What is your favorite divison?

Bantamweight.

 

Yeah, um, if you think A LOT of Muhammad Ali fights aren't available, you're going to be in for a shock when you try to go back and watch other lighter-weight boxers from 40 to 50 years ago (or longer) and attempt to watch their entire careers.

If TV wasn't around yet, and they didn't live in New York, good luck with finding "most" of their career fights.

In the US, I think Floyd Patterson, being a New Yorker, and New York hosting a lot of the weekly televised boxing cards, was one of the first "names" who had a large number of his early fights on television. (And Floyd happened to be friends with a few of the only guys at the time who actively preserved boxing matches.)

Ray Leonard and the 1976 US Olympic boxing team was the first Olympic squad where a lot of their early fights were televised (because they were so celebrated).

But most young boxers to that point didn't have their entire careers televised. What we tend to have are the significant fights that were broadcast on TV or filmed and shown in movie theaters ... unless some "forward thinking" fan at the time paid for ticket and brought a hand-held film camera with him, or someone invested in a giant beta recorder and could afford to buy expensive tapes and not record over them.

In recent years, a lot of Hagler fights have come to light that were captured on silent, hand-held film cameras, not TV footage.

I mean, with Carlos Monzon, for example, good luck finding any of his first 75 or so pro fights.

We live in an era now where you can find nearly every pro fight and a ton of amateur fights of nearly every pro fighter in any weight class - because everyone has a camera on their phone.

But it wasn't like that, even a couple decades ago.

So don't be bummed if you come up short.