Mark Breland.. Educate me

Good fighter. Great amateur. Decent actor.

 

He was a great amateur and a promising professional. I think his management made a mistake putting him in with Marlon Starling when they did. He needed a few more learning fights. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. He never really recovered from that defeat.

 

He just couldn't keep his feet under him in that fight.

 

Breland is someone who never remotely fulfilled his incredible amateur promise. Howard Davis is another. Many thought the pair of them would be the next SRR at times.

Breland got to a decent pro level ignoring his amateur promise. Losing to Starling is no terrible thing, he was a top fighter and is better than heralded. Many a manager made the mistake of putting their prospect up against him in an attempt to use him as a stepping stone. He was making a living off belting promising fighters at one point. Baret, Ayers, Brown, they all got turned back. Starling was a bloody good fighter, and trained by the best.

I don't buy for a second that Breland never recovered from the Starling fight. He could be fragile at times as a Pro and probably lacked that little bit of robustness or snap to get to the next level. He no longer had it all his way and was no longer a big fish in a small pond.

Very interesting fighter and thanks for reminding me i need to revisit some of his work.

 

Mark Breland Sports Illustrated Vault.
http://www.si.com/vault/1984/07/09/620426/the-writing-is-on-the-wall

 

Thanks, J! Your archive stuff is great!

 

Psychologically, the Starling loss stunted his development, surely.
When a professional is 18-0 and loses like that, he either learns and improves and goes on to build new confidence, comes back stronger .... or he doesn't.
I don't think Breland improved from it.

 

I don't agree that the Starling loss damaged him in any real way. Physically and mentally he just wasn't prepared for the pro game. I don't think his heart was in it, and some guys don't have the tools to make it in the pro ranks. Amateur skills don't always translate. Interesting how his power was so feared in the amateurs and went largely missing after that.

 

Well, it's all speculation.
Most professional fighters do develop and build confidence as they progressed through 15, 20, 25 fights etc.
I'm speculating that if he'd been matched differently through his first 25 or 30 pro fights he would have been developed better. The alternative view is that his management did everything correct, and under no circumstances could he have developed better.
I'd usually expect a professional fighter to be better at 30 fights than he is at 18-0. I didn't see that with Breland.

 

Exactly, he simply didn't make a truly successful transition to the pro's. Howard was the same and took no beating to cause it.

 

I'd say Mark Breland was successful in the pro ranks.
He just didn't develop as much from the novice stage as you'd usually expect from a guy fighting at world level.
I think Marlon Starling was a significant factor, a 45 fight professional who the 'experts' were sleeping on thinking he was on the decline too probably, against an 18-0 fighter.

5 or 10 more fights under his belt would have either assisted Breland against such an opponent ..... or not made a bit of difference.

18 fights, and a professional less than 3 years. That's either ample experience to make a transition to the top level .... or it isn't.

He even learned from his loss and improved .... or he didn't.

 

-23-0 with 22 knockouts, 15 in the first round in the golden gloves.
-Won every major amateur tournament, the olympics, the world championships, the pan american games, everything.
-Amateur record of 110-1 with that loss being a 3-2 decision against Darryl Anthony (he avenged that loss as a pro).
Mark Breland was one of the greatest amateurs of all time, he was considered the next Sugar Ray Robinson and you could see why, he was stopping everyone under 2 rounds in the amateurs, he beat Russians, Cubans and everyone that would step in the ring with him and he was a hell of a fighter, a really tall boxer with great speed, power and reflexes, but he also was a skilled operator who respected the game and used to study the greats before him, he had a natural balance and punch selection, but the hype was starting to go down in the olympics, when he struggled more than he should even without the soviets or the cubans and was booed by his own crowd many times.
When he turned pro, he seemed to lack the killer instinct he had in the amateurs, that including with the fact that he probably wasn't as builded for the pro's as he was for the amateurs, let him with a kinda disappointing career, even when he had two world titles and he was known as an almost impossible guy to outbox.
I love watching Breland and yes, i believe he could have done it better, but there are many factors before you reach the atg status.

 

BCR
Summed it up well.