I was a casual fan through the 90's, while serving in the military. I checked out some boxing gyms to get in shape and remember watching the post-prison Tyson and Bowe/Golota fights. In the early 00's I started really following televised fights and training myself. Now, I follow fights that are not even on TV, boxing is the only sport I follow closely, and I am training for some masters division fights. What I love about boxing is that there is nobody but you in there. You have to overcome your own obstacles to have a great win or survive a bad beating. What I hate about boxing is the lack of a central sanctioning/governing body, greedy promoters and lack of quality fights.
Growing up my dad was into it crazy!! Then i just loved out a man can dodge a bunch of shots then hit the other man with a 5 piece so I got hooked and never stopped
Ali had a cartoon on Saturday mornings that I used to watch. He would do appearances in person at the end and give advice on becoming a champion...stay away from people who smoke and that sort of thing. Eff. I'm getting old!
I've been watching since I can remember, my sister was a big fan of Mancini and Leonard's so I became fans of theirs and my grandfather and brother in law would sit and watch and talk boxing very often and wouldn't let anyone watch anything else, so it was drilled into me as a child and it stuck. Not only that but growing up in the 80's and early 90's I loved heavy metal, wrestling and Schwarzenegger, Norris and Stallone movies, so Boxing went hand in hand with my obsession with all things ridiculously macho.:yep
My father was a boxer in the army. When I was 8 years old he taught me how to "step into a punch". Three years later he was gone. As fate would have it we ended up moving very close to a boxing gym. Since I was becoming one of those out of control kids having disciplinary problems in school and juvenile run-ins with the law, my mother decided my disruptive behavior was me seeking a father figure or something so she dragged me to the boxing gym. Funny thing, how I hated it for about the first two months but for some reason I started liking it after that.:huh My behavior made a drastic improvement much to the relief of my teachers, principals and classmates.
Got into boxing because I was a huge fan of watching boxing and wanted to get in better shape without lifting and to be able to kick some ass despite being 5'7" and 135 lbs.