When was the last time a fight had more than 12 rounds?

And when/under what circumstances was it customary for them to have 15?

 

The were a couple in the mid 90s....

They were kind of 'gimmick' matches

You also had the NABF experiment of an extra round to break a draw:

Ron Essett WS13 Sanderline Williams...

 

I say we bring the good old 45 round matchs back. Who is with me??

 

Given that fighters fight so rarely these days...I would go for 15 rounds as standard, because that makes an hour of boxing.

 

You cannot get a 15 rounder into an hour of TV time; so we will probably never see 15 rounders back in the mainstream.

 

I call for 15 rounds to come back also.

 

I would like to see it, but it will never happen.The beginning of the end.

 

45 rounds part the men from the boys.

 

15 rounds should be reinstated for PPV fights and i think certainly undiputed championship fights. If you are fighting for just the WBC say, that can go 12. But for ones like RJJ had all the belts or Lennox Lewis had all the heavyweight ones, they should be 15.

By the way i'm all in favour of no-limit fights, fight till one guy either is KO'ed or dies. But hey with Ruiz around we may have to start timing fights with a calender if that rule came into force :yep

 

The fact is that boxing peaked on televison during the 15 round era, in large part precisely because of them. It's only since the 12 round era began that boxing has disappeared from the network airwaves. Larry Holmes routinely defended his title live on prime time ABC telecasts with Howard Cosell, and he was a ratings hit. (At work the next day, even the females would be discussing the outcomes of his matches.) And Larry was famous enough to get mainstream commercial endorsements with sponsors like KFC. Today, nobody knows or cares who the champion is. Back in the day, Hagler, SRL, Ali and Holmes had their names, faces and signatures on sporting goods merchandise in all the major department stores. Duran played a zipgun carrying tough on an episode of Miami Vice, an incredible mainstream gig for a foreign national. Today, boxing's champions are nobodies to mainstream culture.

 

its true. The bull**** they made up about 'more boxers die after the 12th' is crap. I seen it on a website, can't remember the name but search 'boxing fatalities' on google, and over the last 100 odd years the most dangerous round is about the 6-7th. There have been more fatalities in the 1st round than in the 12,13,14,15th put together.

 

i wonder if paul williams can throw a 100 pucnhes a round for 45 rounds haha

 

As I recall, 15 rounders were mostly part of a larger "sports spectacular" show, like NBC's Sportsworld, or ABC's even better Wide World Of Sports. In that arrangement, a 15-rounders' potential to skew a time slot was minimized. They could work other stuff in around the fight as filler. Now, both shows are defunct. :| I'm not sure if this is one of those chicken-and-egg situations, whether the boxing died because those shows went away or the other way around........

 

Incidnetally, at a WBC convention in 1983 lots of ex-champs were asked whether fights should remain at 15 or go down to 12 and more than half said 12. Surprising, especially when among th 'twelvers' were the likes of Ali, Monzon and Foster.

 

I think we would have fewer UDs and more KOs/TKOs if we went back to 15 rounds. Certainly whenever two Champions fight, particularly when they are undefeated should be 15 rounds. Fights like Calzaghe Kessler and Mayweather Hatton should definitely be 15 round fights.

As to safety - taking more hits to the head cannot improve safety, but then, if you felt you couldn't continue, you would not get up after the bell, or your corner would withdraw you before the end. But since these fights would only happen when two Champions fight, it shouldn't be that much of a problem and anyway, winning in those cases/really seeing what the two guys have to offer is probably very important! (like in tennis, where they don't have a tiebreak in the fifth set...)