I'm sure any reasonable boxing fan would acknowledge that chiseled musculature does not a great fighter make, but at the same time, there is a general public perception that the guy with the sculpted abs and granite slab pecs must be good in the ring. In short, appearances sell. Thing is does achieving defined musculature (the appearance) ever conflict with the training required (either in terms cardio and strength training or by cutting into time better spent on honing skills) to become the best fighter possible? If it does, is it a reasonable payoff - given that a fighter who looks better to the public may attract a bigger following? Course, it's never an advantage to be carrying too many pounds of excess baggage into the ring, but without knowing jack about body beautiful, I understand that different types of exercise are required to achieve muscle definition than for power and endurance.
Fans definitely appreciate griitier fighters. Get beatdown or take horrendous shots that would of sent any normal man into dreamworld only to comeback and return the beating. Gatti and Rios to name 2 tough as nails fighters probably weren't the best, but you know they filled seats. Now, when you have tough AND highly skilled fighters like Marquez or a prime Duran or Leonard, you've got something special.
Gritty and determined are absolutely the most essential qualities in any guy that's gonna step in the ring, but what I was actually asking about is how much time and effort some fighters put into looking physically trim. OK I guess I'm gonna have to reveal my guilty interest in MMA - or at least Fedor, a guy who looked a bit like a bored plumber, but beat the snot outta the best you can do with muscle building PEDs. What made me most recently think about it were 1 Cornelius White, a greyhound muscled 175lber being punched around the ring by Kovalev. 2 Commentary on the Mack -GGG fight when they were talking about Golo being muscled 'like a freestyle swimmer' rather than 'a bodybuilder'. (edit: not implying for a second that CW works to look like he does, plenty of guys just naturally built that way - in fact I'm a lean wiry fukka myself, more distance runner than fighter build)