How do you personally weigh this argument? I was watcing a side discussion here on another thread about Mayweather dictating terms to Pacquiao and the hilarity that ensued with the drug testing thing, and got to thinking about it....... In the old days, it was rare that a fighter was allowed the kind of voice he has now as to whom he fights and the terms of said fight. The manager did the thinking and the match-making, the fighter did the fighting, and we laud the old-timers for their single-minded fearlessness and laugh at the new guys for their finagling and perceived overcaution. Many fights that would have been sure things in the old days never get made now because the principles want to guard against any threat, real or imagined. Which side of this argument are you on, or are there more shades of gray here than we see at a glance?
Robinson didn't win him any favours at the latter part of his career though. The opponents (Basilio, Moore) and the commissions basically stopped negotiating with him, leaving him without suitable opponents until Paul Pender after a near 2 year layoff. It certainly wasn't worth it to ruin his reputation in the boxing circles and lose questionable decisions to Pender and later Fullmer for the title. Not that it would have much to an already great legacy but it may have added to his bank account. It's fairly obvious to me that the old timers were more willing to fight because there was less money involved. You had to fight in order to get paid. Even Robinson. You won't see two fighters fight each other 6 times today like LaMotta and Robinson did, except in a very rare case like Vasquez and Marquez. They did it because they made the most money against each other, due to fighting in the unheralded lower weight divisions.
It's a myth this is a new thing. As mentioned there's Robinson, then there's Dempsey, you can blame his management but it's still pretty much the same thing, then look all the way back to Jeffries and Jack Johnson. Then there was Zale holding up the MW title. And as much as everyone loves Lamotta remember he said 'why do I need Charles Burley when I can face Zivic' and he did 4-5 times
It was much worse back in the day. In the pre world War I period, fighters were somtimes held to ridiculous contractural terms, and it wasnt always at the behest of their manager.
Yeah, wasn't Gans often contracted to come in at low weights or something? I think this is no recent trend, although GreatA is right about frequency of fights/money.