Loss Early help a young fighter?

[marbleheadmaui]

I agree with Pugilistic. This is purely down to the individual. Losing only looks beneficial when a fighter has success coming back from it.

I would STRONGLY bet that most losses result in a career decline.

Mayweather's close shave against Castillo wouldn't have made a jot of difference to him. Even though many believe he lost that fight, I have no doubt whatsoever he believes he won performing badly. So much so that he jumped straight back in with him to prove his point.

I'd speculate on the bold slightly differently. I'll bet more often than not that loss represents a ceiling that the fighter never exceeeds but it doesn't lead to a "decline" in and of itself.

Having said that of course I'd also be that if I went through Bert Sugar's top 100 fighters of all time, 75 or more lost early.

Yes.. stalling at a "level" is probably more accurate.

Virtually all losses lead to fighters being dropped in rankings, marketability etc. To progress from the stalling point is out of the norm.

THAT is a recent (last 15 years or so) phenomenon in the sport and a major problem in my view. Too many of us fans are record-driven rather than fighter development driven. In some ways the Argentines may have a more productive approach to young fighters. If two young guys are in a competitive fight? often it will be called a draw so as not to discourage young fighters from taking competitive fights and to develop them as fighters, not merely as boxing records. In the sport's heyday trainers built fighters. Now too often they just build records.

I mean as great a fighter as Pipino Cuevas or Dick Tiger might never have been able to even stay in the game today given their early records. It's a problem.