According to Tyson Wilder is a "journeyman"

Mike's words:

" I hope it's a great fight but I ask myself a question. Wilder, is he going into the ring to win or to go get a big payday? "I believe there is no tactical alternative.

He has to go for it for five or six rounds and shoot all the power he has. If you take it, you take it otherwise it may leak again. So I say it all in six rounds either you win or lose and everyone will be satisfied in the end -


The former champion also commented on the current state of the heavyweight division and expressed a desire to see Oleksandr Usyk fight Wilder himself or Andy Ruiz after his rematch with Anthony Joshua.

“I want to see Usyk fight Wilder and Andy Ruiz. Those guys have more experience than Anthony Joshua who seems ineffective to me right now. After we see Usyk fight a man other than Joshua then we will know if he is a true champion of the heavyweight"


Totally agreed with Tyson. And you?

 

For definition a journeyman is a fighter who gets a big payday to lose a fight. Correct.

 

Time to catch up ..you dosser

[url]https://boxing-social.com/features/the-changing-definition-of-a-journeyman/[/url]

IBHOF inductee Graham Houston reflects on the ‘journeyman’ tag in boxing and how its definition has radically changed over the years.

Times change and word meanings change. I thought of this when watching Sheffield’s Tyrone Nurse extend Spanish big hitter Kerman Lejarraga for the full 10 rounds on internet PPV from Marbella last weekend. Nurse showed boxing skill, grit and a solid chin but Lejarraga was too strong, too insistent and too heavy handed. Still, Nurse had his moments and never looked like getting stopped.

In times past, say in the 1950s or 1960s, Nurse would have been described as a journeyman. Back then, the term had a different meaning to what it does today. In those days a journeyman was a fighter of technical competence who, generally speaking, wasn’t quite good enough to be a champion or a top contender.

Today, in Britain certainly, we think of a journeyman as a campaigner who boxes in the away corner and looks to go the distance while taking on as little punishment as possible so that he can get another earner in a relatively short space of time.

Thus, a boxer with, say, 40, 50, 60, even 100 losses on his record would today be called a journeyman. Sam Eggington initially set out to be what he called a journeyman. (Sam did rather better than that, of course, winning the European, British and Commonwealth welterweight titles.)

Obviously, the boxer who loses many more bouts than he wins has a role to play. These travelling professionals give up-and-comers valuable experience by going rounds — often the full distance — and sometimes offering enough resistance to win a round or two. It isn’t easy going into the ring to face a more skilled opponent who is trying to hurt you, so one doesn’t want to be dismissive. But there is a big difference between what we now call a journeyman and what the description once meant.

In the 1950s, a lightweight from New Orleans named Arthur Persley was given the journeyman tag. “The boy from Louisiana rates as a good journeyman fighter who can box and hit well, stands well under punishment and likes to fight,” the Connecticut Sunday Herald reported in a 1953 boxing item.

Persley was actually a very good fighter. He twice defeated Louisiana rival Joe Brown, who went on to become world lightweight champion. He also beat Percy Bassett, a top-notch featherweight who was recognised as world interim champion after Sandy Saddler was inducted into the military. Persley left boxing with a record of 94-26-5. Today, he would be a world top 10 lightweight. Back then he was regarded as a journeyman.

Even the great Ezzard Charles was once, unbelievably, given the tag of journeyman. “Ezzard the Gizzard is a journeyman worker who has the immense misfortune to follow Joe Louis as champion,” columnist Arthur Daley wrote in the New York Times in 1951.

The journeyman back then was capable of pulling off an upset, such as middleweight Ralph Tiger Jones outpointing Sugar Ray Robinson, who was still struggling to find his best form after a two-year layoff. Or Leroy Jeffrey, a hard-hitting featherweight from Michigan, sensationally stopping British champion Howard Winstone in two rounds.

That was it with the journeyman fighters of the 1950s and 1960s. You could never completely write off their chances. Jeffrey, for instance, was 4-3 in his last seven bouts going into the fight with Winstone, but he was dangerous, having scored 15 KOs in his 19 wins.

A number of imports considered “good journeymen” caused surprises in British rings. Now and again a so-called journeyman could even win a world title if he was in the right place at the right time, such as Brooklyn lightweight Paddy DeMarco outworking the more talented Jimmy Carter in 1954. DeMarco had become what American writers called a “win some, lose some” fighter. He was 4-4 in his last eight bouts before upsetting Carter. (In a rematch, Carter stopped DeMarco in the final round.)

In Britain in the 1960s we had some solid professionals who at the time would have been described as journeymen. The name of Brian Cartwright, of Birmingham, comes to mind. Cartwright was a competent technician who was at his best in the featherweight division although he boxed unsuccessfully for the British title as a flyweight and then at 130lbs when that weight class was still referred to as junior lightweight in Britain. Cartwright retired with a record of 54-26-4.

A southpaw middleweight from Hertfordshire named Joe Somerville was the 1960s equivalent of today’s British journeyman. Somerville was a cagey boxer who was regularly employed to test prospects. Every now and again, Somerville would spring a surprise, as when he outpointed a young hopeful named Tony French, a 17-year-old with a 20-1 record. Going into that bout, French was considered to have considerable potential. But Somerville outsmarted him and French’s career hit the skids. Somerville even outfoxed Eddie Avoth, a future British light-heavyweight champion who at the time was a 4-0 junior middleweight. When Somerville retired his record stood at 41-57-5.

Boxing terminology has changed. Today, Arthur Persley, for example, would no doubt be described as a “fringe contender”. That description could be applied to any number of yesteryear’s journeymen. And what of today’s multi-losses boxers? A dictionary definition of “journeyman” is usually given as something like “reliable but not outstanding”. Fair enough.

 

Shut up...you are ridiculous...

In fact is the new definition. Have you read the article I posted on the changing of the definition of journeyman? This is the future, folks.. and Wilder is the king of the new journeymen.

 

New definition of journeymen: fighters paid to lose fights.

Wilder has few chances with Fury, he knows that but he will get a lot of money with Fury. Thats to say: journeyman.