer scholarships for football or basketball? It makes more sense to get a free education while playing a sport than it does to bypass the education and play the sport. Smaller guys don't have that issue because they can't play the sport anyway. That's a simplistics explanation for why football and basketball have taken athletes away from boxing.