Do you think fighters fight enough?

[Fenster]

I wonder about this. I know boxing has evolved since Joe louis (69 fights), Jersey Joe Walcott (71), Foreman (81), Holmes (75) etc etc.

David Haye has been in the World mix for a few years now and has already retired once with 28 fights.

Dereck Chisora - 19 fights
Manuel Charr - 23
Maruisz Wach - 28
Robert Helenius - 18
Odlanier Solis - 19

^^All either already had a title shot or are close to one and I get the feeling that by the time they hit 40 fights the world will have forgotten about them.

Whereas George foreman (81 fights) hadn't lost at his 40th bout
Larry Holmes (75 fights) never lost until his 49th fight.

Maybe I'm just reiterating the lack of decent heavyweights around now but I feel a bit more activity would help fighters.

Mayweather will go down as probably one of the top 5 p4p boxers of all time and we'll be lucky if he sees 50 fights. That's not right to me!

While boxers today do seem to have less fights I don't think total fights gives that accurate a picture of how busy someone is or has been. Joe Frazier fought only 37 times but the guy rightly is seen as a legendary fighter because of the important contests he shared with Ali and the excitement, heart and class he brought to the sport along with the affinity fans felt for a guy who was for many like the real life Rocky. His career?

In 1965 his first year as a Pro he fought 4 times
In 1966 he fought 9! times in January,twice in March, twice in April,May,July,September and November
In 1967 he fought 6 times
In 1968 he fought 3 times
In 1969 he fought twice
In 1970 he fought twice winning and then successfully defending the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles
In 1971 he fought once in "The fight of the Century" against Ali
In 1972,1973,1974 and 1975 he fought twice then once in 1976 and once again in 1981

He won the heavyweight titles in his 25th fight and like most fighters then slowed down to a couple of fights a year because the opposition was on another level and the purses were better. It is only natural that fighters and their promoters take more time to build fights as events once champions are established but plenty of fighters do stay busy nowadays on the way up. Chris Eubank Jr for example .Then you have guys like Wlad Klitschko who whatever you think of his style has had 59 fights and 3 of them in 2012.

Once you are a world champion then to fight two or three times a year seems entirely reasonable because each fight is a bigger event that needs building and promotion, the opposition and potential for punishment is a lot greater, you are probably getting older and more ring worn ( more susceptible to injuries) and you have earned the right to call out and defend against other elite boxers who may have equally important fights. To behave like you are already a superstar and pick and choose you opposition on the way up to the point where matchmaking is just fodder and tomato can after bum, for just a couple of fights a year is just bowl larks though.

Sorry, I didn't see this post when I finally hit submit on mine. I wouldn't have posted if I did. Good stuff.

[mightyfighter]

Fighters that are being built up as a contender or future champion usually don't fight often, only twice a year. If you're trying to get noticed and get a name, then you should fight at least 3-4 times a year. Don't forget that many fighters with low records have had long amateur careers also.

[Beanflicker]

I don't think they fight too often.

People bring up the old guys fighting 200 times (and several times a month) like it's the way it should be, like it was a good thing.

I think the amount of times those old guys had to fight was just a sad indication of the times. Do you think SRR wanted to fight several times a month? He had to, because the promoters and the mob took most of the money and you couldn't make as much off of one fight obviously as you can now with PPV.

Boxing is a dangerous, dehibilitating sport, and we should want our favorite boxers to retire and have a great quality of life and not end up pugilistic dementia like guys like SRR, Dempsey, Louis, ect ect ended up with.

I think 40-50 fights with multiple titles is a great career. Yeah 200 fights looks good, but that was a different (worse) time.

Floyd could go on little "tours" and fight bums in each state a couple times a month like the old guys did, but who would be interested in that now adays?

[IamInuit]

I don't think they fight too often.

People bring up the old guys fighting 200 times (and several times a month) like it's the way it should be, like it was a good thing.

I think the amount of times those old guys had to fight was just a sad indication of the times. Do you think SRR wanted to fight several times a month? He had to, because the promoters and the mob took most of the money and you couldn't make as much off of one fight obviously as you can now with PPV.

Boxing is a dangerous, dehibilitating sport, and we should want our favorite boxers to retire and have a great quality of life and not end up pugilistic dementia like guys like SRR, Dempsey, Louis, ect ect ended up with.

I think 40-50 fights with multiple titles is a great career. Yeah 200 fights looks good, but that was a different (worse) time.

