Which boxers boxed for the longest periods of time, and how successful did they remain in later years? Duran boxed consistantly almost his entire life, until he was a little past 50 if I'm remembering correctly. Buger had a... 32 year career? Jack Johnson deserves some kind of mention. Hearns was active for forever and a day.
I think Duran pretty much takes the cake here. Archie Moore and Larry Holmes began at a relatively advanced age. I'd check to see who had a combined pro/am career of 35 years or more. Jack Britton had 350 fights from 1905 to 1930, stepping into the ring multiple times during every one of those 25 years. He began his professional career around his twentieth birthday. After 1905, only a peak Benny Leonard proved capable of stopping him before the final bell. Today, of course, nobody has the combination of number of bouts and length of career to compare to that.
Length, definitely. There are still a few club fighters who have a few hundred fights to their names, anyway.
Jerry Quarry went in and out of retirement but boxed pro from 1965 to 1992. Not the longest, but a very long time. Got progressively worse.
Another way of couching this is the longest time frame between top flight performances, something I was thinking about last night. Duran is clearly hard to beat ('72 Buchanan, '89 Barkley, you could stretch it out further for wins over mere top10 opposition, as opposed to world titles). SRR without question, with a '46 to '58 span of sensational wins and more to choose if you want. In terms of HWs I am going to surprise myself and give Lennox a mention with a 9 year span of excellent, demolitions over Ruddock ('92) and Rahman II ('01). Ali goes brilliantly with wonderful performances against Liston ('64) and Foreman ('74) a decade apart. Of course, the aesthetic nature of both victories was notable, the finishes dramatic, and the two victims in questions were at the tail of a 10 year winning streak and 40-0 respectively. Ali’s 3 year break may actually have helped him with this metric in terms of general preservation. Holmes get a very honorable mention with his jabbing master class against Shavers in '78 and his decent win over limited but tough Ray Mercer 14 years later in '92. Patterson makes a statement with a devastating win over Moore in ’56 and a points victory over tough Oscar Bonavena in ’72, a full 16 years later.
Certainly. I consider El Cholo's May 1970 win over Ernesto Marcel to be the true starting point of his prominence as a top flight competitor in boxing. Marcel would go on to close out his career with a ten round SD over Sammy Serrano, and a very impressive WBA FW title retirement win over up and coming Alexis Arguello. (Marcel promised before his defense against Arguello that he would retire after the bout, and despite his dominance of Alexis he kept his word. Marcel could well be a future IBHOFer.) Duran was the only one to ever take Marcel out. His rematch decision win over Castro was his final victory over an opponent of consequence, and while hardly a top flight display, it did take place over 27 years after he beat Marcel. For all his flaws, Floyd Patterson's career was a true testament to his maintenance of excellent physical conditioning. He could obviously be punched out, and his back was famously thrown out in the first Ali fight. (It does say something for the peak Ali's elusiveness if Liston and Patterson succumbed because they overreached for a target who was no longer there.) But nobody ever beat Floyd by fatiguing him. In Patterson's case, and those of others like him, it might be appropriate to factor in their amateur successes in addition to professional achievements. That would tack on over five more years to Floyd's resume. Jack Johnson was 48 years old when he handed Pat Lester a 15 round boxing lesson in Mexico. This was 32 years after his earliest recorded one on one match, and around a quarter century after he became prominent.
