I'm amazed there are no elite Brazilian boxers to speak of. Are they all doing jui-jitsu? Playing soccer? You'd think there would be some...the country has a LOT of people and on a whole seems quite athletic. Can anyone shed some light...
Brazil, it's soccer and then MMA. Guys like Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva, even older guys like Vitor Belfort are very well regarded out there. Boxing doesn't have much influence.
Hit the nail on the head, when you come from a nation where your biggest sporting heros are Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldhinio, Silva, Aldo then your going to get involved in MMA and football Besides I dont watch much MMA so I dont think Brazillians get the right training to succeed at a higher level, I mean most british level fighters could probably beat the top Brazillian fighters
You've got Jofre and (to a much lesser extent) Freitas from Brazil. Otherwise, yeah, the top combatants are almost always jiu-jitsu/MMA practitioners.
There are Brazilian boxers, but they just give away the fights and walk away with a pay check. http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7634803
I partly agree, but here in the UK boxing is so far down the food chain and we still get boxers (sorry dont know where u are from) I think you have a point though and i do find it odd. And Anderson has had either 1 or 2 boxing bouts in the past, but he wasnt that good, so like someoe else said it may be that there simply are not enough institutes to teach straight boxing to a decent level. I would imagine a freak show like Silva being able to adapt to almost any combat sport with correct training. Brazil would generally adopt a stereotype Mexican style if they did box IMO.
Is this different then saying all the potentially great heavy weights in the US are playing basketball or football?
i saw a brazlian fighter on showbox recently. went by the name brazilian rocky. can't remember his actual name. trained with glen johnson's trainer. not very impressive.
micheal olivera is his name and yeah he aint all that great. but whats surprising is he has a deal with tv globo one of the biggest networks in the world that show his his fights to like 50 million homes. he's making serious bank so there must be a market for it