We spend a lot of time slating undercards and I'm going to up the ante. I watched Larry Holmes vs. Ernie Shavers II last night. Who was on the undercard? Sugar Ray Leonard against a top ten opponent, Roberto Duran in a welterweight fight and Wilfredo Gomez. That's a ****in riot compared to the **** we get thrown at us today! I remember Don King doing dynamite undercards in the nineties featuring the likes of Tito and Terry Norris but he drastically underpaid them. Do you think we'll see quality undercards again EVER!
I doubt we will see such good undercards again. Free market economics dictates the promoters actions and they can make a shed load more money seperating out the big fighters onto different cards and then fill up the undercard with prospects rather than other top names.
Oh I miss the days when future great were on undercards and gave such wonderful fights. Now undercards are filled with fighters we don't care about and it's shameful compared to then.
One problem with this statement is that we don't all agree on who the future greats are all the time. A lot of fighters don't get the respect they deserve until they retire! Looking back on cards from the past is always going to look better, we judge fighters from the past based on their entire career (usually the best memories of them springing to mind). It's never going to be a fair comparison. However, those cases with multiple big-name title fights...we wont be seeing many like that again.
Just go to boxrec and go through Muhammad Ali's undercards in the 1970's and compare to the crap thrown at us now.
i'm curious - what are UFC (mmz, xma whatever) cards like? and why are boxers fighting so rarely now? going through the ring magazine's top 10 of each division, i see literally about 100 fighters i'd like to see fight. and how was haye ruiz not televized in North america? wtf is going on?!
I mean of the 70's or 80's like say Leonard or Hagler though I wasn't alive in either decade:silly. No doubt that SRL & Marvelous are legends. Sorry if I misled you. You're right it's always great to look at the past cards.
A lot of the early PPVs with Hagler/Hearns/Leonard/Duran from the 1980's had poor undercards, it must be a Top Rank thing.
:dealThis. I meant when the days when SRL and Hagler were coming up, not when they were already seen as greats.
Top Rank always gave crap no-name undercards. The semi main event underneath Hagler-Hearns was Pat Jefferson vs Cubanito Perez a competitive match but completely a contest featuring no names. Don King was the KING of boxing events.
