Fighters who had confidence problems to begin with?

Gerrie Coetzee's father Philip was a negaholic, and it unfortunately rubbed off on his son.

Floyd Patterson is famous for growing up with confidence problems.

Marciano came into his first amateur bout overconfident and out of shape. The memory of that humiliation before his home fans drove him incessantly from that point forth.

 

johnny nelson was one

 

Didn't Mike Tyson? I read somewhere he was terrified before each fight so he would seek to end them early, lol.

 

Yep, I was going to say Tyson. Seems a lot of Cus fighters are like that. Ironically, they're supposed to be strong of the mind first. I guess that forces them to over-think things mentally, or he just got mentally weak fighters... or fighters that lacked a lot of confidence (Patterson, Tyson).

 

Fear is needed in boxing, a fighter without fear is going to get found out, sooner rather than later. The secret is to find a way to control the fear, which Tyson did rather successfully for quite a few years!

Going back to the thread, hardly someone who deserves to be mentioned on a classic boxing forum, but Danny Williams has always had confidence problems.

 

Mike Tyson & Gerry Cooney.

I remember an interview with Cooney where he said he was sitting in his dressing room alone before most of his fights and he wanted to get up and leave and not fight. Gil Clancy also said in an interview he thought Cooney suffered from panic attacks before and during fights if things were not going his way.

 

I think it's very true, that fear is an essential part of the fighter's arsenal. I think we'd be surprised to know how many great fighters had a good dose of, call it fear or apprehension or just the jitters. But the worst of it ends once the bell rings for round one.

 

Andrew Golota. Extreme anxiety/confidence etc issues.

 

i had very bad confidence problems in my first few fights

Frank Bruno i think he thought of himself as a loser but a gallant loser and IMO thats a confidence issue

 

Tyson was afraid early on. Cus D'mato taught Tyson that fear can be a good thing.

 

Doesn't have much to do with this thread but I found this quote and the article interesting:

"The fear that Ray Robinson knows is the limited fear that inspires a degree of caution and out of this gives birth to an inspired performance"

http://www.ringtv.com/blog/685/classic_column_what_makes_a_good_fighter/

 

As Foreman said, for a 15 year veteran to fight like he did in the Tyson rematch was an absolute disgrace.

 

MOst fighters don't admit to being afraid, though. Fear is normal and a part of life, but fighters don't like to talk about it or admit it.