Floyd could go on little "tours" and fight bums in each state a couple times a month like the old guys did, but who would be interested in that now adays?

Valid points but a bit of a broad brush. Yes fighters fought much more in other eras and yes in many cases it was simply to literally put food on the table and pay rent but I do think that hard times makes better fighters both in and out of the ring.

Other factors need to be taken into account though. For instance Langford fought Wills about 20 times because he could not get fights. The same can be said about the entire Murdrers Row. They had to fight each other lots because the establishment would not embrace them. Robinson would not even fight them although he did fight Marshall after Lloyd was essentially done.

Another factor is that only 1 belt existed not 25 so the drive was there and legacy had a meaning. Today it’s a bunch of tin pots who all claim to be world champions and for the most part staying away from each other.

Greb fought 45 times in one year once and it was not a tour bus. Stribling fought more then that once and sure boxing was a "job" more so then today but these guys wanted to fight. P4P actually meant something then to. Langford was a short middle at best and yet knocked out almost every hev of his day including Wills, Mcvey and Jeannette. Probably the first man to introduce the shoulder roll and would fight the last part of his career pretty much blind.

Greb beat 7 world light heavy champions, dominated the middleweight division and beat several contending heavyweights and finished his career blind in one eye. He only lost 11 times in 300 fights and was only stopped twice, once because his arm was broken.

Today if you lose or get knocked out you are almost written off or tossed to the recycling bin but in past eras a loss was looked on almost as a badge of honour.

@Beanflicker. I know what you mean man, we history buffs can go a little overboard at times in comparisons but the differences from the past and today as far as attitude goes is really quite striking.
The difference between risk and reward as applied today and how it was applied in other eras even as early as the mid 80's almost has its own taste. Point well taken though as all one has to do is look at Leonards 40 fights. His resume stacks up to almost anyone in history quality wise.

[Spicoli]

Buck Smith : Boxer They can't all be a modern day Buck Smith driving around in his hatchback and camping outside of the arena...and maybe thats a good thing.

It may really come down to quality over quantity. I like a guy who maintains and stays active but not just for the sake of just collecting checks. Then again, who the hell am I. For the lesser guys its a living and they can be expected to ply their trade and pay the rent. You hate to see guys who are career door mats with high activity but you do. I have a bigger problem with elites and guys who have 'arrived' and rest on the bench, all the while still living on past accomplishments. Yes...Mayweather comes first to mind. He is a prime example of a guy who hit a career peak performance with Hatton and then simply took his ball and went home...retiring for two years. I think he blew some key time and missed oppurtunity in a division and sport that almost seemed to pass him by a bit. On the other end a top guy who just fights so so types and ends up with more padding than a Highschool prom. Canelo may be in that design thus far, with a couple of names tossed in to peak interest. Activity is a must but fans need to see a guy tested and face a monster once in a while to keep stay interested. If all you want to do is drive nails, go be a carpenter.

[THE THIRD MAN]

Barring a legitimate ring earned or training injury i think 3 times a year for a champion should be mandatory.

[Beanflicker]

Barring a legitimate ring earned or training injury i think 3 times a year for a champion should be mandatory.

So if a championship boxers gets into a car accident and can't fight that year, he should be subjected to some sort of penalty?

This "mandatory" stuff is crazy. It's supposed to be a free country. Boxers are independant contractors. If a carpenter doesn't want to take a job, he doesn't have to. He can take 100 jobs or 0 jobs in a year. Free country.

[Beanflicker]

Valid points but a bit of a broad brush. Yes fighters fought much more in other eras and yes in many cases it was simply to literally put food on the table and pay rent but I do think that hard times makes better fighters both in and out of the ring.

Other factors need to be taken into account though. For instance Langford fought Wills about 20 times because he could not get fights. The same can be said about the entire Murdrers Row. They had to fight each other lots because the establishment would not embrace them. Robinson would not even fight them although he did fight Marshall after Lloyd was essentially done.

Another factor is that only 1 belt existed not 25 so the drive was there and legacy had a meaning. Today it’s a bunch of tin pots who all claim to be world champions and for the most part staying away from each other.

Greb fought 45 times in one year once and it was not a tour bus. Stribling fought more then that once and sure boxing was a "job" more so then today but these guys wanted to fight. P4P actually meant something then to. Langford was a short middle at best and yet knocked out almost every hev of his day including Wills, Mcvey and Jeannette. Probably the first man to introduce the shoulder roll and would fight the last part of his career pretty much blind.

