We Are Far Too Impatient-We Should Let Fights Build-It Makes Them More Significant

You're not making the right point. We shouldn't have to 'wait for big fights'. The issue is untested flavours of the months or undeserved faded names being hyped up to make a 'great fight' that really isn't. Almost none of the fights you mentioned were actually even fair matchups, much less great fights. The solution is even matchmaking at every level, and right now, not later. I don't get how Kovalev-Stevenson applies. Right after Kovalev beat Cleverly would indeed have been a great time. If Kovalev as the underdog won, he would've gained more immediate acclaim, and then would have racked up similar wins as he has. You're falling for the bs when you say Kovalev would've lost too much had he lost. He was already the second best light heavyweight, and once you get to that position you risk it and don't worry about future star power.

Like you said, Lemieux should've had to fight another top contender to garner the hype as a legitimate threat to GGG. But that's not going to happen in boxing because promoters want to protect while getting as much as they can from their bankable stars. Come on, you know how the business of boxing works.

I do think promoters should give fairer matchmaking a go as a model, instead of depending on the short-term star model, and I think it would in fact work financially, not just competitively. A loss doesn't have to be horribly debilitating, and nor does it even have to damage a fighter's marketibility. First put Canelo in with a quality true 160 lber, but if GGG-Canelo's a great action fight and a great sell, make the fight, Canelo's career won't be over if he loses.

 

You guys excuse a rising star from facing a tough challenge because he might take a beating and not be the same. But what about the flip side?. So the star fighter could avoid taking a beating, so many no-hopers had to get a beating from the the star fighter!

 

Taylor had plenty of though ifghts before he lost.

Kelly Pavlik never recovered after his loss to Martinez and he was only 28 at the time.

 

Not everyone does. But I don't think it's possible to dispute that the older you are the harder it is to recover from punishment.

 

Agreed! :good

 

lol don't try to justify canelo ducking the king

 

Yes lets let them build so we can call one of them shot when we lose our betting money

*rolling my ****ing eyes*

 

I don't think that was even a case where it was "too early" for Taylor anyway, not did it really change what his career would have likely been like if he fought Chavez a year later, or never fought him. Taylor was always going to have a short stay at the top and have major issues due to the talent level at 147 (as well as Taylor's weaknesses). Taylor was having trouble making 140 anyway, and ready to outgrow the division (it was his last fight at 140 until he rematched Chavez at 140 four years later, probably desperate for revenge and a big payday). If he stayed at 140 and was feeling drained, he ran the risk of losing to a lesser fighter while the bout with Chavez "marinated".

We got a great fight, hell a classic fight out of Chavez-Taylor 1. Taylor wasn't too inexperienced to beat Chavez, hell he was 2 seconds from victory and I really do think he was distracted by Lou Duva getting up on the ringpost. It looked like he was looking at Lou when Steele was asking him questions. Taylor had those instincts to trade when unnecessary, and that wasn't a matter of inexperience. It was his temperament, and if he didn't learn from the first JCC fight, he was never going to learn. He fought Chavez again and actually did pretty well. Mills Lane took away 2 points for low blows, unfair I think as Chavez was pulling his head down on some of them, then Taylor decided to war with him in the 6th. It was an exciting round, but Taylor's legs were gone as a result of it.

If anything, the bad decision by Taylor's management was when they had him face Terry Norris, which seemed like a cash-out fight for an increasingly vulnerable champion.

Boxing fans put up with so much ****, so I don't think it's too much to ask for the matchup to take place when it should. I don't mind a little bit of building up. For instance, Leonard-Hearns 1. Angelo Dundee said he wanted the fight to build and get bigger. But look at the time frame. Hearns won the title from Cuevas in August 1980 (the same night Pryor beat Cervantes for the 140 lb title). Leonard had just lost the title to Duran in June, then won in back in November. The fight took place in September 1981. So basically, it was a grand total of 10 months of building up. That's okay. And just to add, Leonard took on Kalule, a very good boxer who was the #1 fighter one division above, as a tune-up for Hearns. Imagine that. That's sort of like Mayweather fighting Canelo as a tune-up for Pacquiao, only Kalule was a better fighter than Canelo.

Mayweather-Hatton is another "building-up" that was alright with me. Yes it would have been better at 140, but given Mayweather's relative small size at 147 (Hatton probably weighed more than him on fight night), but they wanted that one to build. Hatton's team rejected that fight back when it was proposed at 140 because they wanted him to get a bigger profile and signed with HBO. It's amusing to me when people actually believe that junk that Hatton insulting Mayweather in his post-fight interview after the Castillo fight is what made the fight, when Hatton's dad later admitted they had been negotiating the fight for 18 months

Just another case of boxing fans thinking boxing is some sort of schoolyard fight, when we see time and time again how it's big business and huge money at the top level.

"I fought him because he called me out! Not because I want to make millions!"

LOL

The Maywather-Pacquiao "build-up" just left a bad taste in so many mouths because it was so obvious, at least to me, that a big reason why they had little interest in fighting each other was because they could make insane money fighting easy, or perceived easy, opponents. They could just dangle the carrot in front of the fans and act like "Mayweather-Pacquiao will be next, this is the appetizer!" and they kept doing it over and over again. Notice how their PPV sales had to start disappointing before they fought each other.

 

^^NIce post TS. I've seen that fight multiple times, and leading up to the 10th round, Taylor was dominating him. It was conceivable at that point he might've been leading 9-1 on the scorecards.

And I agree with you on the Duva distraction. Had he not been looking at Duva on the apron and gave Steele his undivided attention, it's feasible to assume Steele would've allowed him to continue (even though the bell pretty much sounded at that point.)

Had the fight not been stopped, I think Taylor was on his way to a very clear, decisive UD.

 

boxing is a joke. In UFC the best fight the best. Once to get to number 1 thats it you must fight the champ. This is a bloody joke!!