I noticed, in areas of the media, the narrative shift around Tyson Fury after his loss to Usyk - namely that it's now opened up an opportunity to avenge the defeat and become great through redemption. So my question is what matters to you most as a fan ... going undefeated like a Mayweather? Or does that show you've been matched too well and never overcome the ultimate adversity? Or does gaining revenge over a loss, like Ali over Frazier or Lennox Lewis, reveal a winners fortitude by learning and coming back better??
Losing is not a positive thing. The whole 2x,3x,4x champ honor is perhaps the stupidest in all of sports in that it requires fighters to lose for each additional honor and rewards someone who can't consistantly win title fights. Manufacturing a record to go undefeated is the other extreme but giving fighters credit for losing is not the answer. Avenging a loss is all fine and good its not better than avoiding the loss altogether.
It's next best thing I guess. When you lose your 0, the best course of action is to avenge it straight away. Funnily enough, when Joshua did this, it wasn't appreciated so the bias of the British media is still heavy in favour of Fury. Let's see how the public will go as these days, Fury is not the most popular guy even in his home country.
I will always respect someone who lost and have many challenges, then someone like Tank, who never fought at the level of his rivals. Fury is not great, but he challenged himself and it's the right way to do it. He needs to fight also other HWs, just like Usyk has to. Stop protecting your favorite fighters. We need all the fights that would be possible, BUD vs Canelo should be good for starters.
It depends who you lose to, and how... And how you avenge it. Not that it's common but, for example... Not super impressive: losing a dominant UD when clearly at your best, and winning the rematch by KO whilst getting dominated again. This looks more like the luck of a punchers chance than it does the superior fighter correcting the record. Then you have the opposite; Losing by KO/TKO to an opponent you're strongly favoured to beat... Then winning the rematch through dominant UD, or a KO to cap a dominant performance. This is setting the record straight, and satisfactorily explains away the loss as a product of luck - it might even cancel out the loss entirely, in some people's eyes. There's more to it than just the W and L column... The same way there's more to a good resume than just KO% and keeping your zero.
Despite losing quite a few times, I hold Holyfield in high regard for his wins and challenging the best throughout his career. If Holyfield camped out at cruiser for his career, was extremely selective on who he fought and maybe at the tail end won a title at heavy but went 60-0, i would not hold him in high regard.
