Do past-prime/shot losses harm a fighter's legacy

Ofcourse I was, it wasn't even a decade ago.

As I say, you can choose to hold losses against a fighter when they've clearly declined but it's mind boggling to me.

It'd be like judging steve davis's snooker ability on today's matches.

 

The perception of a fighter changes when they lose.

Even opponents think a different way once a fighter has been defeated.

Tyson for example became beateable in some of these guys minds. You hear a lot of boxing writers and trainers talk about the cloak of invincibility and how it was erased once he lost to Douglas.

 

Doesn't really apply here.

You can hold past prime losses against a declining fighter, that's your choice.

Just know that I disagree and in all likelihood so will history itself (robinson, duran, charles, leonard, ali etc.)

 

Theres a few big problems with this area:

A fighters prime is so hard to define and agree upon. Do you define it as

a) The spell where they are at their absolute best; which is typically fairly short.

Or

b) A longer period between when they can no longer be considered green at all and not totally shot.

I think far too many people use a) and as soon as a fighter is slightly past prime suddenly any loss doesn't count in their eyes. Makes it so easy for fans to give their favourite fighters a pass for defeats.

I think all loses should count unless they are clearly extremely shot and have no business fighting anymore- Holyfield, Jones atm for example. Or at the other end very early in their career.

However if you take a fighter like Hopkins, I think any loss he suffers at the moment or over the past few years should harm his legacy to some degree. He's obviously past prime but I don't consider him to be shot. So big praise if he's still picking up wins but the losses still count in my book. Now obviously I wouldn't hold his 1st pro loss against him (clearly v green).

 

it matters how strong a legacy that fighter had in his prime. If a guy fought great fighters and accounted well for himself, losses when he is older don't really matter. But in the case of Floyd Mayweather who handpicks, losing later does make a difference because that is probably when he had a big challenge and couldn't overcome it. Same with Roy Jones a little, which was actually in another thread earlier. Roy avoided tough fights when he was young, and then started to fight better guys when he got older and was being knocked out. He would have probably beaten those guy when he was young, but he didn't fight them then.

 

Too, too often it diminishes a boxers legacy, by unthinking fans. I am not one of them.
When I compare great fighters of the past, I think of them in their primes in fantasy bouts. The record books years later, is too often misleading.
For examples : Old Jeffries / Johnson , Dempsey / Tunney, Benny Leonard/ Jimmy McLarnin , Henry Armstrong / Fritzie Zivic, Louis / Marciano, Ali/ Holmes. A few example of
past peak fighters, staying way past their peaks....

 

By that logic you should not count prime wins over past prime fighters.

 

Yes, people today looking at Tyson and RJJ's records and seeing all the KO losses get the impression that they were run of the mill champions benefitting from weak opposition. The truth is both would bode quite well in their perspective weightclasses in any era.

 

Often times at the end of the careers, it turns into shoe on the other foot time. They are the old guy fighting youth and reflexes. If that is the course they took on the way up, then shouldn't the same standard to them be applied?

Sometimes fighters don't fight pedigreed youth though. And, you certainly don't see a ton of matches against the youthful slicksters or big punchers with old reflex guy.

But look at a guy like Jones that has been mentioned in previous threads. He didn't face youthful pedigree. He was ko'd later on by contemporaries in Johnson and Tarver. It wasn't as if those guys were 23 years old themselves and were perceived as the upcoming Mike Spinks.

Still, I always prefer the older champions fighting the pedigreed up and comers. And sometimes they do come out with the wins. Far more often it's a case of changing of the guard time. Some of the great fights in boxing history are the old guy digging deep and pulling out the win.

But even in losses some can still be competitive and they have the capability of altering their styles to elongate their careers. Look at Commander Vander. He fights better defensively in recent times far better than the guy that countered off landed punches in his prime and trade. Everything used to be a battle but he changed his style to compensate for the loss in reflexes. That's a skill that can be utilized and my take is go ahead and subtract somewhat from the guys that cannot or will not adapt their style.

 

Yeah, but no fighter is ever invincible.
I'm sure not every one of Tyson's first 37 opponents thought he was invincible.
i never thought he was invincible.
its true that it was hard to imagine anyone current beating him in 1988 or 1989, but not impossible. and naturally it's always only a matter of time before someone comes along

losses (even past-prime) might change the perception of those people who buy into the "invincible" stuff, but they had a warped perception to start with.

 

Many people have that kind of perception.

 

good for them. but it's proven time and time again to be a false perception.

i understand how difficult it is to imagine how a dominant unbeaten fighter will get beat.
but it should be easy to figure that as a general rule every fighter is beatable.

 

Not all are way past their peaks:

Ali -shot
Leonard - shot
Louis - past it
Jeffries - unknown, past prime though
Dempsey - slightly past prime like Ali against Frazier
Armstrong - near prime

 

There's no blueprint!

 

True, there are all degrees of past primes.
Ali/Holmes truly shot
Leonard / McLarnin fat and old
Jeffries/Johnson- SIX year layoff no tuneup
Armstrong/Zivic- Armstrong 28 and winding down
Dempsey/ Tunney- 32, and 3 years without a tune-up bout
Louis? Marciano- Louis 37 years old shot, no reflexes left.
Yes all different degrees...