Remember when young pre-prime fighters would take risks and fight older, more experienced fighters? Thinking of Mancini-Arguello, Jacobs-Pirog or even Barrera-Jones. They hardly ever do that anymore. The excuse seems to be that if a young fighter gets thrown in with an experienced veteran he will get "ruined". If a loss against a more experienced veteran is going to ruin your fighter then maybe he's just too mentally weak for the sport of boxing. A guy like that isn't cut out for boxing. All the fighters I just mentioned got much better after an early loss. After an early career loss you go back to the drawing board, identify weaknesses and make technical improvements. Seems to me that the true reason young fighters don't take fights against experienced top guys anymore is because they are protecting their "0". It seems hard to market a young and upcoming fighter with a loss or even multiple losses. Modern fans see a blemish on a young fighter's resume and write him off. Seems stupid to me. This is why we have guys who are in their 30s and haven't even had a real fight in their career. Take a guy like Jaron Ennis. What if he loses to Crawford? So what? If he is a real fighter with a tough mentality, he will then take the loss as a learning fight. Hell, if he puts on the performance of a lifetime he might even win.
Like Canelo? I think bud and Spence dint want it with boots though. He is too high risk low reward for them to fight. Im sure he would jump at the opportunity to fight Crawford next.
Canelo is a good example actually. Although anybody would fight Mayweather because there is no higher payday.
He also learned a lot from that loss. I think of them as legacy investment wins if a guy like canelo goes on to be great. You can also have the opposite effect where the veteran fighter ruins him. Like bhop vs pavlik or tito vs Vargas for example.
