Oldest person you met or knew that started the sport late?

So, to continue my midlife crisis, I finally started taking up boxing at the age of 40 after putting it off for years, lucky for me, I never abused my body much so I feel pretty good, never a drug user really (recreational at worst), haven’t been a drinker since my late 20’s, workout relatively often, plenty of sleep, decent diet, etc

I’m 7-8 lessons deep and my coach has told me he’s been pretty surprised by how much I’ve learned and already knew coming in with no real training prior to meeting him

My plan is to get 200-300 rounds of sparring in and get my cardio and weight where I want it to be, I’m 5’6, 184 pounds, zero desire to shed 50 pounds, plan on trying to get down to 160 or 168, my goals are small, fight on the club circuit in my region and just have fun with it, see how far I can take it

My question to y’all is, what’s the oldest you’ve seen someone turn pro that had some small amount of success?

 

har har

 

You do know Firat Arslan is turning 56 and still fights, right?

 

Yes, I understand this, I didn’t say I was ready to turn pro yet. Not what I was insinuating.

I start sparring in the next week or two.

My goal is to spar for a year or two and go from there. No amateur background. Right to small circuit stuff.

 

Also, this isn’t about money, it’s about accomplishment. I have money, I have a great job. I’ve followed the sport forever. It’s not uncommon for guys to turn pro around my age.

It’s rare, yes, but if you sift through BoxRec, you’ll see multiple guys at every weight class turning pro in their late 30’s. I was quite shocked to find as many as I did, and I wasn’t even looking far, all guys ranked in the top 200-250 from 160-175. I think I found over 2-3 dozen that either turned pro around my age or were still fighting well beyond my age. I didn’t even go to the guys ranked 250-500.

 

I am.

Trust me, this is a one step at a time conquest and I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. The next year or so, I want to keep doing my roadwork, get my weight down and spar. Once my coach assesses where I’m at, we go from there. If he says it’s not for me, I’ll accept it, if he says another year, I’ll accept it, if he says I’m ready, the challenge really begins.

I wanted to see if anyone on this forum has any first hand experience meeting very late bloomers to the sport. I know it happens through scouring BoxRec, but I wanted to hear some first hand experiences from people here.

 

I was encouraged when my coach asked me if I had any previous experience, which I didn’t, just my own workouts hitting the heavy bag and boxing mitts with friends. He said he gets a lot of first timers and I’m one of the few that came in and has caught on fast.

I decided this is my last chance to start this run and the plan is to take it as far as humanly possible.

 

no, I’m not, if you’re simply going by BMI you are clueless, I promise you, if you saw me in person you would not look at me and think I’m grossly overweight, I wear my weight very well

That same BMI metric that told me I was slightly overweight when I was about 150 pounds, when I was probably single digits in body fat percentage and thin as a stick when I was in the military 20 years ago

BMI is the most ridiculous metric of all time because it does NOT account for muscle mass

also, I mostly eat meat, starches and vegetables and fruit, I’ve pretty much drastically cut out sugar the last eight or nine weeks or so, so I expect to start losing some weight due to that

i’m not saying I can’t afford to lose some weight, but for you to call me grossly overweight is absolutely ridiculous, I am more than happy to walk around in the summertime without a shirt on because I have zero reason to be embarrassed about how I look, according to BMI, someone like Mike Tyson would be considered overweight during his prime, did Mike Tyson look overweight to you when he was 225?

 

I would say you’d be correct if I had very little muscle mass and I weighed the same amount, but that’s where you’re wrong and that’s where BMI is the dumbest statistic out there and it makes people like you look like clowns for even using it