Is the knockout the singlemost damaging phenomenon in sports? How does one come to terms with being knocked out cold? How hard is it to climb through the ropes again, paticularly against the man who knocked you out? In other sports, you can usually assess why you lost; you can go over the match or game piece by piece and systematically break it down as to why you didn't win. With a KO though, things are a little different. Yes, one can evaluate the film and see that maybe your hands were low or whatever, but isn't it somewhat like looking at a filtered reality, because you cannot actually remember the event and can only see it as a detached 3rd party on film? The knockout punch short-circuits the brain. You're cut off from your senses, and are effectively rendered helpless. In a sport where machismo is everything, how damaging psychologically is it to feel 'owned' by another man? A points loss is one thing - you finish on your feet and three judges decide the result, but a knockout leaves no room for excuses. One moment you're doing fine, and the next thing you know, you're waking up in the dressing room, without a clue as to what happened. In a sport where it's said 90% of it is mental, being handed your first KO loss must be one of the hardest things to deal with from an emotional and mental perspective than just about any other situation in sports. Maybe missing a field goal by mere inches in the Superbowl or missing a sitter in a Champion's League final is surely very tough to deal with, but at the end of the day, you can look to the rest of the team as to why the other guys walked off with the trophy. Team sports have psychologists and all sorts of support systems, but in an isolationist sport like boxing, getting knocked out must be very tough to deal with. For one thing, the boxer would probably rather die than admit it's affecting him, even if it's killing him inside. That's a boxer for you. Maybe only your trainer knows how you really feel. So, I repeat my question - is the KO the most psychologically damaging phenomenon is sports, or is overhitting that vital forehand in the Wimbledon finals worse?
Its a great question, and I think you assessed it pretty well yourself - leaving little room for other posters to contribute!
I think it's very hard to comeback just from the humiliation of being knocked out not to mention it hurts your marketability.
Some fighters handel it better than others. For some it is almost a positive experience giving them a focus and dedication that they didnt have before. For others it efectivley finishes them as a fighter. Even when a fighter dose come back stronger from it a mark is left and theloss can become a point of obsesion for life.
It depends on the fighter. A knockout loss tests the confidence of the fighter who was knocked out, and often emboldened his opponents. Some fighters are mentally strong enough to come back, others are not. Classic examples of come backs are Joe Louis, and Wlad Kltischko.
Tyson was never the same fighter again once he got spanked by Buster, but did bounce back very impressively in his immediate fights afterwards and didn't appear to take his opponents for granted. Post prison he was OK until he ran into (and ironically underestimated, I think) a suposedly washed up Evander.
Lewis showed immense mental toughness leading upto and during the Rahman rematch, claming convincing redemption in the process. Louis also recovered well from the first Schmeling fight.
