"Americans are playing other sports" is nonsense

People say it's the NFL and NBA but those sports were huge in the 80's and 90's. Great athletes in the US have been playing pro football and basketball since the 60's and 70's. There were still a lot of good American heavyweights then too. Also there are a lot of great boxers who wouldn't have necessarily been NFL or NBA material. What other sport would Larry Holmes have been great in? Tyson? Holyfield? People say Ray Lewis would be a heavyweight champ if he'd been a boxer. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Jim Brown would have been too but he was in the NFL. There have been great athletes in the NFL and NBA since the 60's at least

The main issue as already mentioned has been that boxing gyms are shutting down across the country and it's become a niche sport, instead of one of the most popular. It's a lot easier to pick up a basketball or throw a football around than it is to find a gym and get proper training

 

It isnt 1982 these Cold War propoganda practices are no longer in existance.

You are a perfect example of what i was talking about in another thread on this subject.Some people(you obviously) think there is some "secret Soviet" Boxing programme that these guys all take part in before they go pro.

 

Like i've been saying all along.. all the next great chinese heavyweights are all tied up since the proliferation of professional ping-pong.

 

Football, basketball, and baseball were the options I had growing up. I have recently found one boxing gym in the city of Jacksonville. Youth boxing in the US is all but dead. It's true that most of our youth dream of being a football or basketball player. And it's true they are going to other sports because it's just not an option we hear about.

As for the person who brought up basketball and our players losing in FIBA competition.

1. The rules are different. The NBA plays an entirely differnet game with no true zone defenses, a narrower lane, a three point line that is further back etc.

2. It's a team sport. The US until this new program was sending teams that had been together for a whole 2-3 weeks to play teams who had been intact since they were teens. Before, when basketball was fairly irrelevant to the rest of the world, we could get by with this. This is no longer the case, and the US has something to do with that. Our coaches went abroad to spread the game and teach it. Most foreign programs will tell you that.

3. The talent across the world has increased substantially. There is no denying this. The US can no longer just send a team full of players who don't play together, or a team of some of our best players, but not the top ones overall. The new program has been in place for 2 years with the players playing together in the offseason. Lets see how it works.

 

I agree with some of your other points, but this is a stupid ass paragraph. First, Americans are doing OK in some of the lower divisions. If Floyd isn't hungry and Pavlik isn't hungry and Hopkins isn't hungry, how are they on top? The best fighters of the past two decades -- Mayweather and Jones -- were American.

What we're discussing are HWs, which do not represent the U.S. as a whole. Our best jumbo athletes get identified early and funneled into basketball or football, where there are lots of resources and support. There is none for boxing.

Pavlik, at 6-2, is too lanky to compete in football. Mayweather is by far too short. Antonio Tarver is a good example. He played high school football in a football-crazed state (Florida), and he couldn't parlay that into a college scholarship. So off to boxing he does. But if Tarver makes it to a D-I school, we never hear from him in the ring.

America's strategy needs to be to pick off some of the former college athletes in football and basketball who weren't quite good enough for the pros. You'd be getting to them at 22 or 23, which is late, but they'd still have 6 or 7 years to learn before they needed to start taking on serious opponents.

 

True to a point, but the NFL and NBA were no where near the juggernauts they are now. Especially the NFL, which now dwarfs the other sports here. NCAA football was bigger than the NFL in the 80's. Not so anymore.

 

Exactly. Had it been available to me at local VFW or Rec Center (the same ones my dad and grandpa trained at for free back in the day) I would have joined boxing at a much younger age andI can say the same for many friends

 

True, but the football and basketball "machines" here in the U.S. are better than ever at identifying kids early with potential for those sports. Now, along with the demise of the local boxing gym, you see the problem. What 's scary is that a lot of our best fighters at any weightclass are there because of legacy. New blood is rare.

Pavlik and Taylor seemed to find their way there on their own, but both Mayweather and Jones were brought to the sport by family. In the big picture, that won't work for the U.S.

 

Every E.E fighter gets the same preperation and attention as Ivan Drago.

They have the entire government behind them seeing to it that they make it.

 

didn't Tarver have a solid am career? beating RJJ and all? if he fell back on boxing after failing to make a college team, he still had a solid boxing foundation that most American athletes do not. i just don't see how people starting off in their early 20's can compete at an international level, or even would have the fire in their belly to do so

 

I think this is the key point. Measuring the success of a given team isn't how you ideally measure individual talent.

Here's how you know your point is legit:

1) By far the best money in basketball is in the NBA

2) Scouting has become globalized, and teams are happy to draft international players

3) Americans continue to dominate the composition of NBA rosters

The best basketball players are from the United States. Case closed.

 

In America kids wear Isotoners in the winter.

In Eastern Europe they wear Boxing gloves to stay warm.

 

He did, but he had a huge gap in between his amateur careers. He fought Jones young (officially he lost that fight) and then had a gap and came back to boxing. Presumably, this was after football in high school. And believe me, I have lived in Florida all my life. I was born in Pensacola....and alot more people from there know who Emmitt Smith is than Jones Jr.

 

I'm pretty sure Tarver started boxing after high school, or at least seriously. It had to be around the same time when it became clear he wasn't going to get a ticket to a D-I program. He never defeated Jones in the ams to my knowledge, though. Perhaps you're thinking of McClellan?

Your point about fire is well-taken. If you live at the training table of D-1 football or basketball school, it's easy to become satisfied. On the other hand, we're talking about heavyweights, and they can develop at a slower rate. I just can't believe that a big-time athlete at 22 couldn't over he course of 8 years catch up to the likes of an Eddie Chambers or Calvin Brock. Surely, we can do better.

 

Oven mitts dont exist in Eastern Europe.

Boxing gloves hang over the oven.