The Perfect Retirement. Educate me.

That's another one I considered. Gave a good account of himself, got his money, and got out.

 

Lewis. Can't play it much better than that. Got out on top, has stayed clean and classy.

Now, do we mean best retirement itself? Tyson. Went out a heel, has become a face. He wrecked the back half of his career, and has overcome all that to be relevant again.

 

Tunney, Mayweather and Marciano did it right. Technically as much as I got mad at Lewis for ducking Vitali I can’t blame him. No need to get hurt if your hearts not in it and his wasnt

 

Valdez wasn’t a threat. He had gotten trounced by everyone by the time he retired. He didn’t fight Baker but by then he wasn’t really considered much of a threat either.
Beating Archie who beat everyone at the time was as good as it got.

 

People who retired perfectly:
Joe Calzaghe
Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Carl Froch

 

I'll go with Carlos Monzon. He had no losses over his last 79 fights spanning 13 years. He retired following his 14th successful defense of his middleweight title. Pretty good way to go out.

 

I don't know if Tyson qualifies to have the perfect retirement. He lost to 2 hand picked journeyman fighers to end his career.

 

I think he’s talking about the way he has rehabbed his image in retirement and become a character of sorts and also able to profit from it.

I’d say the perfect retirement as far as how someone set themselves up for retirement life and have lived it is Larry Holmes.

Living a fairly simple life out of the limelight in his hometown of Easton, Pa. Built the house he still lives in with money earned during his career. Married Diane in 1979 and still married to her.

Invested ring earnings in real estate. Built the biggest office building in Easton and leased it to the federal government to be the post office — said he had offers from other interests to rent space for more money but shorter-term leases and instead got either a 25- or 50-year lease from the government and the check is always on time and paid in full, no need to worry about collecting or someone’s business failing and having to find a new renter. Then other government agencies started leasing space for their offices to the point that it was all rented out except for an office he kept for himself and become the de facto federal building in that town.

He sold all that I think a little less than 10 years ago and can basically live his life the way he wants it with minimal bills and frills. Also has done a good bit of charity work — both he and Gerry Cooney have said whenever someone asks them to do a charity appearance the first thing they do is call each other and they always say yes, so they show up together and make it an even bigger deal.

We should all do so well in our retirement.

 

Steve Collins

 

That's a good shout, good career and retired a wealthy man.

 

Micky Ward for the type of fighter he was, brawler, journeymen, he finally got a belt. The big $ came with Gatti trilogy. That was enough.

 

If Lewis had rematched Vitali, beaten him again and then retired it would have been as good as it gets.

 

Yeah but why take the chance? Lewis has always been seen as a cold calculating guy rather than an highly emotional one and he knew that Vitali had given him hell in their fight and more likely would be even better for the experience in any rematch while he himself was on the downward slide. It was the smart thing to do. Beside in his career Lewis only gave rematches if he lost or didn't win.

 

it was indeed the smart thing to do because I think in a rematch Vitali would have finished him.