Why is boxing the only sport that celebrates willful lack of preparation?

It absolutely is in MMA. I don't follow kickboxing closely enough outside of all the cool techniques to know.

 

some of this is the media's fault. i am a san francisco giants fan. when we won the series in 10, 12, and 14, i seem to recall that certain announcers never gave the giants the respect they deserved. many were, "well, the REAL rangers did not show up for the series", "the tigers were not ready" etc....
look at the fans of a certain recent former british heavy weight champion. he did not train in many fights, abused his body, yet the press and his fans gave him a pass. "well, he he will EASILY win next time after he trains." they do not want to admit that maybe, just maybe, he is not living up to hos potential or that they were fooled that he really is not as good and are too embarrassed to admit ti.

 

I believe it cost his career.

 

An excellent point here about ego. Ego can change so much in any individual. Similar to this point as well.

 

It seems to apply to all combat sports which makes me wonder if there's something about more individualistic competitions such as tennis, boxing, ssbm, MMA, etc. that leads to this behavior happening more often and/or being more accepted and what that trait would be.

 

@Saintpat think with team sports even the GOAT performers have the team to fall back on to get them out of jail, others step up make a play unheralded players in football score a winning goal etc.

Boxing it's sometimes the narrative gets rewritten. We all know time and again 'the best training camp ever' fighters that lose then within a week after the stories leak of went in with injury, didn't prepare well enough, blame the trainer , crashed weight etc.

 

I agree with OP to some extent. Whenever you point out the losses of some or other pet fighter there are always excuses "that was a terrible version of him" and the classic "we only take the best version" where the best version existed between 11 and midnight on February 29th ...

 

Buster scored a victory over Tyson worthy of ATG. If Buster had even briefly been in the top 5 heavyweight divisions outside of this fight, everyone would have considered him ATG. But Buster was defeated by Holy moments later, returning to his normal position. But no one can take that away from him. He will forever be the one who tamed Tyson. However, it's hard to consider him an ATG just because he defeated Tyson. Just as it's hard to consider McCall, who quickly knocked out Lewis, an ATG.

Tyson, on the other hand, defeated a dozen or so fighters ranked higher than Douglas, sometimes in dominant fashion, which means Tokyo wasn't the norm. If it were, he would have lost frequently to fighters of Buster's caliber, so either Buster was his kryptonite, Tojio Tyson was out of shape, or both, but nothing in their long careers confirms that this outcome was a given. People still consider it a sensation, right?

Only in boxing is the fall of an idol so painful. Does anyone take away Michael Spitz's gold medals from Munich because he didn't qualify for the next Olympics? Does anyone take away Bob Beamon's great record in Mexico because his results were much weaker in subsequent seasons? Would anyone write that the great Simon Beales isn't so great because she had weaker seasons and didn't dominate them? Wasn't Maradona a great soccer player at the World Championships in Mexico because he didn't score a single goal in subsequent seasons?

Usain Bolt had the best results in track and field year after year, but in one season, his result was 15th in the world... Only 15th!! Let's take all his medals away!! The year before, he was 1st, the year after, he was 1st, but between those seasons, he was 15th.
Would anyone in their right mind have come up with the idea, like Saintpat, to consider Usain 14 better because, for some reason, his form throughout the season was weaker, just like Tyson's form during that one night in Tokyo???

Before prison, Tyson won 41 fights, lost one, and suddenly that fight decides everything, and the rest don't matter. It's like taking away all of Bolt's world records because at a certain point in his career, he had worse results.
Complete nonsense, Saintpat

 

Literally nobody says that. It's the opposite - you Tyson fanboys acting like the Douglas fight, or Holyfield fights to a certain extent don't matter.

 

Probably Cos it's the most raw, stripped down sport.
There should be no excuses really , but there always is..

 

Sugar Ray Robinson describes it in Dave Anderson's book Sugar Ray. He said "warriors never lose something just happens to keep them from winning"

 

I know what the auror of the post is getting at, but I think he's using bad examples.
Fighters are real people, not characters from a video game. Sometimes they have a bad day, sometimes they're unlucky, and boxing can be a lottery.
We can't sum up Tyson's entire career in one night in Tokyo and say, "Buster is in a different league." Even the biggest hater knows that Tyson dominated centuries of boxers like Buster.
We can't define Roberto Duran's entire career with one fight against Kirk Laing. We can't look at Wlad Klitschko and only look at him when Corrie Sanders beat him or Roy Glenn Johnson beat him. They had other fights too. Those that took place are significant, but they can't erase their successes. Is Joe Frazier's career reduced to just Foreman, and was the FOTC a fabrication?