"Americans are playing other sports" is nonsense

What I said is true actually. I never said it was more dangerous than boxing. Just not less dangerous. The injuries sustained are different in the NFL because its a different sport. More boxers have died, but I would be willing to bet they sustain less overall injuries in the sport per person. Boxers don't worry about torn ligaments and broken bones as often as football players. Sure boxers are more suceptible to head injuries....thats certainly true.

 

Right here you admitted that there are lost boxers to the other sports. Does anything else really matter? This is what we are arguing, so case closed

 

My two cents on this is that boxing has become a socially out cast sport. Plain and simple. With all the emphasis on political correctness there is no room in the consciousness of most adults for a sport in which men are often beaten to death by other men. Boxing used to be so socially acceptable that it was taught in schools. Could you imagine the public out cry these days if lil Timmy the pacifist was forced to box by his gym teacher. Don't know how it happened but North Americans have turned into pussies.

I know MMA is big but guys nobody actually gets "make you feel ashamed of yourself for enjoying this" hurt in MMA. Nobody ends up like Ali or slips into comas after matches. MMA is all about the anticipation of danger. The fight ends before either man can sustain enough punishment to be at risk of dying and if there is any real danger in the match the ref jumps in and stops the fight. MMA gives people an outlet by which they can enjoy combat sports, without forcing them to question the morality of it. It’s just easier for the casual fan to enjoy.

 

Ofcourse you worry about these things, injury is very much part of sports. But it doesnt hinder us from participating. Lot of sports have recorded deaths from time to time but its not what you think of before everything. Tell me what you think of first when people mention "Football" and then "boxing"...

 

I don't understand your point.

With Football, I think of the Jags, when I think of boxing, I think of RJJ. How does this help.

 

A majority of boxers don't make in a lifetime what a rookie can make in the NFL after a year.

 

Perhaps you didn't notice but basketball is about chemistry, a team sport. Regardless how individually talented American basketball players are, you can't slap together a team in a few weeks before the Olympics and think you're going to look good against a team that has played together for years.

 

There are quite a few bull riders though and I don't think the pay is all that great.

 

heavyweights?:huh

 

We forget that pre-80's, European fighters were prohibited from professional boxing. That's when we first got spoiled and haughty.
Many of the potentialally great fighters were unexposed because they had to do more honorable things for their country, and I'm not just talking about Teofilo, either.
But they are out there in abundance now.
I don't buy,the American football and basketball theory, those sports have been around for decades. Besides, just because you can slam a basketball with a 42" vertical, and sack a quarterback, doesn't equal ability to avoid and with stand a missile from the likes of Wlad Klitschko, much less, pack the same wallop..

 

The 150 million American men would not box anyway.

These are a few facts:

1. Between 1946 and 1955 twelve white Americans were earned places among the top five Ring Magazine rated heavyweights.
2. Between 1951 and 1955 five white Americans earned places in the top five Ring rated heavyweights--Marciano, LaStarza, Layne, Bucceroni, Pastrano.
3. In the last 50 years, four white Americans have earned places in the top five Ring rated heavyweights--Jerry Quarry, Duane Bobick, Gerry Cooney, and John Ruiz.
4. In 2007, five white Eastern Europeans, more than the total white American heavyweights of the last 50 years, earned places in the Ring ratings--Klitschko, Maskaev, Chagaev, Valuev, Ibragimov.

Clearly something happened in the 1950's which caused white Americans to largely abandon the sport as participants. I would think there were not only other options in sports but other options in society. The postwar years were ones of burgeoning prosperity. There were easier ways to make a living than a hard, brutal, and dangerous sport of boxing.

And it might not be pleasant to think about, but by the 1950's we were about 30 to 40 years past the first explosion of boxing popularity in the teens and twenties. The long term effect of extended careers in boxing may have been brought home to many Americans by seeing what became physically and mentally of the heroes of their youth.

 

Having played a little football and being an avid follower to this day, here's a little facts on it for those using the football copout, with a little NBA for good measure:

1)No standout Heavyweight boxer, the type that we all say is lacking from the US, was ever a standout football player. The same holds true for the NBA. The talent pools were never merged, but that still never stopped US Heavyweights from strong showings up until the late 90's.

2) The average career of an NFL player is only a few years- this number gets skewed by the veterans who can make it for 7-10 years. Out of everyone that's fortunate enough to get drafted, more than half will be gone within 3 years.

3) Because there's so much more supply than demand, there's still great athletes that don't make it into the NFL every year, and would still be young enough to start boxing- even if it was later than optimal- 22-23 is not too old to start boxing for heavyweights. Hundreds of NFL hopefuls each year are back on the athletic market when that doesn't work out. The NBA numbers are even more skewed because there's so many more players available than roster spots. The reason you just see an occasional JD Chapman (ex college football player) is because most football players aren't cut out to be great boxers. Hundreds of guys come out every year that were good enough to be above average college players, sometimes with better overall athleticism than the guys that do make it professionally, and don't even sniff the NFL.

The numbers don't lie- if these hundreds of athletes that the NFL and NBA turn away every year aren't good enough to even become a decent fighter if they start at 22, why should we believe they'd have been champions if the gyms got him at 15? Most of these players that don't make it are still athletic- but the NBA and NFL enjoy near monopolies and can afford to let these guys go every single year.

There shouldn't be 2000 ex-college football and basketball prospects every year, but it's likely that if any of these guys had talents for fighting, we'd have seen at least 20-30 guys take up the sport late with some measure of success over the past 25 years...and yet it hasn't happened.

4) There's a high number of football and basketball players that never graduate college. The biggest myth is that all these guys are doctors and lawyers...in reality, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of players in college football and b-ball who don't come out with any kind of education and enter the "real world" just as broke as when they left for school, without great prospects.


By now, we should have seen someone- anyone- come from an ex college football or basketball background, enter boxing late, and still been at least a top 10 HW contender. Yet, it has not happened. Not in the last 5 years, 10 years, however far back you want to go with it.

Why? Because there aren't 8 dozen Heavyweight champions in hiding on the basketball court or NFL. There's probably not 2. Period.

 

The complete vanishing of the white American heavyweight can hardly be explained by the NFL or NBA. TV has been blamed for burning up the young talent, but I wonder if it hurt boxing in another way. Boxing matches were brought directly into the home. Mostly men had gone to matches, and had taken their sons, but now the women watched also. Did this produce a backlash with mothers exerting more pressure to keep their sons away from this brutality. Just a thought.

 

Why do people continually miss the point?

Most young kids in America that possess natural physical talent or display gifted athletic tangibles are scooped up, groomed and cultivated by football and basketball scouts at a very young age. If there is a young American who can fight and has natural boxing ability, he is probably on his way to the NFL or NBA. Americans don't send their 10 year old kids to boxing camps, they send to pop warner football and basketball leagues.

In any event, most American boxers, particularly the heavyweights, are washouts from other sports - they weren't good enough to make into the pro leagues. Thus you have journeymen like McCline trying to make a living in boxing.