Micheal Spinks Resume Audit

Spinks beats both in any case.

 

They are just as excuses.

 

I’ve never given any favor to the ‘*had a good excuse’ asterisk. There may be certain cases in history where that comes into play (Marcel Cerdan being one-armed after LaMotta tackled him to the canvas causing an injury, maybe someone breaking a hand early in the fight or a guy being stopped on cuts caused by a butt when in the ruleset of the time that was a TKO other than go to the scorecards thing and the guy stopped was way ahead … but those are rare and isolated).

“I got fat” doesn’t excuse EMM’s loss … it’s his job to be a professional and be in shape, same as for Duran in the Leonard rematch. Let’s not forget that EMM was given a rematch and … pulled out on the day of the fight because he couldn’t be arsed to shed extra pounds to make weight. His lack of discipline is a mark against him when it comes to assessing him as a fighter.

Never heard Qawi’s excuse but if he stepped into the ring at less than 100% for whatever reason, that’s on him — he’s far from the first to ever do so. Michael Jordan famously had one of his biggest, most legendary games whille battling a high fever from the flu, Larry Holmes beat Ken Norton with a torn bicep, etc.

Nothing in either fight to me rises to the level of the isolated incidents cited above that would give consideration for nullifying or mitigating the result.

This much is true in the history of all sport: Winners adjust; losers make excuses.

 

Everybody that loses had an excuse why they lost......................an excuse that you never would hear about had they won

 

I’ll use this as an opportunity to share the wisdom of Sean O’Grady that gives insight into the mind of a fighter:

“When you lose, you were never at your best — because if you were at your best, how could you lose?”

A fighter’s internal mindset has to be that he’s basically invincible at his best. He is going to have a hard time processing that someone else is just flat-out better than him. So maybe if he had eaten differently or not had that nagging injury (which he fought through and won with before) or his biorhythms were just right or he hadn’t changed mouthpieces (or socks, lol), he would have won.

 

No. Exuses are like a$$holes, everybody has one

It's not Spink's fault Eddie Mustafa Muhammad was undisiplined and Braxton lost his fire

 

I wouldn't doubt that Mustafa wasn't in the best shape for that fight, but Spinks wasn't necessarily at his own best, either - he was conceding a lot of experience to Mustafa & was still at least a year shy of his peak IMO. Mustafa used his edge in experience to foil Spinks over the first half of the fight, but once Spinks figured out his style, he overwhelmed him. Even if Mustafa hadn't sabotaged the rematch, he wouldn't have had the same edge in experience that he had the first time.

 

Michael Spinks losing his wife right before the Braxton fight still showed up to do what he needed to do. And Eddie Gregory moving up to fight a heavyweight contender while still having a light heavyweight belt in his possession was a risk he chose to take. If things were different who knows ? But Spinks shouldn’t be penalized for circumstances he had no control over

 

Can’t make excuses but def not the strongest LHW era that belongs in the 45-55 era. Second strongest isn’t to bad though

 

Truth.

It’s similar with Tyson-Douglas. Buster was in grief because of his mother dying and half a world away, but somehow the (Tyson mafia) narrative has become ‘well that turned him into Superman and, besides, Mike had sex in Tokyo so how could he be expected to fight?’

 

I'd forgotten about that - reportedly, their child visited Spinks' dressing room just before the fight & asked, "Where's mommy?," causing Spinks to break down in tears. Then he went out in the 1st round & unloaded on Qawi.

 

See wut happened wuz....

 

They could be true or partially true but don't alter the fact that they took the fights and lost them.

 

Mustafa's excuse probably holds some weight factually. We can see that when he fought Snipes he was 201 3/4 and about 8 weeks later he had to make 175 vs Spinks. That's a loss of more than 3 pounds a week over the full duration so i can understand some difficulty. Did he slack a bit? I have no idea i wasn't in his camp. It's plain to see however that Eddie controlled the first half of the fight before the weight drain set in and he visibly run out of gas. He also had an eye that shut rapidly from what was likely an elbow from memory. The flipside is Spinks was customarily a slow starter but Eddie did pay for that weight loss. The win cannot be taken away from Spinks tho because he won on the night and anything else is conjecture. Qawi's claim carries more conjecture and for me the win isn't tainted at all.

The rematch scenario was also somewhat interesting. Mustafa actually predicted Spinks, who usually came in a couple of pounds under would be bang on the limit and lo and behold he was right. Eddie weighed in at 177 1/2.

Rather than bang on about it myself i'll give you something from The Irish Times.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/tipping-the-scales-of-boxing-justice-1.504997

All of which put us in mind of another weigh-in, almost a quarter of a century ago in Washington, DC. Although Eddie Mustafa Muhammad was the reigning light-heavyweight champion, the bout was being promoted by challenger Michael Spinks's man, Butch Lewis.

Mustafa was convinced that Lewis and the District of Colombia Boxing Commission, with whom the flamboyant promoter still had some juice in the spring of 1981, were plotting to lift his title by manipulating the scale.

On the afternoon of the weigh-in, Michael (Wolf Man) Katz and I visited Eddie Mustafa in his suite, where he predicted that the scales had been rigged in Spinks's favour. "You watch," Mustafa presciently forecast. "Spinks is always in the 172-173 range, but he'll be exactly 175. And I weighed myself at on a hospital scales last night, but I'll be overweight."

He was dead right. When Spinks, after being announced at 175, stepped off the scales, a handler was standing by with a bowl of stew and a bottle of juice mounted on a tray. Spinks was defiantly slurping away by the time Eddie stepped on the scale and weighed in two pounds over the limit.

Moments after that weigh-in, Bert Randolph Sugar, the boxing historian, plagiarist, and at the time, editor of The Ring magazine, dashed out to a nearby supermarket and bought a 20lb sack of - naturally - sugar, which he brought back and weighed on the same device. It weighed 22 lbs on the DC commission scale. Sugar then took the sugar down the street to the United States Bureau of Weights and Measures, which certified that it was within an ounce or two of its advertised weight.

At the end of the day tho i give Spinks absolute credit for both wins. What a great light heavyweight he was.