Why did Prince Naseem Hamed retire?

the answer is simple:

Marco Antonio Barrera

 

well then he must not have had that fighting spirit. As others have pointed out, many fighters have tasted defeat and came back to prove they actually have the fighters heart. Naz was humiliated by MAB and could never get back into it. Then he just got in some car accidents and fat and the rest is history

 

spot on:good

 

Not sure if you were after this sort of thing, but at least I won't just say "MAB".

Writing wise:
- You need to straighten out your semi-colons. They're in there way too often and used where commas, colons and periods would be better (or even when no punctuation was needed).
- Similarly, commas are over used.
- You strayed from the subject of the article a great deal, recounting history rather than continuously building to the reasons for retirement. This made it overly long and gives a tendency to just skip over chunks.
- I think the religious angle is a good one. It'd be interesting to explore it further, especially with examples of it within the public eye. His demeanor is far from devout - how does that end up reconciled? Lots of questions there.
- Other than the punctuation, I thought the writing was pretty good. You didn't repeat phrases (which is done alot in boxing articles) and had some good turns of phrase. You did repeat yourself though, expecially mentioning the same point about the Vasquez fight twice.

I think it's a good topic for exploration. Tighten up the history part and dig into the religious angle and reasons for the Ingle/Warren split (at one point you make it sound like Naz's fault, at another an abandonment by Ingle) and I think it'd be stronger.

 

I don't know why honestly. MAB beat him but the fight was closer than people make it out to be it wasn't a Winky-Tito or Calzaghe-Lacy type of schooling but if you leave it up to MAB huggers or Naz haters you'd think it was.

 

I genuinely believe that Naz's decision to retire was based solely on one single factor:

Naz grew up genuinely believing he was a Sugar Ray or an Ali. He grew up genuinely believing he would never lose and that he would retire as an undefeated legend. Once he lost, his mentality was shattered. It wouldn't have mattered to him if he did beat MAB in a rematch, when he lost his zero he lost his sense of self, lost his life plan, lost his interest/love for boxing.

I believe Floyd Mayweather has the same mentality, though he managed to retire before the inevitable loss.

 

Because an arrogant fighter like him couldn't handle defeat.. simple as that..

Barrera took his heart and turned him into an empty shell.

 

Very good peice. It always riles me how idiots on here refer to the barerra fight as a schooling when it wasnt.

In the infamous documentary, after the fight he's in the dressing room and says something akin to all fighters lose and i'll be back. It didn't seem to me like he was mentally crushed.

Maybe it was just a case of it's hard to get out of bed at 4am to go running when you're wearing silk pjamas

 

After what Barrera did to him I don't blame him. Since he coudnt hang with MAB he knew what Morales was going to do to him.

 

What do you mean what he did to him? You act as if Nas was destroyed or something he wasn't. It wasn't a schooling man it was a big win and upset. Quit trying to make the fight into something that it wasn't. MAB schooling Nas is one of the biggest myths in boxing.:deal

 

What did he do? After outboxing Naz, MAB full nelsoned him into the corner. How embarrasing.....

 

Barrera won comprehensively and convincingly, but it was not a PBF-Corrales/Hopkins-Pavlik/Wright-Trinidad style bona fide schooling at all. It was a competitive battle with a clear winner, but nowhere even near a shutout.

 

Thank You! Thats all all trying to get at.:good

 

It's just one of those irritatingly widely believed boxing myths, such as JMM won every round against Pacquiao after the 1st in Pac-JMM I, or Joe Calzaghe had some special ability that meant he "always found a way to win" (pretty easy when you're fighting a tomato can 95% of the time).