Do You Thinks It Really Matters What Age You Start Boxing?

its all God Given Talent.. i could force my kid to play football eberyday does't mean they'd be good at the sport.

In some people they just realise they have the tralent late on say mid 20s and is the fitness is there its faily easy for them to get into it.

 

Jess Willard turn pro at 29 and won the heavyweight title.


Some times its the draw of the card. I think talent plays a bigger part than what age you start imo.

 

Horribly cherry picked examples right there, how about your analyse all the best of the best and you'll the average starting age is quite low. The fact you can find boxers who achieved little who started young is irrelevant. Its no coincidence very very few top fighters started past the age of 18

You can pick up skills later in life, but if you've practised boxing from a young young age your going to have a better grasp of those skills. Most of the examples of those that start late tend to be ones who arent the most skillfull and rely on physical conditioning/abilities

 

I'd like to think that i could go to my local gym at age 36 almost 37 train and learn the ins and outs of boxing and win a world championship/tittle at around 40. Enless I turn out to be a real life Roy Hobbs this is not very likely to happen.
On the other hand I could have started boxing at age 9 or 10 and you might be compareing me to other greats. Mabey not. Experance and hard work can go a long ways. However were limited by our natural talent. Another advantage of starting early is that you can better devlope your mussical memory.
If you have a high leval of natural boxing talent and you are in top physical condition you can start late in life and do very well however If you don't starting early gives you advantages that you won't have if you start latter in life.

 

The conundrum facing most fighters is that it's unhealthier to start fighting young because getting hit in the head as a child repeatedly does more damage long-term than waiting until the brain's fully developed to enter the sport and the "mileage" on each fighter would theoretically shorten the earlier they started , but the muscle memory many fighters get from starting and training young can be invaluable. For every Bernard Hokins, there's probably 10 champs who've been training since they were kids.

If I had the proper funding I'd like to do a study to see the average quality of life of fighters who started young vs those who picked it up later as far as cognitive skills, etc. go. It'd be interesting to see if there's a correlation there.

 

You've chosen some domestic fighters. Of course the likes of Marciano are going to look better compared to them :rofl

I could say, Benitez, Ali, Duran.

Dickhead plagarist.

 

I'm in full agreement.
Just a brief look at (for example) most great heavyweight champs, and you'll see that most of them started boxing early in their lives, and most also won a gold medal at the Olympics or at least successful amateur careers.
Skill or natural ability is the chief determinent of how fast you'll progress and how far you'll go, but starting boxing later in life means that you're forever playing catchup to earlier starters.

 

It's a mix of both, naturally.

 

Ron Lyle once said that if he'd started pro boxing earlier than he did,he'd have been more succesful.

 

Cotto20/Monzon is back under another pseudonym which would explain his hatred of me after I rumbled him last time.

 

Heck yeah it makes a difference. Movements have to become second nature. The ability to pick up on an opponents movements to react with your own is something that happens over time of massive repetition and training. Physical ability and technique obviously also plays a part, but movements have to become second nature.
Most of the best fighters have a lot of amatuer experience and have boxed since they were young kids.

 

Doesn't really make much difference physically, if you're talented, dedicated, and put in the hours it takes to develop ability.

Mentally it's a bit harder though, because someone who's in his 20s is already gotten used to other habits and lifestyle and mode of thinking as an adult, so he's got to be highly motivated from the get-go - it takes an even rarer type of individual than the dedicated talented athlete who starts as a boy (a rarity in itself). The flipside to that, of course, is that talented boxers who start young may well get bored and lose focus at exactly the wrong time.

It all boils down to the individual.