Only two of the BoxRec top 40 heavyweights have a fight scheduled for the next five months, and both of them (Dimitrenko and Platov) are fighting "TBA". :? Only about ten of the top 100 heavyweights have a fight scheduled for the next few months! Why are they so inactive? Of course, a few have fought recently, and the top heavyweights are well paid and so don't need to very often. But, interestingly, the top ten have been more active than most of the next 90 on the list... What about Kevin Johnson, Friday Ahunyana, Malik Scott, Timor Ibragimov and all the others who have not fought this year, and are still not scheduled for the next few months? They haven't made a lot of money yet in their careers. :huh Being inactive for long periods of time doesn't help one's boxing career. It's not easy to get back into shape when you're 40 or 50 pounds overweight, so when they do finally fight, they're often fat and slow! :-(
So what's happened to Brewster, Briggs, Brock, T. Ibragimov, Austin, Williamson and all the others? Have they retired?
I think a big problem is that so many of the top heavys are controlled by King. King locks them up for multi fight deals then won't allow him to fight except on his cards. While it is true that some are lazy and don't want to fight much, it is also true that contractually some heavyweights just can't fight unless their is a card put on by their promoter that they are allowed to fight on.
I know that Peter had to wait on Oleg's injuries and if Vitali and Peter are scheduled to fight and Vitali at the last moment pulls out for another injury I'm going to **** a brick
As far as the HWs are concerned, the more inactive the better. That's less BS I gotta sift through when I'm channel-surfing on a Saturday night.
Good qestion. I think Austin is on the short list for Golota's next fight. I think Briggs is planning on yet another return shortly. I think this will be about his umpteenth return, after having claimed to be retired, yet again. Timor Ibragimov seems to have fell off the face of the earth, after his Tony Thompson loss. Brock, I think is planning on continuing shortly, according to an interview on the site that talks about boxing a few months ago. Not heard on Brewster. I think he should regroup and continue, if his eye is durable enough. It seemed to hold up fine in the Wlad rematch.
But that's what I said, read my post. It's the next 90 of the top 100 that I'm wondering about, especially those from #11 to #40 - people like Kevin Johnson, Malik Scott, Friday Ahunanya, Calvin Brock, etc. They have become strangely inactive. I know Don King wouldn't let Austin fight after the embarassing loss to Wlad, and he's cruelly imposed inactivity on some others who want to fight. But some of them including Austin are free agents now.
I think these boxers should just each have an easy fight to keep active. Ray Austin, Brock, Chambers etc. could all do with a confidence boosting, keep active fight. Briggs and Brewster are probably just retired though.
I hope so! :bbb He should be more active during these prime years, since they don't last long. He'll start to decline soon - in fact, he may already have. I thought in his last fight against Sultan he looked just a bit slower.