"Boxers shouldn't be afraid to lose.."

I guess it's not surprising that a lot of angry and fickle people would be attracted to a combat sport.

I think the 0 obsession will change as the memory of Floyd fades. I suspect a lot of Ryan Garcia's instagram fans would stick with him through losses. Loma will have fans as long as he wants to keep going, Wilder too I suspect.

Dubois is a a special case because he's generally good but was dangerously bad along one dimension. It's tiresome when every competitive loss means someone was exposed as a hypejob, but that narrative fits a little bit here.

 

It's also how you lose.

If you want to go around pretending you're a killer and a warrior, then you better go out on your shield, not take a knee or spit your gum shield out.

Certain boxers act like they're the greatest badasses the world has ever seen. Powdered aristocrats in Europe used to duel each other to the death.

So people can rightfully critique quitters in a ''warrior sport'' already filled with protective systems of all kinds, and post fight surgery also.

Fans don't necessarily just drop fighters when they lose if they feel the fighter has done so giving his all.

 

Context, context, context.

Mikey Garcia ran away from lightweight just as soon as Lomachenko came into his own and everyone was talking about that fight; I've heard some say he similarly avoided lightweight while Crawford ran supreme. When he moved up, it wasn't to jr. welter so he could avoid that Taylor/Prograis smoke...I mean, totally not step on stablemate Rameriz' toes. Totally that. He moved all the way up to Welterweight, where he went after the champion most people suspected was overhyped and underskilled, Errol Spence Jr. Spence used him as a cross between a pinata and a punching bag for almost the entire fight, and Mikey's big 'come-back' was against on-his-way-out-and-up Jessie Vargas, who made it a competitive and close fight even with the knock-down. He's also repeatedly said he doesn't even really like boxing and only does it because the money's good. Fine and dandy, but no one should be flacked for not thinking much of him based on that.

As you've said, Wilder has done all of this to himself. He's treated like a joke because he made himself out to be a joke. At least Joshua took his loss (and all the jokes and memes - some of them from Wilder!) on the chin and got his get-back.

Almost everyone and their mother thought Loma was too good for Teo, that it would be a one-sided massacre. Instead, Loma found himself unable to pull the trigger and being cautious of Teo's power, and Teo won a (IMO close) decision. Yes, Loma was hurt, but apparently so was Teo. Should Loma have magically one down the p4p below Teo? No, but the only people laughing at Loma now were the people who were laughing at him before. Most understand that Loma was always too small for this weight class, but his skills carried him through and presumed they always would. I've seen more (credible) people simply give Teo credit rather than run Loma down or treat him like yesterday's dishrag.

Dubois was hyped to the moon and back, when Joe Joyce was his first opponent of any real credible talent, yet everyone from the commentators to the promoters to the odds-makers was saying how in-over-his-head Joyce was (3-1 against the Silver Medalist who had been in the ring with Usyk? C'mon!). So when you get utterly exposed for, of all things, lack of head movement and JAB DEFENSE you are going to get flak, especially when it looks like the first time you met resistance you just gave up. (Doesn't hurt that he quit on an eye-injury after making horrid comments about Joe's visually impaired mother-talk smack get cracked).

As Morvidus said, sometimes it's just the way you lose. Porter's losses were close split-decision's against top-three division opponents. Who in their right mind is going to make fun of him for that?

 

As far as I am concerned. If you are consistently facing the best opponents and are at the very top of the sport.

Then you will lose fights. It is absolutely inevitable.

If you are the kind of fighter who cherry picks opponents that you are 100% going to beat.
Avoid fighters who may give you difficulties.
Then you arent giving us the fans what we want. That hurts your legacy.

You may have an 0 in the L colum, but you have serious question marks and negatives in the legacy column.

Also if you fight on long enough then you are going to lose.
Your athletic peak for boxing is aged 35.
Although it differs for different people, you are going to start losing past your athletic peak more often that you would do at your peak. Again another guarantee in life.

 

Boxers who are afraid to lose don't handle loss well and try to protect resume

Wilder

Crawford

Floyd

Billie Joe Saunders

 

Dont blame the fans only.

Look at canelo, he lost, and he recovered. Or sor rungvisai.

I agree with mayweather pimping his record hurting a lot the sport. But the truth is that there are fighter that cannot deal with a defeat. And it has been like that since always.

Canelo lost, only to grow and grow and grow more and more and to become a way better fighter. He had the same age dubois has today. And got embarassed 1 million times worse. So if canelo could do it, dubois can do it too, no excuses.

At the end of the day, even if the fans and the media have their good amount of guilt, it depends on the fighter.

Obviously if you are contesting a p4p position, and you lose to another fighter equally p4p, you cant pretend your stock not to go down. But that's fair. To be 4p4 genius, you cant lose to fighters who preted those p4p spots too. That's another story. To win a belt, you need to win, to be a top p4p ranked fighter, you need to beat p4p fighters. You lose, you have nothing. And you are not considered a p4p worthy any more (you need to start building everything again). But that's a complete another story as I said.

 

I dont include Crawford there. I bet crawford would fight spencer tomorrow if specer agrees. I dont see any worthy fighter willing to fight crawford, tbh. Not a single one.

 

Well, I dont like to blame quitters, but you are 100% right, if you are acting as a badass, you better fight up to your last drop of blood. If not, you better shut up. And if you play the badass and then cry and quit, then dont blame anyone for bashing you, you tried to fool them in the first place, so that's what you deserve.

I had to laugh here. Sissi powdered aristocrats with ridiculous wigs, fighting literally to death because a guy looked at his sister's ankle. hahahahha And one of them ends with a bullet in his head or a piece of iron trhough his chest. Quit that, *****.

Then kovalev, who sold himself as the meanest man on earth, quitting in front of a guy with average power because he's too tired to continue.

DISGUSTING. And I said kovalev because it's the first guy who came to my mind. There are tons of badass guys who are only badass when they are winning or when there is no real fight. Starting with the idiots in the neighbourghood where I grew up. There are TONS of them.

No more men any more. With or without wigs. At least, have the decency of acting as you are, do not try to fool anyone. I dont blame a quitter, it's hard not to quit when you are risking your full career, I guess. But dont fool me *****.

 

I prefer fighters that take hard fights and lose than fighters who take easy fights to pad there records. DSG is a great example of win some, lose some but take the best fights.

 

At the end of the day if you fight for a living you have to position yourself to make as much money as possible. A very small number of fighters are remembered after they retire so letting their pride and ego make decisions during their careers only hurts them and more than likely they won't even be remembered for it

 

Regarding Mikey (who is one of my favs), the way he fought was just basically a cash out and selling his 0.
You deserve to get shamed for that kind of effort.

Jumping up weight divisions for money isn't daring to be great. Especially when you have some good challenges at you own weight class.

 

To me it's when you it's how you lose

 

Can’t listen to every critical clvoice out there. Every fighter has his fans and every fighter has his haters.

I won’t lay it all on Mayweather, but yeah, he bears some of the blame. Guys like Calzaghe as well.

Unfortunately to many casuals, the 0 in the loss column is a marketing tool.
And the business of boxing is based on a fight by fight basis, and future earnings are inextricably tied to previous results. Yeah, it sucks as many guys get relegated to the scrap heap based on a loss.