Examples of...

An A-side draw picking the fight that is considered harder, is less lucrative and lower profile over one that is seen as less of a challenge but is more high profile and lucrative? :think

What made me think of this is the rash of complaints about Floyd possibly fighting Cotto or Canelo at JMW or MW instead of GGG or Khan at WW instead of Brook or Thurman for his next fight. Or Cotto/Canelo pursuing Floyd or one another at JMW or MW instead of GGG.

The fighter must be an A-side guy or at least an equal draw in the "easier", higher profile, less lucrative light and the clear A-side in the "harder", lower profile, less lucrative fight. Please list the fight chosen AND the fight that was passed over.

It's definitely extremely rare. The best example
I can think of is a fight that sadly never even happened. In '82 Leonard signed to fight Pryor as his next fight after a stay busy title defense against Lafford and was scheduled to make $4mil for the Pryor bout. Ray was 3 years removed from splitting fights with Duran, each of which earned him more than $8mil. SRL had also knocked out Hearns in one of the greatest fights of all time less than a year ago in a fight that earned him a then sub-HW record of $11mil. A Duran rubber match or Hearns rematch would surely have netted Ray far, far more than the $4mil he'd make from the Pryor fight. It's debatable whether a Pryor fight would have been seen as more dangerous than meeting Hearns at 154 for a rematch, who had looked good in beating 3 overmatched opponents since being beaten by Ray. But Pryor had to be considered more dangerous at the time to boxing fans who had watched Benitez and Kirklaind Lang outbox Duran since the Leonard fight while Pryor had won a JWW title by knocking out possibly the greatest JWW ever in Antonio Cervantes and then defending the title 6 times, all via stoppage. Then throw in the rumors (whether they were true or not) about SRL moving up to WW in the pros to avoid Pryor at JWW. The fight never materialized after Ray had to retire before the Lafford fight due to his detached retina.

That's the best one I could think of. Give me yours.

 

Explain how choosing examples you disagree would make the question irrelevant. You can choose your own modern examples to fit the question but it will have literally zero impact on what is being asked. There is no "theory" here so I don't know what you mean by that. There is just a question. Can you think of examples of this happening? Whether you like the examples or not should have no bearing on the relevance of the question or thread

So again, please explain how choosing examples you don't agree with makes the question irrelevant.

 

And if you had read what I wrote carefully you would see that I did not even make a case that those examples you took issue with were accurate representations of the scenario I laid out. I only said that the flood of complaints I have seen on this forum from many different posters about this subject had got me thinking about whether there were examples of that scenario actually playing out throughout history in a way that accurately fulfills the tenants of the "theory" , as you call it.

I presented an example that I think did that very well.

 

Good one :thumbsup

Didn't give the fight he chose it over it but there are multiple that he could have chosen that would probably have been at least as lucrative and much less challenging.

 

Good shout, abuffy!

 

Good shouts, everyone!