Baptism By Fire? Young Fighters In The Boxing World

well,
for one....i think they get a lot more credit then they deserve too young....then when the people actually see them live, they kind of fall back a few steps from them.....take the berto vs rivera fight, or the williams vs pakau fight....yeah they won, but people expected a lot more...

not only that, but not too many people feel williams LOST that margo fight....i for one think margo won that fight.....

but in all honesty, i dont hate williams or berto, i actually like them...i love how paul set himself out on a mission to get margo, got'em, fought'em and then won the fight (in the judges eyes).....

but regardless, fighters will always have haters, that's just part of the game and if everyone saw eye to eye, boxing would get boring quick.....

 

Berto, Williams, Taylor, Lacy, etc. all received a ton of hype coming up, and people tend to backlash against it. I don't think it has nearly as much to do with skin tone as the hype factor. People like to root for the underdog.

 

:good
nice, most of the time i'm too upset to type all that ****....but then again, right when i start a thread, i get the race card thrown at me....but you summed it up to a tee....that's exactly what it's like....


VARGAS is also a perfect example...everybody assumes all mexicans like him etc etc....but in reality, he had that "thug" mindset and it did bring him a lot of fans, but in the ring, he also left it all in there so that brought him a lot more fans from older generations...now, the grandpa's and older cats dont really dig (yes, a lot of older mexicans hate him) him simply cause of his **** talking, but because he backed it up in the ring, he got the respect he wanted in the manner that he wanted it in......but still, a lot of his own people still didnt like him

as a fighter, mayweather is half of that....he talked the trash and attracted that young crowd, but when it came down to pleasing them, they all fell asleep....sure we all know damn well he has the skill of a slick fighter...but he doesn't have the heart of the type of people fall in love with....

 

It says that Paul Williams beat the man who beat the man.
and yes Paul Wiliams is a very good boxer.

 

i for one am the type of guy to not really care about race, color etc etc....but i'll be the first to admit that it does bring fun and excitement to the ring, house parties, get-togethers etc etc.....but it's all in good fun, and it'll never change...so people need to realize this and enjoy it....it's not racist, it just brings that "PIZZAZZZ" to the sport...

i get the race card thrown at me atleast 48907543897548954389759 times a day in here...but people that really know me, know how i really am so that's all that matters.....i love the sport of boxing, and nobody will ever change how i see , fell or go about showing it....

 

for reals man,
people need to learn how to seperate racism with a little pride/fun...

i've admitted before that when a mexican i dont know is fighting another guy from another country, i'm obviously gonna go for the mexican guy.....
that don't make me racist at all, but it does keep the sport going and it makes it better :yep :yep

and i know i aint the only one, i'm just one of the few that admit it....:good

 

In the case of Lacy, Taylor and Berto (I guess you can throw Dawson and Tarver into this category also), because they were successful amateurs with a great set of tools. With Williams, because he'd had about 10 televised fights before he fought anyone significant, and because he has some freak of nature factor to him.

Put it this way: there are plenty of guys who are similarly hyped and end up with the same backlash who aren't African-American, and there are plenty of guys who are African-American and haven't received the same kind of backlash because they came up under the radar.

Non-black fighters who received post-hype backlash:
Panchito Bojado
Joel Julio
Ricky Hatton
Naseem Hamed
I'd also argue that Miguel Cotto received quite a bit of post-hype backlash before he moved to 147.
Chris Arreola and Amir Khan are already getting post-hype backlash, and they haven't even fought anyone good yet

Black fighters who had no similar backlash because they weren't originally hyped:
Bernard Hopkins
Winky Wright
Glen Johnson
Steve Cunningham
Josh Clottey
Timothy Bradley

Guys in the first category all have the same two profiles - talented amateurs who had great tools and looked like they would be great pro boxers, or guys with crowd-pleasing styles who had been on TV earlier than was probably warranted under the circumstances. Same with guys in the second category - fighters who came up under the radar, maybe even had a few losses early in their careers, but didn't have crowd-pleasing styles and didn't necessarily have the flashiest tools in the world.

There are just too many counterexamples that all fit into the same explanation for the race explanation to be the right one. I'm not going to discount it entirely - I do think that some people have a preconcieved notion that muscular black fighters are more naturally talented than other fighters (when in reality, it doesn't make much of a difference), but it has a LOT more to do with how flashy the fighter is, how toolsy the fighter is, and how much hype they got moving up the ranks.

 

Relax dude. Berto has yet to prove himself in a big fight. No one is underrating him, he just has to prove himself. PW is ranked consistently as either #1 or #2 on this board at WW.