Are journeymen fights usually fixed, like does the journeyman feels its better to lose?

Yeah. In spirit or in letter about 80% of most boxers' records is crap.

 

Fix is when there is a specific agreement that a guy is going to lose. He’s going to go out of his way to make sure he doesn’t win — he’s not going to land a haymaker or try to win rounds because he’s being paid (or perhaps I guess blackmailed or promised something down the road or threatened, etc.) to lose.

That’s different than being overmatched and getting a payday. In that case the fighter, once he’s seasoned enough and taken a few L’s, knows he’s likely to lose. He also learns that if he gives good fighters good rounds, he’s going to be in demand for the next payday against another top guy or up-and-comer, so maybe he fights more cautiously to avoid an early end and make himself more valuable as an opponent. Because that’s what he is, a professional opponent.

When a guy is really good, especially a puncher, he has trouble getting quality in-ring experience because he blows out less experienced guys. He gets a win but he doesn’t learn anything like how to pace himself, to work on certain combinations or moves or improve his defense. The durable opponent provides those valuable rounds that develop the prospect/contender.

Some guys who get KO’d early a lot also find that end of the vocation — but they’re always available on short notice, they’ll fight anybody, they’re probably more reasonably priced than the cautious guy who goes more rounds, maybe they have a soft chin but a rep for delivering some good action before being taken out.

Most of these guys have managers who know how to keep them viable, or maybe a promoter who gets a cut of their bigger paydays because they get that guy a win when he’s lost several in a row and in danger of a commission banning them and ending their livelihood. They usually have more value when they have a winning record — often they started out by winning say 15 of their first 17 and then step up and they aren’t that level. So they lose a bunch in a row and now they’re 15-10 … so they take a fight for free or little money against someone even lower on the food chain to get a win and now the commission can approve them because they’re not on a losing streak. they get to say 16-14, they get another win to stay viable. Repeat.

That is the business of boxing. Hey, football teams that aren’t contenders still show up and play even though they know they’re not beating the Tom Brady Patriots or other top teams.

If you’re a real fan of the sport and spend enough time at fights in person, you learn to appreciate those guys. You see them overmatched but you see what they do — the subtle things to shorten a round by lessening exchanges, how they cover up, how they throw back just enough to keep in it so the referee doesn’t stop it, etc. I remember a small, portly heavyweight who had an awful record but rarely got KO’d and he’d spend the whole fight on the ropes … but not still, sliding a few steps to the left, then a few to the right. Throw back here and there but mostly pick off punches. It was boring to a casual fan and it wasn’t competitive, but I loved watching the guy because he could take a 10-0 former amateur world champ and the guy would finally figure out he just needed to forget about the KO and work on things and bank the rounds. And every so often he’d throw a haymaker when the top dog relaxed and land it — wouldn’t turn the fight or anything, but it signaled ‘hey kid, you better wake up,’ haha.

 

Marion Wilson is a lot like what you’re describing to me… all those rounds with killers working to survive but he wasn’t stopped from memory, little guy too for his weight class… I wonder how good he really was there is a fair chance he had twinkles in his eye here or there and said “I could beat this guy” but then he’d be out of the job, you don’t “win” every spar especially not with world champions but you get educated so imagine all he learnt when they’re not playing?

 

This is great stuff everyone here should read.

 

None of y'all did any paid losing when you were younger? Everyone's either a genius or a former prodigy who would have been world champion if not for some outrageous misfortune?

It's not so much that you're fixing fights with a promoter so much as you're up front about your level of dedication to the sport. Basically just raw talents who have careers too valuable to abandon. I was a prosthetist by trade.

 

A brilliant post.
To add a bit in the way of illustration, this is the record of a friend of mine: https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/574305
If you look at his record, you will see back to back fights against Ivan Najera and Casey Ramos on Top Rank cards which I am sure most of us watched. Najera and Ramos were both managed by Dempsey1234- he had at least 3 guys on each of those shows- and that opened many doors for Angel.
Looking at his record you will see that he fought many undefeated guys, many with recognizable names and you will see that he went a lot of rounds. He did that by fighting at a slow pace that was almost hypnotic, a style that he adopted, I am told, after a pretty heated fight with Najera in which he went down. But he had a good reputation, which you can see by clicking on the event spot and seeing the promoters he worked with and how high he often appeared on the bills.
For a good period of time in there I was in the gym with him daily. At the time I had a young fighter that we had high hopes for and they sparred often but I didn't really like that because my guy would buy into that slow style. Angel was in the gym daily and weighed daily so, when you see that he weighed 133 or whatever for a fight, that was what he weighed in the gym. He kept his weight there because he took a lot of fights on short notice of 3-5 days so he didn't have time to cut a lot of weight (and that is one way of 'fixing' a fight, or at least gaining an advantage) but he was paid extra for that.
When he fought Andy Vences, he could have won that fight but he quit using his jab, but using his jab was unusual in the first place. I watched him spar hundreds of rounds and he rarely threw one. The only time he was stopped, Angel fought a guy that didn't buy into his style and caught him.
He had a guy that brokered fights for him, I suspect it was Dempsey1234, and took 20% but he was making a pretty good living.

