Comparing Heavyweight eras...

This is true. Today, losing an undefeated tag is completely career-ending. Moreover, they take off a year or two afterwards, having completely lost heart. Years ago a loss was treated as, "I'll get him in the rematch!" And he may have a couple of fights in between the rematch to keep sharp. Big difference in the fighters' makeup from then to today.

 

It's more of a commentary on Joe Joyce and Oleksandr Uysk.

Joyce is 36 years old and has 13 fights. Usyk is 34 and only has 19.

Most of the fighters from the recent list have more than the average of 27 fights.

Fury (32 fights), Wilder (45 fights), Povetkin (40 fights), Ortiz (34 fights), Ruiz (36 fights), Parker (31 fights), Whyte (30 fights), Joshua (26 fights) and Hunter (22 fights).

You look at that group, and you don't think they've averaging 27 fights.

Joyce and Usyk's ages and small number of fights in a group of 10 people can throw the averages way out of whack.

Also, Covid sort of lopped off at minimum two fights from everyone's career. Most top fighters box at minimum twice a year. Most averaged one fight a year the last two years. (Fury, Joshua, Wilder, Usyk, Whyte, Hunter) Ruiz only had one in the last two years.

It is unusual for seven of the top 10 heavyweights to fight once a year for a couple years in a row. But they had to stay home, too.

 

The modern top 5 are considerably taller than the modern 6-10 listed:
Fury 6'9, Usyk 6'3, Wilder 6'7, AJ 6'6, Joyce 6'6, average 6'6.2

Compare that with the 80's top 5:
Holmes 6'3, Dokes 6'3, Page 6'2, Berbick 6'2, Weaver 6'1, average 6'2.2

 

A fascinating analysis, with the caveat that all of the statistics that reflect negatively on whatever era I happen to like at the moment can be explained away.

 

Rematch clause definitely needs to be reworked. Like maybe a rematch within a year or something. Just to make the better matches in between.

but I somewhat disagree. Getting a defeat definitely hurts the marketing of up and coming fighters. If you’ve already made it to the top it matters less. But If I’m setting up a fight like a manager I want my champion to face the “undefeated” guy as opposed to the guy with two or three losses. More drama I suppose.

 

I think you took me too literal with 'career-ending.' I was using a little literary license in regards to their heart, as if to say, "It's all over!" Of course a loss isn't career-ending. Only if you want it to. And this has to do with the fighter's psyche. They are pumped up to believe they're the second coming and a loss crushes them. It seems like it takes a year of cajoling before giving it another go. Back in the 60's and 70s Jerry Quarry lost his undefeated price tag to Eddie Machen and was back in the ring 3 months later. No moping there. His next loss to Jimmy Ellis he was out 7 months, but most of that time was spent in a body-cast due to a broken bone in his back. When Quarry ended Lyle's run, Ron was back in the ring 2 months later. When Ron KO'd Shavers, Earnie was back in the ring 2 months later. I should also mention back then management and trainers didn't simply dump a fighter after a loss. The Duva's were great for that once they became big time as well as some big name trainers. I know a guy who was a prospect in the 80s, who was trained by Dundee. He took a hammering from a top ten contender (it went the distance) in a big step up. He said Dundee stuck his head in the shower after the fight and said, "See ya, kid." He said he didn't even wait to see if he was OK. And that was the last he saw of him. A big difference from era to era.

 

They say that, yet Joshua is coming off his biggest loss and is still a star.

Canrlo might be the biggest star at the moment and he'd not undefeated either.

 

Again, you guys are taking me too literal. It's only career-ending if you allow it to be. Canelo came back from a loss, I'm aware of that. He did not allow it to be career-ending. Joshua came back from a loss once. Can he do it again or will he lose heart? The jury is out. I hope he does.

 

Career killer not the right word it just makes (this only refers to up and coming fighters not established contenders with a history). Wilder wouldn’t count. You’re right too but it just makes the journey much harder for those coming up whereas pre 70s it wasn’t considered a big deal .

