Myth that American leading heavyweights are in other sports-

?? As for Mexican MMA fighters/boxers, not every Mexican wannabe athlete can play soccer professionally and fighting is another option for them. They're typically a proud culture, there's a long history of mexican boxers, and what other sports are big down there and within which they'd have an advantage (baseball used to be pretty big don't know about now.)

 

Yeah, out of the thousands of pro football and basketball players that are HW's, I'm sure not a single one of them could take a punch. No one is saying Shaq, Lebron etc specifically would be the HW champion. Just that 99.9 percent of the best athletes are playing other sports, and some of those athletes would certainly have a fighters mentality and chin.

Not to be rude but that's a ****ing idiotic post atsch

 

NFL. More money and not as risky/dangerous as boxing. That's where most heavyweights go as far as I know.

 

Monster dog? :huh Yeah, whatever.............:rofl

 

Another example. Cuba has had many great amateurs, but the whole communism thing has always been a factor. Yet in Cuba, who's trying to be a boxer when they can play baseball?

Anyway we still don't know how those fighters would have fared in the pros. Cause "amateurs is completely different", but then we assume that football players and NBA players would dominate... when they are much less similar to boxing than amateur... BOXING.

 

The point of this thread isn't that NBA/NFL players would dominate, it's that the popularity and earning power of those sports along with the lack of popularity of boxing in the USA has greatly contributed to the dwindling of the talent pool available for boxing. Simple as that.

 

Exactly. :good Love how these guys are acting like all of these huge athletes in the nba, nfl, or mlb wouldn't have the ability to be top boxers. Yes you need training and dedication for boxing, but it is not all that difficult a sport to grasp: the key points being to develop a technique where you minimize getting punched while maximizing your ability to punch and hit the other guy. Yes "chin" or punch resistance isn't entirely common but plenty of those guys would certainly would at least have decent enough chin to compete (as Wlad proves you don't need a top notch chin if you're a huge athlete). Some of the NBA'ers would be lacking in "heart" but not any NFL players. The bottom line is that if these huge athletes in other sports concentrated on boxing begining in their early/mid teens there would be US dominance or at least tons of good hw boxers.

 

Hmm... anyone think it may be a combination... lost interest in US AND increased world-wide competition? As is often the case, the answer falls somewhere between the extremes...

Some thoughts that I don't think have been mentioned yet...
- amateur boxing in the US has been declining for years; the Olympics, a huge selling point to potential young fighters, just isn't a big part of Olympic coverage (this is more an effect of boxing's fall from mainstream status, but it certainly helps to keep it from bouncing back)

- you can make a living playing pro baseball/basketball not at the elite level (not so much football). Not so in boxing. It's alot more attractive to be "good but not great" in other sports.

- the college scholarship angle can't be understated. There are alot of very good athletes that would go that route just for the education - that's valuable to a kid that otherwise couldn't afford it! See point above... being a "good but not great" b-ball/f-ball player is worth something; not so in boxing.

Saying those things doesn't deny the rise of the Eastern Euros, though. It's be ludicrous to say the fall of the Iron Curtain hasn't reduced the number of prominent US HW's. While only 2 have proven to be historically noteworthy (I still think Povetkin could be), there have been a great number of "very good" Eastern Euros that wouldn't have been around 20 years ago.

The current HW picture is the result of a combined reduced US talent pool and increased competition from the rest of the world. Is it really that hard for people to accept this?

 

There's a long line of mexican boxers but it doesn't matter, there's a long line of american boxers too. Soccer is still overwhelmingly more popular, if they can't be playing soccer, most likely most are going to do something else other than boxing.

 

What are you babbling about?

Generally in the US, there are no sport careers for LITTLE guys. We don't have a huge interest in soccer. We don't have as dominate a path in sports for anyone but our big guys. The other ancillary sports pale in comparison. The $ follows baseball, basketball, and football in our colleges/universities. We don't have "Floyd Mayweather" playing in the NFL/NBA/MLB. Little guys can be great athletes .. unfortunately that still means nearly all of them will have to "get a job". Few will become boxers in the lower weight divisions as a livelihood.

 

Why is there more than a page on this thread?

 

I don't know for sure of course, just as you don't know that there would be many great boxers in other sports. I base my guess that there wouldn't be many on the fact that it is a lot easier to be successful in team sports than it is in individual sports. Take tennis for example, which has a very large worldwide talent pool yet only very few special players are continually at the top of the rankings (Federer, Nadal, Williams sisters). Even if there are many physically capable of being good boxers, very few will have the mental toughness to overcome adversity and come back after a tough loss or bad beating. It's not like football or rugby when you take the loss as a team and have others that are in the same position helping through rough patches. Boxing is a special sport that requires a special combination of skills, mental and physical, to be the best.

 

Seriously, does anyone think that Eddie Chambers and Chris Arreola are the best boxers a country of hundreds of millions of people can produce?

No, not every NFL player can take a punch. But there are surely at least a hundred or so out of 1600 that can and have 10x the physical abilities that those two have.

 

Nobody here is saying that football players, baseball players, golfers, tennis players, nascar drivers would DOMINATE! We're saying that in the US, UNLIKE Cuba, there are more appealing options than boxing. I dont know anyone of my friends that wanted to be a boxing champ, and I use me as an example because I grew up in a big, urban, multicultural city and had/have friends of different financial backing and ethnicities.

In Cuba you're going to be what the government WANTS you to be, as far as athletics are concerned. They take you as a kid and put you in a boxing camp from the time youre 7 years old. Youre comparing apples and oranges.

Americans go where the money's at. Are you in the states? If so, I want you to watch TV for a full day. Watch ESPN, watch sitcoms, watch commercials, Nike ads, Reebok ads and come back at the end of the day and tell me how many times boxing was mentioned.

Regardless, I LOVE the sport and wish I wouldve excelled in it, but I KNOW Im in the minority as far as thats concerned.

 

?? I think it's safe to assume that at least some or many top Cuban amateurs would eventually be top pros. **** even a lot of their decent amateours who've defected have done fairly well. I'm sure Savon would've got a belt. Yes amateur boxing is a lot different than pro but it ain't entirely different and it still is good training and background for pro boxers as a lot of great amateurs at least have good/decent careers and many have great careers.

As to why a Cuban would want box as opposed to play baseball? It's probably a matter of personal preference or because there's more glory in boxing. Neither sport is gonna make a Cuban rich unless he defects and at any rate again not every kid can play baseball and vice a verca.