15 rounder s. Do you feel that boxing has suffered or gained with losing them?

Great post.

You can add Levander Johnson. His fight should have been stopped way sooner. He had somehow gotten a title by beating the obscure Zoff. Johnson was very faded, a shadow of what he had been when he stopped Sharmba Mitchell 11 yrs. earlier.

Boxing politics plus bad referee can equal ring tragedy.

 

Too many good fights have ended with a 12 round indecision.. Duran Barkley would have been better at 15, Frazier wins Manilla with a 12 rounder, Duran was ahead of Hagler after 12, and Sugar Ray Leonard would have folded in a 15 rd fight with Hagler. A 15 round fight almost always answers all the questions.

 

In 12 rdrs fighters can afford to not have the best conditioning. They start coasting around the 8th or 9th whereas in 15 rdrs you didn't see as much coasting and if you did it usually wasn't until later.

 

The game is weaker since losing the championship distance. Fighters no longer need to be in as great of condition. Training for more of a sprint rather than the quarter mile in effect.

 

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100% this. This is why fighters are bigger now than they used to be.

 

The 12 round distances does make for less entertaining fights, but I support it from the standpoint of fighter safety.
The wellbeing of the fighters should always come first.

 

I truly miss the 15 round championship distance. Tides change throughout a fight and when it came down to those last three rounds conditioning, heart and desire became big factors. With the 12 rounders I feel shortchanged, like things are just really getting started and it ends.

I think the training portion is also part of the fighters desire also. With today's training and nutrition, fighters would have the conditioning to go 15 and but would have to work harder with that in mind.

By the same token fighters are stronger and fighting to more advanced ages, 30s and in some cases their 40's. This may play a big roll in the "after effects" of a boxing career. Today fighters have less overall fights - maybe they incur less damage or maybe they have less time to truly hone their skills as a professional thus would get in over their head too early with result being not being ready for a 15 rounder.

 

Hagler shouldn't have chumped out against Leonard for 12 rounds. He should've demanded 15 rounds.