They claim to be boxing fans but ask them who their favourite fighter is and they usually say 'Mike Tyson' At least casual football fans would still keep it current and say Ronaldo or Messi. It's the equivalent of in football them saying George Best or Paul Gascoigne. They always are in the past, don't know much about the present day fighters.
Nearly finished Tyson’s book. What an absolute mad man. Every page he’s hammering the beak, punching someone, hanging around with pimps and knocking back out of loads of birds.
In his prime (early 20’s) he was in my opinion the most dangerous heavyweight of all time. That version of him before it started to quickly unravel would have sparked anyone. Career wise, he wasted most of it. He did well to retain the world titles post jail but it was a faded version of him. I’m a bit disappointed in the book up to now. I really like reading about a fighters perspective of the build up, the ring walk, highlights of the fight etc but a number of his significant fights are described in a small paragraph, almost like a side note. Strangely, his sister dying barely gets a paragraph. It’s just pointless drug and alcohol fuelled anecdotes.
The most annoying people are boxing nerds who've never seen the inside of a gym and probably can't do 10 press ups, never mind fight, but think they are boxing experts who know it all and talk down to others because they can recite the entire undercard for Randy Turpin vs Sugar Ray Robinson off by heart, or have their all time pound for pound lists filled with obscure South American and Asian flyweights that no one has ever heard of.
Putting on a pair of gloves and exchanging punches gives you a completely different perspective on what these guys go through. I don't think you need to have boxed at the highest level to have a valid opinion, but if you have no active experience at all there is a gap in your knowledge base. A bugbear of mine is when a fan (casual or otherwise) blasts a fighter for not doing x or y, when the obvious reason why he isn't is because every time he does he gets punched in the face. That and denigrating fighters as cowards if they pull out of the fight; it's not the ****ing colosseum, and we don't need to see people executed just for our amusement. If the fighter is clearly beaten, they should be able to get out of there and fight another day.