In less than a 2-year span, three of boxing's more promising fighters were left damaged goods by a series of fights that pushed them to the limit. After enduring 24 rounds of brutal give-and-take action against Tomasz Adamek, the rugged Australian Paul Briggs was forced to retire as a result of the damage he had suffered at the hands of Adamek. He won another fight before he retired but the Adamek wars pretty much ensured that he would never be the same fighter again. In their two fights, Jean Marc Mormeck and O'Neil Bell beat the fight out of each other. Their vicious exchanges left each other damaged goods and the fact that the rematch was basically fought in a sauna couldn't have helped. Both fighters absorbed heavy punches throughout and showed incredible powers of recovery to come back and take more. Mormeck was brutally stopped in the first fight but Bell had to take a lot of hard punches to get to that point. Why do I bring up these fights you ask? I suppose it's because I am of the belief that Briggs, Bell, and Mormeck would have still been players in their respective divisions had they not fought the rematches. Does anyone else agree with me?
The fight against Briggs was close both fights. He felt as he had a Kickboxing career that it was time to retire. It wasnt because Adamek mashed him up or something like your saying. In fact its the opposite and now Paul Briggs commentates big Australian boxing matches.
I do think Adamek hastened Paul's declined...but nearly 20 years of professional fighting..Pretty close to 100 combined boxing and muay thai bouts was the real reason. Paul wasnt a young, fresh spring chicken for those fights...He had plenty of mileage in those legs.
I hear what you guys are saying and I agree with you as I am aware that Briggs had an extensive career as a kickboxer prior to boxing. However, one cannot deny the impact the Adamek fights had on his boxing career. If you think about it most fighters could not endure 12 rounds of the type of action that those guys fought through let alone 24. I'm basically saying that had Briggs not fought Adamek for a second time and had instead taken part in more conventional boxing matches he probably would have lasted longer. By conventional I mean more strategic fights and not out and out slugfests. Sure, the overall accumulation from a long fighting career had probably been catching up to him but the Adamek fights (particulaly the rematch) sped up Paul's exit from boxing. If you can isolate his boxing career from his kickboxing career there was really nothing else in the former to even warrant retirement outside of those two fights. It's not as though anybody else had given him a real hard fight.
It's possible that he was more susceptible to the affects of those wars because of his long fighting career. It's an interesting idea. I also think it's a shame that he retired, cause he was a hell of a fighter and always fought with all his heart.
It's hard to tell though I doubt that even the freshest of fighters could emerge from fights like those without any long-term effects. I really liked Briggs and I would have liked to have seen him fight other opponents but it didn't work out that way. Paul's case is obviously a little more complicated because there was a confounding variable, his kickboxing career, whereas it's pretty safe to say that Bell and Mormeck really shortened each other's careers.
