who's opinion do you value more?

:good
I need a poster or two to point me to good posts.... I suppose you are OK
(I don't do well with compliments:smoke)

 

I can tell, you've been hammering even your favourite poster, JT. What chance do the rest of us have?!

 

Just meaningless bantering, Sweet Scientist! (I hardly see anything as an honest hammering - just fun)

He's the one that informed me you are a great poster (It's hard to read through every post!). I agree with what was said!

 

JT post Rocco -------> :!:

 

Cheers mate, and I know you don't take things too seriously and like a bit of ribbing for fun. :good

 

It depends.

If the opinion is about the personality or even the fighting abilities of a fighter (particularly the intangibles) then it has to be the gym rat. Provided always, that the gym rat is intelligent and articulate.

When it means comparing fighters it will again be the gym rat if he has seen all the fighters, which over a period of time becomes impossible.

Now, if footage and information is not available to a gym rat it will have to be the person who has studied films and print of the fighters.

So, how about a gym rat who has access to footage and written stuff and who also is intelligent, analytical and articulate to boot!

 

That's a hard call to make. I'd say the extensive research would be key to have, but the first person perspective is what fleshes out this research. Each is its own dimension that can help the other.

 

It depends on rather or not I think they are honest and have no personal agenda to bring down or lift up a boxer.

 

I think I would value more the opinion of a young, logical researcher in most cases, in favour over someone like my great uncle, who saw Joe Louis fight Tommy Farr but then whose memory is also fading. Of course, someone who is still level headed at an advanced age is another story, and I would probably rather talk to them than some juvenile Boxreccer.

 

I think there is definately some merit to listening to the perspective of a person ( gym rat ), who knew a particular fighter personally. They had the opportunity to see these men up close, knew their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, even personal life issues, which a lot of times can effect fighters and even the most resourceful sportswriters may not know of them. On the otherhand, human beings tend to exaturate stories especially when enjoying the egotistical benefits of knowing someone famous or high profile. All of a sudden, a young kid with a dream sweating his ass off in a gym is now a god of sorts. On the otherhand, if the gym rat didn't paricularly care for this person, the stories could be biased in the other direction as well.

Experts are people who collect and compile information. They make good utilization of whatever material is available to them, for the purpose of producing an informed opinion regarding a particular subject. This holds true not only in boxing, but in every area of study. Experts are certainly capable of bias as well, given that they are afterall human. But a professional analyst or expert, may be more equipped to utilize whatever is avail to him as opposed to a kid who watched Joe Louis pounding on a bag, and may have had a few conversations with him in a locker room.

Nevertheless, both perspective are extremely valuable to me as a boxing fan. I suppose it depends on the individual expert or bystander that will make the difference in the amount of credibility and usefullness of the material.

 

As long as they are honest I think booth can be good sorceses of information

 

John,

For me personally, I`ll always listen more to the gymrat whos been up close and personal with the fighter/fighters themselves and been at the fights. The reason for that being that when it comes to research, I can do most of that myself and if I need to find out more information than I can find out on my own then I know of several people who I can contact to do so.

I still listen intently to what the researcher has to say, but he cannot tell me about the fighters personality or of incidents that took place away from the ring which someone who was close to the fighter can do. I honestly don`t even care if the gymrat in question is biased in favour or against a particular fighter, the fact remains he would still have storys to share that a researcher would not know about as he wasn`t there and that is what interests me the most.

My 0.02$

PS, check your inbox tomorrow John.

 

Did I mess you up that much?

Man, I sometimes forget my own ability