Danny Wafford: A Whopping 122 Pro Fights over 20 Yrs.

Next level

 

Next level bum he is

 

Peter Buckley had 300.

 

I find it appalling that he's willing to get beaten up for a living with no goals of succeeding

 

Reggie Strickland had 350 plus.

 

Pretty much. He's basically pimping out his brain cells

 

He was good enough to earn an organizational title shot. Yes indeed.

 

Couldn’t disagree more.

You don’t really know how boxing works if you aren’t familiar with guys who are ‘professional opponents.’ They come in and aren’t a challenge to win but you keep your guys busy.

I saw Danny fight relatively early in his career and I think once later on an undercard somewhere. For a lot of his career he was guaranteed rounds — he’d give your guy six or eight or even 10 in some cases. Short and round, had more skill than most realized in that he really didn’t take many beatings because he played pure defense and guys mostly banged on his arms and gloves.

Most every fighter you see has fighters like this on their record — you got a guy who is 7-0 with 7 quick KOs, you bring in a Wofford who you know can take him six or eight rounds so he learns to pace himself and learns that not everybody is going to fall down and go boom when he hits them.

How many guys on this forum aspire and work every minute of every day to be the very best in the world at what they do? There are average people in every profession and below-average people in every profession. Boxing is no different, but they all serve a purpose.

There’s a 7-foot white guy on the end of every bench in the NBA (Charles Barkley calls it the welfare program for 7-foot white men) who play a couple of minutes a couple of times a week and get maybe a point here and a rebound there — you think those guys don’t reach a point real quick where they know they aren’t going to be taking LeBron’s place? They’re journeymen. There are 30-something-year-old minor leaguers who maybe got a decent signing bonus when they started but they’re making low wages doing something they must love even though they know the majors aren’t calling.

Some guys have enough management or enough backing that after they lose four or five or six in a row, their manager ‘buys’ them a win by putting them in with an 0-1 guy who really can’t fight. Wofford didn’t have that or either wanted to get paid every time out. He’s brave enough to get in with the best and knows they are going to throw their best shots and he handles it for the most part — you don’t see a lot of early knockouts on his record and when you do I’m willing to wager if you could find film it’s just a referee stoppage because the guy is throwing and Wofford isn’t hurt but isn’t throwing back either, so they get the local boy a KO over the guy all these other top guys couldn’t KO.

He put food on his table. He boxed for a living. You take out every boxer who isn’t an aspiring world champ, who doesn’t have the goods, and you’d have worldwide probably 20-30 guys in each division.

Have fun with that.

 

I imagine it was a job to him, but a cool job that allowed him to see a lot of the country (all over the South plus New York, Las Vegas, France, Kansas City), which probably a lot of guys from his background never got to experience.

I also imagine he took some pride in his ability to hang in there with the big names, even if he wasn’t competitive with them — he gave a lot of people more round than some of the top fighters they fought.

I won’t name names as to not dox myself, but I worked with a guy who became a journeyman heavyweight, started late, turned pro after seven fights and fought in Russia, Germany, Mexico, Panama and a bunch of other places (including around the USA). He was awkward and very defense-oriented, gave good rounds to guys but usually didn’t do enough to win rounds against top talent, had a little more than 40 fights and won just over half.

He certainly enjoyed what he did. Liked going to interesting places. Liked the money for sure. Took his boxing savings and opened up a small restaurant (cooking was his passion) and unless COVID has shut it down for good (I’ve moved to another city so I’m not sure) he’s run it for more than a decade. I guarantee you he wouldn’t trade his boxing experiences for anything, especially since it let him live his dream of owning his own restaurant.