Cowards in the ring

Someone butthurt that I hurt his hero's legacy?

 

Don’t forget the money on offer. Bruce Seldon wasn’t cowardly in a ring? Clifford Etienne wasn’t cowardly?

 

Point taken & perhaps or perhaps not, but then again, would it make the opinion itself less valid? I mean, I’m sure there’s lots of people who’ve said terrible things about Genghis Khan who might lose their nerve face to face with the man, no?

 

Well like I said, that’s for the individual to decide.

There are braver things done in life than step in a Boxing ring.

 

Well, true.

But if you're specifically accusing Genghis Khan of cowardice, and the average person would be afraid to even insult Genghis Khan to his face (let alone fight him)...then Genghis is probably not cowardly compared to the average person.

 

I didn’t have cowardice in mind LOL. Although I’m only moderately familiar with Khan’s story, I doubt he lacked for personal courage. He was certainly a piece of **** as a Human Being though. You tell him I said that if you ever see him I’ll wait here

 

Ha!

No, I see what you're saying. I agree that character flaws are what they are, even if the person pointing them out is worse.

That said, here's the point I was making with my analogy:

This thread is accusing boxers of cowardice. Now, are boxers the bravest people in the world? No. But it takes more guts to step into a boxing ring than it does to insult someone online. And yet the average poster here wouldn't even dare call a fighter a coward over the internet.

So that's the baseline. Fighters are a lot braver than the average person. So it doesn't make sense to call fighters cowards in any normal sense of the word.

 

I agree with that - but where’s the line? Boxers are criticised here in hundreds of ways daily, by fans who couldn’t do better. If I bought a car tomorrow & the steering wheel fell off, well I could do no better, so should I refrain from complaining?

I mean, just look at the fantasy matches as an example. Every member runs down the guy they’re picking against, from mildly to savagely. Yet how many of these members could take a punch better than Tommy Morrison, for instance? Probably fewer than we imagine when we think of Morrison’s chin.

 

Sure. I'm not making a moral point here. Whether it makes you a bad person to call a fighter a coward is irrelevant to me.

I'm simply pointing out that, as a matter of fact, boxers are much braver than the average person. So it doesn't make much sense to call them cowards.

Even Zelenoff may be braver than the average person, as @NoNeck pointed out. Slimy and repugnant, but possibly braver. The average person just isn't very brave.

 

That’s true, which is why I said it should come back to the individual to responsibly decide if they’re comfortable calling it. I mean, as I said earlier too, one can be both things at different times. I’m sure Seldon was brave somewhere, sometime in a ring. But against Tyson, that was pure gutless.

 

As to whether you can complain:

Depends how you do it, but yes.

To leave aside arguing about factual details, let's just posit Seldon threw the Tyson fight, for the sake of discussion:

You paid good money to see Seldon fight Tyson. Seldon, although a brave man compared to most of the population, fell well below his profession's high standards for bravery in that fight. He did a substandard job. He cheated you. That night, he failed as a professional boxer, and deserved to be penalized professionally.

 

I doubt the average person would have showed more guts against Tyson. So even Seldon's terrible performance against Tyson probably doesn't hit cowardice level.

But it definitely justifies having his purse withheld, and perhaps other professional sanctions.

 

& really, I think it’s fair to hold a prize fighter to a higher standard than the average Joe, anyway. We all expect cops & fire fighters to be brave, don’t we? If a cop refused to put himself in danger even those who wouldn’t in the public would still be right to complain. I don’t see why fighters should be exempt. If someone isn’t comfortable with their own personal level of bravery, sure, don’t step into the discussion if you don’t want to. But a blanket ban on it when non-fighters routinely criticise Boxers in all sorts of ways daily seems nonsensical to me.

 

I mean, yes. You may have your own set of standards for bravery.

But if they diverge enough that you're calling people who are much braver than 50+% of the population cowardly, you'll probably encounter some incredulity. Like a man who insists that a full tuxedo is the minimum acceptable dress code for a parent/teacher conference.

 

Likar Ramos. He played dead when JMM hit him.