Myth that American leading heavyweights are in other sports-

Usually these types of threads are filled with euro dudes agreeing with the thread starter in unison. Not today I suppose.

 

It addresses the question of talent pool - there's a much greater incentive for athletic big men to look elsewhere. So, that many fewer ever find themselves in a boxing gym to discover they're good at it.

 

You take the current top 20 rugby players in the Europe rewind the clock until they are all age 5. Train them in boxing instead of rugby until adulthood. I promise you the Europe would hold every single friggin heavyweight belt.....lol sounds familiar don't you think and yes you fail with this one:good. You people can make hundreds of examples and it will still prove nothing, at this moment USA don't have good boxers face it, but mayby in next few years will have some great warriors period.

 

Well, at least you get half a point for that. Some other moron wants to use football (soccer) players as their example. Rugby guys are strong proponents of the toughness of their sport. No problem with that. There are some big guys in the sport.

If you know the players and believe some of them have the combination of size with talent to challenge the "C" level crop in the current heavyweight picture then that sounds reasonable and plausible. Because it is an absolute certainty that there are hundreds of large sized athletes in the US with tremendous conditioning, speed, power, quickness, athleticism and talent to have trained to become heavyweight fighters and destroyed this current crappy group of completely forgettable mediocrity.

 

That our potentially good fighters might be going to other sports is just a red herring - boxing is in decline in the US and that is a fact. There's no question that the quality of our amateur program has fallen and it's a fact that boxing gyms are closing all over the place. That's all that really matters because the real argument underlying the 'other sports' rabble is that there are those that believe the Americans were never as good as their reputations suggested and that's why ex-Soviets, who could not compete until only recently, are dominating now.

Just because we're in decline, though, doesn't mean the other side doesn't have excellent fighters. It's a shitty argument on both sides.

 

Yea Its not myth I would love to see shaq in the ring.
Or Lebron James as Athletic as he is Im sure if his talent was put into boxing he would dominate. The big guys just dont want to fight no more. In highschool if your huge the basketball coach which is usually tied in w a math teacher or science teacher will say if you play for us we will give you 1 grade higher then you deserve. The football coach would hound them aswell.

David Terrell another example he got drafted to the bears but I thought he fought better then he caught a pass in motion he was a big guy too

 

And all the rest of world's best heavyweights, cruisers and light heavies are playing rugby and the best middleweights on down are playing football. If Americans can spew that line, so can everyone else.

 

Let's just put it like this.

Somewhere in Texas, a baby will be born today who has the genes to become a 6'5, 240 pound athletic monster. From the age of five on to the day he graduates high school, he will likely be a part of a well funded, well respected sports system that is virtually a part of the fabric of his community and his state. If he's a good enough athlete and works extremely hard, he can guarantee himself a four year education, and even possibly tens of millions of dollars down the line. In Texas, this system is called "football".

If you really can not understand that somewhere in this talent pool and others like it across America, there are hundreds of heavyweight prospects being "lost" every year, then you are being willfully ignorant.

 

This is a very good post. :good

 

Oh my.... do you think the peak of dream in Europe is to be a boxer, and we have boxing gym at every corner?? Its the same situation here some people can be boxers but they choose different path and do something else, face it.

 

No one has a problem with that. There are some large sized athletes in rugby.

In America, most little guys, no matter how athletic and talented, have jobs not sport careers.

The NFL/NBA/MLB doesn't include any material or substantive number of "Floyd Mayweather"-sized athletes.

The other sports are comparatively irrelevant in terms of numbers of participants in the US.

The hyperbolic rise of the success, popularity, and remuneration of and from the NFL/NBA/MLB combined with the subsidy and education provided by US universities/colleges supporting these pro endeavors has shrunk the talent pool for boxing and most specifically in the heaviest weight class(es).

The best of the best are not pursuing boxing.

[But, there also is not any great statistical opportunity for small men to become professional boxers as a livelihood.]

You can spew whatever you want. The truth is what it is. Some would just use their eyes and decide whether or not they see greatness in the heavyweight division. Apparently, you are very easily impressed.

This had nothing to do with country of origin. It has to do with the existence of great large-size athletic talent.

If Lamon Brewster or Eddie Chambers or even Nigerian Sam Peter who lives here in Vegas were heavyweight champ, no one would be saying they are great. They are all mediocre and less than exceptional relative to what we see competing in our other sports. Any good athlete should be able to distinguish between the two.

Maybe athletics just isn't your thing.

 

Good post.

 

Can't sum it up any better than that.

 

Exactly. Lol. I'm not European. It's the same EVERYWHERE. It doesn't matter if most soccer players (and soccer is just one example) wouldn't be big/strong HW (you gotta remember that for the NFL is just US, for soccer it's worldwide, so there probably going to be just as many "huge" players in total).

Doesn't matter though, cause the lower division talent pool suffers the same, so everyone else in the world can make the same point.

And it's like you are assuming these great big athletes if they can't play soccer, they must surely be boxing , nah, more like either playing some other sport, or just not playing sports period.

 

True, just Americans mostly agreeing in unison.