Back in the old days, many fighters would get thrown to the wolves very early in their careers. Because of that, they ended up with tons of losses. Some of the best to have ever boxed have tons of early losses. They were resilient and came back from adversity to become great.

The issue is that with how we view and promote boxing, is this just not beneficial anymore? They promote the “0” so much that it almost seems like it becomes more mentally damaging than it used to. I know that even in MMA where they don’t promote the “0” much it still takes a huge mental toll on many fighters. Is this just cultural? Like these kids come up with the expectation to not lose? Whereas back in the day most fighters would assume they would lose coming up the ranks.

I hear fans so often saying that fight A isn’t ready for fighter B. While it might be true, couldn’t it be a good experience that would make them better in the future? Or have we lost that mindset? It’s just unfortunate because I would love it if some of these young guns like Haney, R. Garcia, Stevenson, etc could just make fights with some of the big dawgs here and there to see where they are at. I think it would make for some exciting match ups with potential upsets.

I think one of the biggest issues of it though is that fact that fighters don’t fight near enough anymore. It’s difficult to make these types of fights when there are other ones to be made. I just wish that somehow we could allow fighters to feel alright with losing early in their careers without the fear of losing potential financial benefits.