"Rocky, Archie and the Lost Magic" - superb article

[greynotsoold]

It is kind of stupid, how the 'smart guys' in boxing shot themselves in the foot. In an effort to make each fight a bigger deal, they made every fight a championship fight. Now it is at the point where nobody gives a fuck about the titles any more.
And what does it matter, when everybody gets to be champion, and everybody is 30-0 with 27 KOs. You either see through the BS or you believe it, and Lord knows that plenty do think that all these guys are 30-0 w/27 because they are great.

[bradlee180]

It's the dudes from poverty from places like Mexico and the Philippines, coming up unprotected, taking some hard early losses and persevering, developing by fighting all manners of styles before they get a title shot: that's the ones really learn how to fight!

These guys like broner, pavlik, devon alexander, coming up fighting decent opponents but protected from the ones they would've really learned something from, they find themselves in title fights and finally in deep against someone that can really fight, and they have no answers! It's too late then. In the past, the techniques and ways to fight different styles were learned before getting title fights. But titles don't mean much anymore and neither does unbeaten records. Unbeaten records mean a guy's just not fighting the best competition available to him. Long ago, a 24 year old fighter in his 1st title shot already had between 40 and 70 pro fights on their ledger, and still at the beginning of their athletic prime.

[bradlee180]

Pacquiao, Sergio Martinez, Bernard Hopkins came up the old way...