Greb beat 7 world light heavy champions, dominated the middleweight division and beat several contending heavyweights and finished his career blind in one eye. He only lost 11 times in 300 fights and was only stopped twice, once because his arm was broken.

Today if you lose or get knocked out you are almost written off or tossed to the recycling bin but in past eras a loss was looked on almost as a badge of honour.

@Beanflicker . I know what you mean man, we history buffs can go a little overboard at times in comparisons but the differences from the past and today as far as attitude goes is really quite striking.
The difference between risk and reward as applied today and how it was applied in other eras even as early as the mid 80's almost has its own taste. Point well taken though as all one has to do is look at Leonards 40 fights. His resume stacks up to almost anyone in history quality wise.

Meh to me it's all just romanticizing the "good old days", which is something that we do in almost every subject. How many times have you heard "dude I only listen to 60s/70s rock because that's when music was PURE, man". Most of these guys like Greb we've never even seen fight. We really don't know a whole lot about him or his opponents.

I still say if you take Roy Jones, same record and accomplishments, but put him back in the 1920s or so and all we had were newspaper clippings and hearsay about him, he would be the absolute undisputed #1 p4p of all time.

You can also see this with SRR. People have this great view of the guy, as opposed to PBF who everyone agrees is an asshole. But SRR was as big an asshole as PBF. He flaunted his money, hired an entourage to keep him company, hired a midget to make him laugh, beat his wife and was a horrible absentee father to his sons. But we all have this rosey view of him like he was a real man's man, a gentleman.

The past is the past to me. With all the new stuff we learned about concussions and the effect of subconcussive blows, I think fighting all the time like they did is just stupid. Even if you're fighting bums, you're still taking punches that are chipping away at your health. We all have a different biological clock, getting smashed in the ring and in training takes a toll and you can only go to the well so many times until the well is dry.

So I think today is way better, because guys are still young and fresh when they hit the main stage.

Does fighting more often make you more seasoned? Definitely, but you're also accruing punishment to your body and mind. So it's a double edged sword IMO.

I say we leave the past in the past, remember back when Greb fought doctors would recommend smoking cigarettes lol.

[greynotsoold]

The reason the old time guys fought a lot is because they were getting paid and paid well. Unlike today when even world ranked fighters have day jobs, there were a lot of fighters making good money. That was because there was no tv, no football to speak of, no NBA, etc...so people went to the fights and thus there were a lot of fight cards. That means a lot of work available for fighters.
I can guarantee you that you will never find a young pro starting out that would tell you he'd like to fight less. To a man (and I guess woman, these days) they are all discouraged at not being able to find fights and at getting paid peanuts when they do find work. The number of fights cards is not nearly what it was in the 1950s (with the advent of televised fights), much less the 1930s, and while there are a handful of fighters making huge money, most make nothing.
And a lot of the guys that do fight a lot and do get paid, use their fights to fight victims and pad their records, so they get to big fights 30-0 with 27kos, having fought 40 rounds. They may be "fresh" but they still fight like amateurs, which makes sense for a guy with only 4 fights worth of rounds under his belt.

[Beanflicker]

The reason the old time guys fought a lot is because they were getting paid and paid well.

Jesus dude I've read enough autobiographies of the old timers to know that wasn't the case. Especially during the depression era. Maybe the top guys were getting paid well, but the lower card guys were still struggling worse then they are today.

Times change but basic principles always stay the same, and one of those is no promoter is going to pay a guy out of the kindness of their heart. They pay guys who put butts in the seats.

[IamInuit]

Valid points but a bit of a broad brush. Yes fighters fought much more in other eras and yes in many cases it was simply to literally put food on the table and pay rent but I do think that hard times makes better fighters both in and out of the ring.

Other factors need to be taken into account though. For instance Langford fought Wills about 20 times because he could not get fights. The same can be said about the entire Murdrers Row. They had to fight each other lots because the establishment would not embrace them. Robinson would not even fight them although he did fight Marshall after Lloyd was essentially done.

Another factor is that only 1 belt existed not 25 so the drive was there and legacy had a meaning. Today it’s a bunch of tin pots who all claim to be world champions and for the most part staying away from each other.

Greb fought 45 times in one year once and it was not a tour bus. Stribling fought more then that once and sure boxing was a "job" more so then today but these guys wanted to fight. P4P actually meant something then to. Langford was a short middle at best and yet knocked out almost every hev of his day including Wills, Mcvey and Jeannette. Probably the first man to introduce the shoulder roll and would fight the last part of his career pretty much blind.

