Is it possible for a Boxer to have good record (20+ wins ) and never get a title fight ?

Packey McFarland

 

Also, Marvin Hagler was 46-2-1 before receiving a title shot. That was a long time ago, but interesting to me. Both losses and the draw were early in his career and he would later go on to completely annihilate the 3 fighters who blemished his record.

 

There’s a risk to that, even when your more talented than your competition by several factors when you climb through the ropes you risk getting knocked out, and if you roll the dice 40 times instead of 20 you could lose the 36th or 37th time just by chance and then you risk losing your confidence, momentum or any public interest.

Of course, you could argue that if you are ko’d like that you never had it, but I would disagree. I’m sure there’s been fighters who tried to go for a massive record, lost to a low quality opponent and was ancient history who could’ve been far more successful if they braved the deep end sooner instead of stubbing their toe and drowning by wallowing in the shallow.

 

Maybe, but in the UK it is very rare to reach 20-0 and even more so 30-0 given that we have better regulation and infrastructure for boxing. In a country with less infrastructure and investment in boxing the number for recognition will be much higher and the talent pool less challenging. Simply put, British fighters are more valuable per capita and that is why you will see them getting title shots earlier than there counterparts in lets say, Hungary for example. It is also the reason that many fighters with ambition relocate to the UK to improve there chances of succeeding in the sport. Martin Bakole and Anthony Yigit being recent examples.

 

Okay fine, but dude, again, the OP wasn't making a thread about one country in particular, but painting broadly, with a large brush, suggesting it was unusual or noteworthy for a boxer to have a 20-0 and up record on BoxRec and not have challenged, which in general, it absolutely isn't. Savvy?

Here in the US we do have the infrastructure but not so much the investment. Our amateur program is a shambles compared with the UK's (or some of the E.E. countries, or Cuba for instance). But look at places like Japan and the Philippines. Boxing is taken every bit as seriously there as in Britain (and I don't say that lightly, as I know how deep in the marrow of Brit culture boxing is, since that is the modern sport's birthplace) and yet a Jap or Filipino boxer isn't expected to automatically be handed a world title shot just for reaching 20-0. Granted, their domestic scenes are so brutal that even their contender level guys usually pick up a handful of losses on the way up, but a few squeaking through with 20-30 wins and no losses is hardly unheard of.

Then you have a country like Thailand, where our Western boxing is considered second-rate, as they mostly only care about Muay Thai, and you have guys with padded up records of double what the OP's talking about, quite frequently up in the neighborhood of 50-0 ...and yet there's a 50-50 chance when they finally step up to international level competition that it turns out they're bums.

I guess what I'm saying (or, reiterating) is, we can't extrapolate British norms globally, because they don't scale outside that contextually narrow construct.

 

"How can such-and-such a boxer reach 20-0 and not get a world title shot? Me no understand.. " just smacks of acolyte casual fan ignorance to me.

 

I clearly stated I was talking about the UK. You have got completely the wrong end of the stick

Thailand has a completely different approach to boxing than you will find in the west. They keep there fighters active and often put them in horrible mismatches.

 

For a staff member, you really are quite an unpleasant character.

 

Yes but the OP wasn't. And I don't think he's British. You get me? I think he's just some casual American fan who thinks sanctioning bodies will just randomly scoop you up and hand you a shot as some kind of reward for getting as high as 20 fights unbeaten ...which just isn't a thing. I don't think his thread was a carefully nuanced position coming from a Brit perspective. I think it was just silliness, which is why I called it out.

 

Fair enough, no need to bite his head off though.