 

I don't really buy into this idea, that today's boxers are psychological weaklings - who give up at the first sight of adversity. Surely all eras have had both mentally strong and weak boxers. Or maybe I should say strong and not so strong... as I believe it takes at least some balls to get into a ring, with an opponent trying his best to knock your head off!

 

Thanks Mc.

Some storys get told over and over and over again....until the tactics of repitition finally got a very rich hotelier right into the White House, revealing quality afterwards.

 

It’s not just a ‘trainers think they should fight less often/managers and promoters are afraid to see them lose’ thing.

It’s a few other factors:

* Since the pandemic shutdown there have been almost no fights. How do you get a guy 4-5 or more fights a year the last couple of years?

* Beyond that, there are fewer cards anyway. There are simply less available dates. Just on TV alone in the 1980s you had USA running fights every Tuesday and ESPN once a week — and both would also do ‘specials’ on occasion on other nights. That’s 100+ TV dates per year domestically in the USA.

And outside of those regular TV dates in the 1980s you still had network TV fights most weekends at least for the first half of the decade or so. Add in HBO too.

Off TV, you had the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas running weekly shows. (Not for big paydays and main event heavies, but for guys to get frequent work.) And the Olympic Auditorium in LA was also running regularly. Philadelphia was running a ton of shows. Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum was still operating monthly through the 1980s or most of it.

Las Vegas had regular bigger shows at a number of properties. Atlantic City also became a boxing power on the East Coast. And all across America there were shows, some big and some small.

All those shows meant work for boxers. Compare that to the last 10 years.

* The economy of boxing has changed dramatically. You can read into it and find out that those ESPN and USA Network fights often paid a few thousand dollars to each fighter for main events except when they had bigger attractions (title fights or name fighters) on occasion. Heavyweights today want a heck of a lot more money to fight than they did then (other weight classes too).

I don’t know how much you know about the ‘business’ of boxing, but if you have a heavyweight you’re trying to raise through the ranks you aren’t able to sit and wait for the phone to ring and either accept or decline fights … because unless you are tied to a promoter who is guaranteeing you X fights a year at $XX per fight, it ain’t ringing.

Someone has to invest pretty much hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a heavyweight to, say, 20-0. You have to pay the prospect but you also have to pay the opponents, and after he’s gotten up beyond say 10-0 nobody is fighting him cheap. They want $10K, $20K and more to fight those guys. So just that one fight may cost you $20-30K. Plus the rest of the card. Now how many butts do you have to put in seats to break even on that? (Add in venue rental, security that the venue requires, insurance that is required, advertising your card, etc.) Mostly, they don’t. The manager and the promoter are usually partners and on those ventures and if they lose money they split the loss — the idea is that if you invest a couple hundred thousand to get your guy up there you hope to make it back when he gets a purse that pays him somewhere in the million-dollar range or more. And if he never gets there, he loses a couple when he steps up, then you aren’t likely to ever recoup your losses on that fighter.

So once your guy has 18 or 20 fights (all wins probably as you’ve matched him to win in pursuit of that big payday), how many times a year can you afford to put him in the ring?

It’s simply not the same game it was business-wise.

EDIT: Some more info:

In the 1970s and ‘80s, in general going rates on a non-TV/non-casino club show (in other words, ones where the paying crowd had to generate the gate from which fighters are paid) would be $50 per scheduled round (so $200 for a 4-rounder, $300 for a 6-rounder) on the undercard and $100 per scheduled round for a main event. Maybe a tad more for a guy who could draw (but more often, that would be a percentage of tickets he could sell). In a bigger city with bigger names (which I contend really isn’t a ‘club show’), the main event guys might get 25% of the gate each with the other 50% paying the undercard, venue rental, everything else and anything left over is what the promoter makes.

Today it’s closer to $3K for each fighter for a 6-rounder. Beginning 4-round fighters can still be found for $100-200 per scheduled round generally but guys want to move along from 4-rounders a lot quicker to make that money.