What do you all consider enough amateur fights for a fighter before turning pro? Me personally I’d say no more then 100-150 max.... when you look at guys with 300-400 amateur fights then going into there pro careers later then sooner and having more wear and tear then they probably should have, how much shorter do there pro careers become? Or how much sooner does there sell by date start if they hadn’t waited as long with beginning there pro careers? 2 guys come to mind GGG and Loma
I've seen this point made here before and it's a good one, imo. Too many am fights would certainly go a long way toward explaining why some really really good fighters never seem to fulfill the promise they show in the ams. GGG and Loma are goods examples. Additionally, how many brilliant Cubans have not gone as far as they appear capable of? Maybe this end up being a dying trend due to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the resulting liberties all those fighters now enjoy?
It depends how you count fights. For a pro you should count only amateur fights vs mature adults, to deal with mature adult is different thing. Especially with not old, still young and already enough experienced adult. These are worst opponents to deal with. More difficult to fool them and they still does have some youngsters attributes usable for fighting. Well, I think depends from country. If in your country pro boxing is not popular and there is lack of good pro promotions and your country supports amateurs from national team pretty well, it is different. If you are in countries like U.S, U.K then : ofc good is if you will have Olympic Gold medal etc. If no, too not that bad. Rigo and Loma BOTH are examples how it is if amateur superstar turns into a pro too late. DLH for example is the best proper example: very young was Olympic Gold medalist and quickly turned into a pro.
Loma at least still had delivered not bad performance. 126 lbs : he had defeated Garry Russel Jr who now is WBC World Title holder 6 years in row. It is rare achievement : boxer had defeated boxer who after this 6 years in row is champion in his division.
It’s probably easier to suggest turning pro at about 20. If a guy starts as an amateur in his teens he will be fairly seasoned (60/80 bouts ?) If he is a guy like Joe Joyce, coming into the sport late, turning professional would see him fast tracked. Horses for courses.
I feel like 50-60 is the sweet spot to be a fairly successful professional. I always scoff at the guys with 200-300 amateur fights turning pro, it just seems like you're starting too late and you're giving away some of your physical prime.
Well, I know about different boxers and their amateur resume too was different. In amateurs too does matter a lot: had he decent pre fight camp, his competition background in all combat sports and achievements. To fight with very high level amateur is insanely hard task if compare with medium level or low level amateur. It is very high difference between this: you beat local amateur or you had lost close decision with lad who was Olympic and World Championship medalist, there even gold, bronze is enough to taste. I know guy who had lost very close fight vs future world superstar and he yeah, turned into a pro too late. More than 200 fights in adults elite division. Another guy, he did in pros not bad despite he had low number of amateur fights under belt. Maybe cos he had very tough amateur fights. I even did not had advised such stuff like he had. 2 guys he fought in amateurs now are undefeated pro boxers, 1 guy undefeated pro kickboxer and this guy is undefeated also in mma, lad does hit very hard.
Probably 100-150 300-400 is just way too much These EE fighters are notorious gym rats who train all year round or at least most of the year. Hence why you never see them blow up in weight or looking fat and out of shape. It's not just the fighting it's the wear and tear of decades of hard training and sparring that takes a toll on your body. Hence why the likes of Loma, Korobov, Usyk, Beterbiev's bodies start breaking down in their early 30s or mid 30s. Korobov was one of the best amateurs I've ever seen and his CV is sick but his body is so fragile now he lost both his last two fights due to two different injuries and had to pull out after 2 and 4 rounds respectively. All of them could've achieved so much more had they turned pro in their early 20s. 'I think what people gotta realize is that, you know they look at my age now of 32 and they don't realize how long I've been doing this since I was 9 years old. That's 22, 23 years.'' --Andre Ward on his 22-23 year long pro career "People see what I do fight night, they see under the lights, but they don't see the toil, they don't see the grind, they don't see just the pain, the physical pain that you go through, not just in the fights, but to prepare and to get ready for those battles," he said. "I felt the physicality of the sport, not just in the ring stuff, but the training and the preparation, start to take its toll on me for the last two or three years and I bit down and continued to push through and at this point, it's time and I know it's time." “I want to be clear — I am leaving because my body can no longer put up with the rigors of the sport and therefore my desire to fight is no longer there,” Ward, 33, said in a statement on his website. “If I cannot give my family, my team, and the fans everything that I have, then I should no longer be fighting.” “I’ve been boxing for 23 years, and just the cumulative effect of all the training and all the fights, it just starts to wear on you, and it starts to take your desire,” Ward said David Haye saying he feels his own power diminished with age and that it's not just the fights that take their toll on you and do damage but the training camps do as well Timestamped This content is protected Froch saying exactly the same - that he knows how he felt at 36 years old This content is protected Ward 120 amateur fights Haye had 96 amateur fights Froch had 88 amateur fights Teofimo Lopez ''I think that he's on his way out. I really do believe that and 135 is just too much of a big weight class for him'' ''If you look at the Luke Campbell fight, you can see there is just a lot of wear-and-tear on his body. “I look at it like this—maybe this whole COVID-19 year helped him out. Maybe he needed it. That way he can probably at least hang in there a little bit with me. It’s going to be a great fight. I just look at the facts. You see a fighter who has gone up in weight class. Sometimes they go up too much where their body isn’t used to it, or the weight class is too big for them.'' “This man has had over 400 fights. I have over 150 fights. I’m 23. I’m going to tell you this, when I get to camp, oh man, my body aches sometimes. If I’m 23 and dealing with stuff at this age, I can only imagine what he must be going through at 32 with over 400 fights.”
I gotta' think that not having defect in order to turn pro will result in fewer multi-medalists and more young pros. Maybe you're to young to remember, but it used to be illegal and prosecutable for people to leave those countries. Like some folk used to get shot trying to leave, ya know?
I think 100-150 is good. You can move up faster in the pros, hone defense and mechanics, and get your youthful mistakes out of the way. People talk about Loma like a cautionary tale, but did it work out so badly from his perspective? He went straight from being a national hero to big pro fights, skipping straight over 5 years of 4-10 round fights that don't pay very well and if you lose you ruin your career.
I do know about these countries and rules during time pretty well. Cuba is different story. Loma is from Ukraine and Ukraine since 1992 th is capitalistic country who does not prohibit to leave country. The biggest problem most likely was that this country then had low popularity for professional boxing, no large highly paying professional promotions AND main stuff there : high level amateur achievements in Ukraine are higher valued in society than in the Western World because Ukraine did not had pro boxing from 1914 th ( World War 1 ) till 1992 th. While 1914-1917 it was not prohibited then they had WAR and no place for entertainment.
Loma turning pro at 20 would have been spectacular for the sport. I think the EE's and Cubans with 400 am fights will be a thing of the past. Plenty of fighters in the past decade have blazed the trail. These fighters still seem to prize glory for their country far more than fighters from other regions, but now they see that they can attain that in the pros as well.
The thing is when you have 200-300+ amateur fights you get ducked by everyone with <50 or <100 amateur fights. And it's often the guys with <50 or <100 am fights who get hyped beyond belief and get a cherrypicked manufactured career that everyone unfortunately falls for
