Are All World Champions Boxing Immortals?

without a doubt the dirtiest fighter of all time

 

If even a fraction of the stories about him have a bit of truth to them, Kid McCoy might have something to say about that, among many others.

 

Strictly speaking, anyone winning even a hopelessly watered-down version of some bauble in the modern day game technically "gets his name in the papers" and is therefore marked forever in time as someone of some note somehow.

Like the time I won the Easter Bunny coloring contest held by a local newspaper. Eight of us got our pictures in the paper because we stayed in the lines the best, out of all those other kids. I have therefore left my mark in the annals of time, while they became also-rans, forgotten by all and now mostly living sad, mundane lives never touched by the flame of fortune and notoriety that I have known.

 

'People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.'

Actually winning the title for yourself in a short blaze of fire is much greater than any possible posthumous fame.

 

That is so true, every generation has their favorites as we have ours. Someone may say that their current favorite could have taken Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson, times change but that is what makes it all interesting. Someone may prefer their H20 fighters as I like yo call them, I have followed boxing since 1965. Even language has evolved.

 

Absolutely. And some great fighters just get forgotten. Mike McCallum and Felix Trinidad were excellent champions whom I don’t think many will immortalize. I believe charisma plays a big part and some champions never had it

 

Not the lesser known champion s. Only the ones that casuals can name in the street. I really can't see Bruce Seldon being talked about round the fire in a hundred years time.

 

I was referring to the myriad stories of McCoy's nefarious antics, the sort of trickery and underhanded measures that John McGraw was known for in baseball in the same era.

 

I will follow that up with my previous post. They can be immortal in the ring but keep in mind that they are too human beings that can fall prey to temptation of the outside world, such as greed and the bad advise of others. They might meet women that tend to exploit them emotionally and financially. They are people who are gifted in their profession, an example being, Oscar Bonavena, who was tragically shot outside a legal brothel in Nevada after getting heavily involved with a worker of the brothel in 1976.