Question For The Classic Posters......

I'm pretty "Psycho" in my cravings for boxing, football & Baseball, but boxing rules... I just wish I was making some goddamn money with my knowledge and film collection.....

 

I'm the same with the 'scrap' piece of paper. However, around 1989 I started a scorecard book, which I mislaid/lost about four and a half years ago when I bought a house with the Ball & Chain.

 

I have been surprised, impressed, instructed, and at times almost incredulous at the breadth of knowledge I've encountered here on ESB. Like anything, it's an addiction, but one at least that won't land you in rehab, the drunk tank, or taking a third mortgage on your house to pay off your bookmaker before you end up in traction.

When I was a kid, pre-cabletv, we were lucky if there was one fight aired in a week's time. ABC's "Wide World of Sports" was our best bet, but that was once a week and the odds of their segments featuring a fight was two or three to one. Flash forward to about ten years ago when you could find a fight on TV just about everyday, I was into then, going to the gym to train not in boxing but in shotokan karate then in kickboxing, and the techniques were close enough that I could apply what I was watching to what I was trying to learn in the dojo or the gym. I watched everything, every fight that was on, one, sometimes two fights a day. ESPN, USA, HBO, Showtime, even Spanish broadcasting with he sound turned off, it didn't matter, marquee fighters or two guys I'd never even heard of in a fight that would end up the best of the night. I had my trips to the bathroom timed to 60 seconds, so I'd be back before the next round started.

But like all addictions, it had to be fed, was self-perpetuating, the more you fed it, the hungrier it was; but the opposite is also true, I found out, after I had to suspend my own training due to a bad shoulder injury. I found I lost interest, tired of the search to find the one special fight of a handful, that's where it's stayed with me up until now. I love a good fight, I know enough about the tools of the trade, the intangibles of character to be an informed viewer, but I've never had tapes, of anyone, not even my favorite fighter. If I'm home and unoccupied and a fight comes on, most times I'll give it a chance, a round or two, whether I know the guys or not. But I just dont have the patience, the dedication, the addiction anymore, to invest in a fight that most often turns out to be mediocre.

 

I use scraps of paper. I actually asked myself the question of 'how important boxing is to my life' when I realised Hopkins-Pavlik was the highlight of my week

 

Boxing is easily my number one sport. I'm also a keen fan of the football team, Celtic, here in Scotland. Tennis and Snooker I watch on TV.

I have been a regular on here for a few years and enjoy reading the posts and contributing. My knowledge isn't what it should be considering what I have at my disposal. I have both the McCrory-Jones fights on video which I've had for about 3-4 years, yet haven't even had the motivation to watch them so far. I use to watch boxing fights every single day 10 years ago.

I admire the consistency on here of people like McGrain and John Thomas. Sweet Pea has just about 10,000 posts. And lets not forget he wasn't on here for a few weeks and his post count started at zero again after he came back. Must have a lot of time on his hands or he's an incredibly quick typer. When it comes to motivation, second to none.

I also have some brilliant books I haven't read. Sweet William "The life of Billy Conn" which I won from a boxing radio show a couple of months ago. The introduction to the book has hardly had a glance, far less the first chapter.

Stonehands89 vanishes for a few days, now and then, but always puts effort into his posts. Usually lengthy ones at that.

 

Same thing, I was thinking of this fight all night

I'm relatively new to boxing and i'm starting to learn more and more, I think of it everyday, sometimes my passion diminishes but it doesn't take long to re-up.

 

"How important is boxing to me". Well, there was absolutely no chance I was getting out of bed at 4.00am to watch that last night, so the answer is 'not very' these days. Since Hopkins-Taylor I, I decided 'never again' unless a British fighter was in action (only once have i reneged on this promise, with Marquez-Barrera).

 

This is the only time I'll watch a fight from America and most of the time I cant keep my eyes open and end up nodding off in one of the preliminaries

 

Not worth it is it, I can't recall the last time two Americans made for a decent world title fight anyway (that was 'live' over here).

 

My obsesions control my life totaly and boxing is only one of them.

If I have my boxing head on then I will pour over old newspaper articles around the clock.

 

You're old school.

 

I'm in the same boat you're in Sal.

I grab a piece of mail/envelope that I'm about to toss, and score a fight on that.
Afterward I place that envelope right at my computer desk, where I post here in this forum.
That scorecard is there for about a week or so, until I clean out my desk, then I toss them.

There was a time quite a few years back, where I'd save my scorecards and a few notes I had made from the fights on my computer.

I had saved a couple of years worth of fight scorecards, until my computer broke down.....just would'nt boot up.
.....and since it was an old computer not worth fixing.....I lost all my notes and scorecards.

I too wish I had the dicipline to organize and keep my scorecards proper, but it just is'nt so.

I admire our friend sweet_scientist, who can go way back to fights that happened well over a decade ago, and know exactly how he scored it.
Scientist is as diciplined to keeping and organizing his scorecards, as Pernell Whitaker was to not deviating from the plan and sticking to playing defense!

My fight tapes are somewhere in my garage, and most of my fight tapes, I'd have no clue which box to start looking for them in!:?

.....and I have fight tapes dating back to the 80's!

My time spent thinking about boxing, is mostly the time that I spend in this forum.....which is usually a couple of hours on and off every night as I simultaneously watch TV, or sit at my desk going over mail, paying bills, and what have you.

Its a good thing that the internet was not available to me during the 80's when I was a teenager, or I'd have spent most of my time and energy sitting on a computer desk on a forum like this posting about boxing and baseball!

God knows what would have become of me, had that happened!

 

Im pretty obsessed to be honest, i do go through phases where that obsession may not be as hardcore as others, but this addiction (as Chinx put it) will never give out on me, and im glad for that. Im a very big fan of my team,Liverpool, but boxing was bigger for me before football was in honesty, and is still the sport that i luv delving into analysis' of more than any other. When i was about 15 (23 now), i started going to this market place (st.johns in our town centre) to buy cheap boxing videos there, i was going like once a week and trying all kinds of bargains with the guy there. A lot of them were from that old collection of videos you got with the magazines, you know with the numbers on the side of each video box, but there were plenty others also. It was at that age that it went from 'fan/interested' to 'obsessed', in terms of real knowledge of the sport's history and the like. Everyone who knows me half well knows what im like about boxing.

But on the subject of the card, a lot of people joke around with me and say ive got a photographic memory, i just do it in my head, in between each round i just say to myself 'so now Hopkins is up by 2points' etc. and add or take from the guy's lead as i see the rounds go. Maybe im not as obsessed as im making out!!!

I did make a card on a scrap piece of paper though for Mayweather-Hatton, but i made a bunch of them for my friends aswell, casual boxing fans at best who were watching that at one at my house