Before the rounds were reduced to twelve. overweight fighters were for the most part rare. Leroy Jones or Mathis. Since then a rash of overweight fighters have been in the division as never before in the history of Heavyweight boxing.
It ruined boxing as a whole. It just lets chumps like mayweather cruise to decision wins. The spirit of boxing is to win by stopping opponent, not a crooked decision by an ignorant judge !!!
it saved lives...15 round fights caused way too much damage with fighters because they no longer were able to protect themselves properly and would take beatings...even fighters who had already well lost the fight would only be there for the surprise KO but even then both fighters took way too much punishment.
15 round fights sure were more entertaining to watch, as well as being more of a gruelling test of stamina and condition, much more than 12 rounds. Obivously, fewer fights went the distance when fighters had to fight an additional 3 rounds, while exhausted. You had fewer decision endings, which was much better than relying on judge's opinions so much, as we do now. It was better for the fans and the excitement of the sport, certainly. I wish they'd bring back 15 rounders, but they never will in these safety first times.
Why don't we go to 6 round fights to save some more lives ??? These guys know the risks before going into the ring. Everything has risk !!!
I don't know if it did save lives, fighters still come in drained or pile on weight on fight night and have an unfair advantage. We all can see the bad side of going down to 12 but I don't know if it really has saved lives.
I think more damage has come from advance weigh-in times as well as fighters draining themselves too much to make the lowest possible class than from 15 round fights. If boxing wanted to get safer, bring back same day weigh-ins and elminate some weight classes. It'd never happen, but that would have a bigger effect (combined with most refs' attitudes about stopping fights much sooner than the old days) on saving fighters' lives.
Going from 15 to 12 was done in the name of saving lives, which came about after Ray Mancini killed duk-Koo kim. It would be interesting to see if the statistics since the change, would support the reasoning. IMO, it was done more for television formatting, so they could squeeze more commercials into a one hour time slot. Personally, I prefer 15. They should have went to 13 at least and eliminated an even number of rounds. Boxing is a dangerous game and death can happen long before 12 or 15, and elminating THE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUNDS hasnt done the sport any favors as far as I'm concerned.
Lighter gloves should be used. This would result in a lot less accumulated damage. One or two power shots would disable, or knock the guy out. 15 rounds was a far better test of stamina & strategy.