 

I always remember Ossie Ocasio, firmly in the “opponent” stage of his career, coming to the UK to fight heavyweight Jess Harding. Ocasio clearly tried not to win but it reached the point where he simply couldn’t miss Harding with anything he threw.
The fight was stopped and Ocasio was almost apologetic. He didn’t want the win, he wanted the work.

 

Anyone here remember amateur star turned professional journeyman Randy Smith? Never dropped or stopped. Very, very defensively sound.

This content is protected

 

I knew a guy who was a matchmaker/agent type who put together a lot of undercards for bigger fights (like pre-champion Roy Jones Jr and a lot of USA Network fights at Casinos in the South) and entire cards in some cases.

He had a pretty modestly talented guy — good look but not fast nor explosive nor slick enough to really make it. I think he upset one or two guys who were prospects but he also got upset once or twice by guys who he should have gotten an easy W against.

Well the matchmaker would make it part of the deal that if he put together the card/undercard that he got a slot or two for ‘his’ guys and this was one of them. He got to about 12-5 and had reached a ceiling. I remember asking him once about bringing that guy to our place to fight one of our guys — probably a 50/50 fight, our guy was no future champ either but he was a good club fighter. Matchmaker told me flat-out, no.

He explained: “He probably has two or three more years in this, max. He knows he’s not going to be world champion. He wants to make enough money to buy a plot of land and a mobile home. Then he’ll have no rent. He’s got a good job as a carpenter (I think that’s what it was, something like that) and he can work at that for 10 years with no rent and then sell the land and the used mobile home and have enough saved to buy himself a house in a nice neighborhood. He came up poor. That’s his dream. So from here on out, any fight where he might lose, he gets paid.”

He retired 14-11 when he had banked enough with money fights (against top guys or up-and-comers, all on the road, all on short notice) to buy that land and mobile home.

Most boxers have day jobs. They are fighting to make a little on top of what they can make — probably not really educated nor possessing any special skills that can take them up a rung on the economic ladder. Some are realistic … boxing is an avocation, a job on top of their job.

I can’t see anything in the world wrong with that. Go back to the 1940s and before and fighters could make a living fighting regularly in clubs without ever sniffing contender status, much less world champ. But it was a way to make a living.

 

As greynotsolod and Saintpat have pointed out, most fights aren't "fixed," but when a prospect who trains for a living, fights a guy who works full time and gets in the gym occasionally, the built in advantages for the prospect are huge. The guy who works full time takes the fight for extra money, usually on short notice. We've had guys who work out at our place get a call on Wednesday for a Friday or Saturday fight. The fighter has to talk to his boss, get the time off, travel to the fight, maybe take somebody with him to work his corner (if the corner man can get off work) or when he arrives at the fight, arrange for somebody in the town where the fight is taking place to work the corner. As Grey pointed out, whatever he weighed when he got the call is his fight weight, if he weighed 133 and the fight is at 130, he'll drop 3 pounds by not eating, by sweating in the shower, or running on the hotel treadmill. If the fight is at 135 or 40, he'll eat good because he doesn't have to worry about making weight. Meanwhile, the prospect walks around 15 pounds above the fight weight. He'll cut weight and then when they get in the ring, the prospect will be much bigger than his opponent.

And, as a final insult if the fight is at 130, the "B" side guy might weigh 131 and have to give some of his purse to the "A" side because he is "overweight." After getting off work, traveling, etc., at fight time, the "B" side guy will weigh 132-33, the "A" side guy will be 140-45. There is no "fix" but the deck is stacked against the "B" side.

 

This is been an eye-opening conversation.

 

Sean O'Grady used to call it "Sparring partner Syndrome." You know what you're there for, and if you like the work and expect to get more, you don't do more than you are supposed to.