Greb beat 7 world light heavy champions, dominated the middleweight division and beat several contending heavyweights and finished his career blind in one eye. He only lost 11 times in 300 fights and was only stopped twice, once because his arm was broken.

Today if you lose or get knocked out you are almost written off or tossed to the recycling bin but in past eras a loss was looked on almost as a badge of honour.

@Beanflicker . I know what you mean man, we history buffs can go a little overboard at times in comparisons but the differences from the past and today as far as attitude goes is really quite striking.
The difference between risk and reward as applied today and how it was applied in other eras even as early as the mid 80's almost has its own taste. Point well taken though as all one has to do is look at Leonards 40 fights. His resume stacks up to almost anyone in history quality wise.

Meh to me it's all just romanticizing the "good old days", which is something that we do in almost every subject. How many times have you heard "dude I only listen to 60s/70s rock because that's when music was PURE, man". Most of these guys like Greb we've never even seen fight. We really don't know a whole lot about him or his opponents.

I still say if you take Roy Jones, same record and accomplishments, but put him back in the 1920s or so and all we had were newspaper clippings and hearsay about him, he would be the absolute undisputed #1 p4p of all time.

You can also see this with SRR. People have this great view of the guy, as opposed to PBF who everyone agrees is an asshole. But SRR was as big an asshole as PBF. He flaunted his money, hired an entourage to keep him company, hired a midget to make him laugh, beat his wife and was a horrible absentee father to his sons. But we all have this rosey view of him like he was a real man's man, a gentleman.

The past is the past to me. With all the new stuff we learned about concussions and the effect of subconcussive blows, I think fighting all the time like they did is just stupid. Even if you're fighting bums, you're still taking punches that are chipping away at your health. We all have a different biological clock, getting smashed in the ring and in training takes a toll and you can only go to the well so many times until the well is dry.

So I think today is way better, because guys are still young and fresh when they hit the main stage.

Does fighting more often make you more seasoned? Definitely, but you're also accruing punishment to your body and mind. So it's a double edged sword IMO.

I say we leave the past in the past, remember back when Greb fought doctors would recommend smoking cigarettes lol.

Thats cool. Be a bit of a drag if we agreed all the time. Fighters today are a bunch of coddled nannies compared to almost any era of the past, To many belts, to much politics, Arum hates Oscar, Floyd and Oscar hate Arum. Reduced to in house fighting and even then they only fight once or twice a year.

[Beanflicker]

Thats cool. Be a bit of a drag if we agreed all the time. Fighters today are a bunch of coddled nannies compared to almost any era of the past, To many belts, to much politics, Arum hates Oscar, Floyd and Oscar hate Arum. Reduced to in house fighting and even then they only fight once or twice a year.

Well people with different opinions makes it interesting, it would be pretty boring if everyone agreed.

But I don't buy the sentiment that these guys are sissies. We still have a ton of guys who are willing to go in there and die in the ring if they have to. Sure we have our coddles babies, but go back in any era and you could find your whiners and quitters I say.

I say if you go back in a time machine, grab SRR from the 40s and show him boxing today, he'd say "You mean I don't have to fight 5 times a month?? I can make in one fight what I made fighting 10 times?? This is great!"

[Master]

It does seem that a lot of the top fighters do not fight often. Donaire is the exception but fighters like Floyd could fight more regularly.

Overall in their career they have lower number of fights because TV companies want undefeated fighters to sell them and less fights mean less risk of getting beat at the higher levels.

[TitoFan]

It does seem that a lot of the top fighters do not fight often. Donaire is the exception but fighters like Floyd could fight more regularly.

Overall in their career they have lower number of fights because TV companies want undefeated fighters to sell them and less fights mean less risk of getting beat at the higher levels.

I agree, M. But TV may be miscalculating what "undefeated fighters" do for general interest. There's a fine line between holding back an undefeated fighter to reduce the risk of his getting beat, and having enough fights to keep public interest going. Whether or not the decrease in today's typical fighter's activity is warranted or not, the bottom line is it doesn't help general interest in the sport. Even an undefeated fighter that fights once a year or even less, is not going to hang on to a lot of fans, just because of the inactivity. There's too much sport competition out there to grab the fans' interest. Even MMA, which personally I haven't the slightest interest in, will continue to erode fan interest in boxing. I mean, what good is an undefeated record if you're only going to put it on the line every 18 months or so?