The next great American heavyweight!!!!

Is Arreola the No.1 Amewrican at the moment? Can't see anyone else.

 

Did you read the first post?

We are talking about potential heavyweights who have chosen other sports.

 

Them lanky pricks would get eaten alive by the russians. The only reason yanks, say that there best athletes are not in boxing, is because you cant compete with the eastern blockers period.

 

True.

If it helps them feel better about the situation then let them go on about it but the facts indicate otherwise. Just because someone excels at Football, Basketball, Baseball or Hockey doesn't mean they'd be any good at all as a boxer.

 

You don't see big Americans boxing at HW because all of the money is in other sports. The possible great American HW champ is probably a tight end, linebacker, or running back in the NFL or a power forward in the NBA.

America has the talent but that talent is playing others sports.

 

There is a reason you rarely see hitters above 6'5. It is almost physically impossible for them to be effective, especially with a larger build. Of course there are outliers like Sexson and a few others, but even they have very slight builds and still struggle with curveballs.

Jordan was the greatest athlete of all-time. Athleticism just doesn't translate to all sports at the highest level.

 

I posted the exact numbers on this a few weeks back- but I can tell you off the top of my head that over 98% of Division 1 players will not last more than 3 years in the NFL.

If all our boxing saviors were in those sports, there would've been someone who picked up boxing later (still in their early 20's) once they washed out and in theory, had some success- after all, if Hasim Rahman can start fighting later in life and become champion, why can't one of these "super athletes" come along and at least become a contender?

Before you pull the "college degree excuse" as to why they don't turn to boxing, you should know that more than a third of blacks who play D1 football never graduate because of the way football factory colleges are run now, and they're not all going pro. Many big time college programs are the worst offenders; only 3 Pac 10 schools graduate more than half of their African American players, for example. Only 6 out of every 10 NCAA basketball players finish their degree. Division II is even worse.

So, why don't we just start putting classified ads in local papers and on Craigslist for the next Heavyweight champion? Chances are there's at least 1000 high level ex college athletes who could use the work and the higher pay.

 

Seeing hitters about 6'5 really has nothing to do with it, just because you don't see that many doesn't mean it can't be done and done exceptionally well. I don't know if Lebron could be a good hitter, but with his reflexes and vision, I don't see how if he was brought up in baseball how he could not be successful at it, just based off his athleticism.

Looking at MJ, he is hardly the greatest athlete of all-time, greatest basketball player, but athelte, I disagree with you. I think Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson were better athletes than him.

 

Maybe because they don't like boxing? Boxing is not something you go into just for the money. You don't wake up one day and say, "Hey, i need money. Why not boxing? I'll risk death and injury and push my body to limits i don't have to push it to while getting hit in the face thousands of times over my career". Boxing is a sacrifice. Most people who box did so because they did it as a kid. That's what my point is. There is no mainstream appeal for the sport so obviously, there are very few kids who aspire to be boxers. So few actually box as kids.

And who are the guys that don't last in the NFL? Guys that aren't as talented as the ones that last right?

 

Why would they box when they can go back home get a cushy coaching gig at high school or college they went to and make a nice living. Hell, they even have the motivational speaking circuit and summer camps they could rely on. There are a lot more easier things they can do and earn comparable money, than boxing.

 

With that sentence, you're admitting that the sport really isn't missing these guys much, because they wouldn't have been boxers anyways. Dave's post basically says the same thing. My reply was a rhetorical question, because I just wanted to hear it from your mouth that those athletes weren't cut out to be fighters.

So why, in your previous post before that, are you pretending that the NBA and NFL are cannibalizing boxing when those athletes are not and weren't ever drawn from the same talent pool? If that's where the drain is coming from, why don't we have more talent coming from the lower weight classes who couldn't play other sports if they wanted to? Whatever the reason- fewer gyms, better economy, etc., it's foolish to act like the decline in US boxing is limited to the Heavyweights and to ignore the dropoff in overall numbers.

The NBA/NFL excuse is just that- it's a bull**** excuse to make ourselves feel better because people are too impatient to just wait for 2-3 great US heavyweights to pop up. And really, that's all people are really asking for at the end of the day anyways. Even when boxing was more popular here, there weren't really ever more than 3 truly great, active, mainstream HW's at the same time for nearly the entire century.

 

You really haven't proven or disproven a point.

the fact is based on the climate of sports in US, kids do not want to be boxers because it does not offer as much money as being second string on one of the major sports. So right there you have the poor kids aiming for other sports and focusing on them, ignoring boxing all together. compound that with the image of it being a corrupt sport with guys looking to leave you broke and jobless, you even more reason why american kids migrate away from it, plus they never see it on tv and have no gyms around to expose them to it.

 

You proved my point.

 

Yes I am

 

You're still missing my point. You are only looking at the fact that these athletes don't like boxing but not WHY they don't like boxing. And i stated the reasons why in my above post.