Boxing and the legends it destroyed.

It's easy to blame it on promoters, managers, etc. -- without knowing the individual circumstances.

I know of a boxer -- an active contender making six-figure paydays with perhaps millions in his future (or perhaps not, we'll see) -- who goes and buys a new vehicle after every fight.

He currently has four, all extremely expensive. He has a house far larger than what he needs. He flies himself and friends to Vegas and New York, etc., to attend big fights ... and foots the bill for everything.

His management has told him repeatedly that he needs to change this, to put money in the bank rather than spend it the way he is spending it. It has even been put in writing with examples. He has been given access to an investment advisor to help set up a retirement account -- an investment advisor who handles money for millionaires in the city where he leaves, and who won't take a penny.

And he ignores this and goes out and buys another vehicle and jets off for another high-dollar vacation.

I suspect you'd find that a lot of these guys were given advice, but it's their money, they are adults and you can't make them take it.

Mike Tyson, now several times bankrupted after going through millions and millions of dollars foolishly, once had an annuity set up by Jacobs and Cayton that would have paid him like $200,000 a year TAX FREE for LIFE. That is a lot fo money for most people, money that would allow him to live quite comfortably -- and he cashed in the annuity for instant money that he probably blew in a few months.

I'm not saying no boxer was ever taken advantage of, but I'd find it hard to believe that no one ever told any of the hard-luck guys "you need to save some of this money, you don't need to be paying the bills for this entourage of people who won't be there when you find yourself down on your luck because you spent it all."

People make their own decisions. They are responsible for the consequences. I find it hard to feel sorry for someone who spent hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars frivlously.