"Rockin' Robin" Deakin officialy retires.

Probably was just "playing the character", looking to raise his profile by calling out anyone in his weight range thar was successful/had a following to land himself a payday. If so, can't really fault him for that.

 

The general consensus is that nobody cares about him and barely anyone outside the UK has even heard of him. Case in point, he's fighting today (perhaps at this very moment for all we know) in Šturovo, Slovakia on a card chock full of naught but 4-rounders and not only is there no TV or streaming coverage there isn't a peep about it (save a few dismissive jokes) on social media.

You could take any 3-year slice of Deakin's career and it would be more a respectable body of work than Patel's entire pro campaign so far.

 

It depends. For some people it really works. Ali Raymi was a horrible boxer (in truth probably 5% as skilled as someone like Deakin) yet endeared himself to a large swath of the fandom through just such antics.

 

Agreed on the exoticism & sideshow appeal (with vaguely unsettling shades of avuncular condescension from the days of colonialism) of Raymi. The difference between Deakin and Patel, in my opinion, is the latter has walked a fairly easy road and comes across more of a pampered & protected fraud, whereas Deakin before he became a blip on the collective radar of consciousness was already somebody that has paid his dues and was the sort of "good, honest, bedrock pro" upon whose back the sport is built. So for him to act in a certain way and for Patel to do it, comes off very differently.

 

Speaking of McGregor that last quote of the article was quite the mic-drop, I actually came very close to spitting out my coffee.

“Like Floyd Mayweather, you never know, I might come back,” he added. The fights I would come back for are the two Conors, Conor Benn and Conor McGregor.

“Anyway, McGregor has a boxing record of 0-1, and I retire with a better record than him.”

That's a world-class burn from a guy with 53 losses.

 

What a cunt. Hard to believe Connor is actually in his twenties, you'd think from his sense of humor that he was studying for his GCSE.