I'll be damned...William Warburton won a fight this year!

Warby, who has since turned 33, scored an upset over Ryan Gall in February to snap a thirty-two loss skid and improve his record to 27-164-10.

I'm over the moon for him...but wondering whether he has chosen this high note to bow out on. A six month absence from the ring for him is drastic...he fought sixteen times in 2019! Granted, the Covid-19 outbreak hit global scale just half a dozen or so weeks after he beat Gall, but still. There have been small hall shows back on for a bit now, and he's the sort that shows up to any assignment, regardless of the circumstances, to fight for pay. If he is retired (and not just enjoying life in the dole), who will then take up the mantle of the UK's most tough and reliable round-going professional loser? (passed onto Warburton himself from the likes of Kristian Laight before him)

 

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...idk about "much worse". Sure you could say that McCauley's winning percentage is half of Warburton's (a measly 6% compared to Warby's robust 13%) but really you're splitting hairs. 164 losses or 207, you're in the "been defeated a fuck ton of times" club either way.

Not sure why you seem to be white knighting anyway, since nobody's even attacking Warby. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm myself a fan, and my thread was only meant to be half tongue-in-cheek, while still genuinely chuffed that he upset another unready young upstart.

I know all about British record-padders, and the function they serve.. and yeah, quite often they have a fair bit more skill that you'd expect and the better ones (the ones good enough to get hundreds of jobs in their careers) usually have near-iron chins, often with only a handful of stoppage losses relatively speaking (like single digits, or very low double with staggering triple digit loss columns)...but I don't buy that all of them always just tank on purpose because that's more lucrative than letting their real ability shine through. Fact is, were their ability good enough to have themselves become a prospect or (even regional belt) contender they would've pursued that path...because I'm not sure what you think professional losers make per diem but it ain't much. The only way to scrape a living at it would be to keep a bullish schedule, which most can't hack. So yes, they deserve credit for putting in yeoman's work and serving as the backbone of the sport and separating the men from the pretenders, but don't let's over-mythicize them and suggest that if they were really giving it their honest all they wouldn't still have overall losing records in as many contests. (I'd buy that someone like Warburton, if he really tried decapitating every kid he was thrown in with, might double or even triple his winning percentage, but...26% and 38% are still low, and nobody in that range is a secret elite suppressing their power like a DVZ character and hiding in plain sight. )