When it comes to chin vs how well a fighter ages when their career is over/when they're past their prime, there's no true consensus. Some believe it's simply a matter of age, yet you have boxers like Chuvalo and Foreman who can still speak well. Some say poor defense=acceleration of risk of being punch drunk, yet tou have defensive fighters such as James Toney who have very slurred speech despite never being KOd once. Some say weak chins are more prone to being in terrible health, yet you have Holyfield who was as tough as an old army boot, but has no declined cognitively with poor speech and Roy Jones is speaking very well with no obvious health issues. So what's the deal? I think (and idk if there's any science to back this up just a fringe theory), a boxer has his health bar inside the ring during the fight. In other words, just like how a character in a video game has a health bar and once it drains to zero they're knocked out, boxers have a limited amount of clean shots they can take before they lose consciousness. The health bad recovers once the fight is over and a boxer gets some rest. Then there's a separate health bar that is more about their long term health and cognition. This health bar gets smaller and smaller with every blow+old age and it never fully recovers. This could explain why Ali and Quarry, who had iron jaws, started to decline so rapidly as their careers were ending and they hadn't even reached their mid 30's. Maybe their chin health bar was huge (took a lot to knock them out), but their long term health bar was very small and they paid the price for having such long, grueling careers continuing to get hit past their prime by so many heavy hitters. On the other hand, maybe boxers such as Roy Jones and Amir Khan have very small chin health bars, but very big long term health bars. Since it doesn't take a lot for them to lose consciousness, their 2nd health bar doesn't drain that much and they don't decline that rapidly even if they have long careers. Maybe Meldrick Taylor unfortunately had very small health bars for both and he was shot at an earlier age. Meanwhile, Foreman/Chuvalo etc were blessed with 2 gigantic health bars. Thoughts?
Seems a logical way to think about it. Another way to look at Jones specifically is that he was barely hit through a large portion of his career, though. This is also why I think Tyson is fine. He barely took any damage for the majority of his fights. I can think of 5 fights total where he took a lot of damage. Foreman is especially impressive to me. Man did he take some beatings as an old guy, doesn't sound like he has any damage at all. Sounds 100% like a normal man of his age.
