Life Spans of Heavyweight Champions

You are a smart fella, so I do not see why you are suprised. Holyfield's career is full of incidents of him defying the odds. Although physically he may not be what he once was, his mentality and drive is going to make him believe his time will come again. Like it did in the past, even when seemingly totally written off...

 

Why? Physically we really should not live much longer. It is the invention of medicines that save us for so long. Being crude, we are dying from the moment we are born, it is only a matter of when, not if...

Also I suspect the average goes up quite a bit, for those who survived childhood.

 

This is really interesting; I wonder, though, if infant mortality is taken into consideration. If so, it skews it a lot.

 

Childhood deaths would have skewed that figure.


And I think it's unwise to try and discern any pattern of mortality,using the heavyweight champions in history,as it's such a small and varied collection of people.

 

Here is a link to an article I wrote a few years ago that deals with this very subject.

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/news/archives/00004745.htm

 

It was 21 in some parts of London at the time.

 

Foreman can still crush skulls.

 

I find myself wondering how Jack Sharkey enjoyed such a long life, given his number of fights against quality opposition.

 

His son could beat him now. Big George has some knee issues now, too!

 

No, humans are designed to live very long lives; 120 years is not out of bounds. It was always disease, lack of nutrition, accidents, lifestyle, etc. that reduced human lifespan. From a genetic standpoint, living well into our 80s, 90s and beyond is not only possible -- but normal! Dying in our 50s, 60s, and 70s is not normal. But it may seem sometimes normal because a large part of the population adopt unhealthy lifestyles that reduce their lifespan.

 

Good points in theory, the problem is interpretation of 'normal'. Of all the billions of humans who lived on this planet, I put it to you, you can count the amount who have proven they have lived to 120, on one hand.

If we look at the statistics, normality for the majority of time we have been on the planet, suggests death before your first birthday.

 

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/news/archives/00004745.htm

In the article in the above link, I took the average life span of the twenty best Heavyweights from each decade and from 1890's to 1950's the averages were;

This content is protected

The above list gives life-span data for 180 top Heavyweights, divided into top 20 by the decade that the fighter did their best work ( in my opinion). You don’t have to agree to the decade selection or indeed my picks as top 20, this table gives a good cross-section of the top fighters at heavyweight 1890-1959. Several points to note:

1) Some fighter’s data not known, so they are ignored.

2) Some fighters still alive, so obviously the average will increase if they survive into 2009.

3) Of the following fighters who died before their 50th year, the following died from other than natural causes; Cleary(amputation after accident) Killeen,(murdered) Goddard (shot) Barry(shot) Palzar(shot) Greb(operation) Stribling (accident) Brennan(shot) Marciano(accident) Liston(suicide?) Machen(accident?)

4) Schaaf, McCarty, Franklin and possibly Killen died from boxing related injuries.

5) I have counted from the year of birth and death(inclusive) ie Schmeling=100

Overall the results are surprising. Tom Sharkey, Schmeling, Jack Root, Moran, Fulton, Jack Sharkey, Carpentier, Tunney, Loughran, Uzcuden, Gains, Heeney, Pastor, Walker, Mann, Bettina, Bivins, Walcott, LaStarza, H.Johnson and Moore all saw at least their 80th year. Anybody with boxing knowledge knows the amount of tough fights and punishment that the above lot took. A recipe for long life? The expected lifespan for America for the period 1890-1959 are shown in the attached excel sheet but the average for the top heavyweights from 1890 to 1959 is 64, this despite the high accident rate. Not all the fighters are American of course but bear in mind the following; (1) most “foreign” fighters spent a considerable period of their careers in America (2) a large number of the American fighters were black and their life expectancy was much lower than average (3) America had a greater life expectancy than most other countries. Despite these adverse factors the top heavyweights easily out-perform the average

 

Ali does not have much time left. A boxer who takes beating when he should retire can literally take years off his life.

 

i guess the flip side of the athletes taking the beatings, is that they also stay and keep in the very best of shape for most of the ime. Particularly in those early days. In theory, if they just trained as boxers and didnt fight (or one every fight by 1st punch ko, then the boxer should leave a longer life than most, i suppose.