Yes, fighters spend years fighting for free so that they can be slightly more marketable when they turn pro.
No not that. The skills are real. The opposition is real. Just the numbers. You really believe nearly every prospect has near 400 amateur bouts? There's nearly never an official record for the numbers. They nearly always come from the management / team. Even back in the day, kid Chocolate and management lied about having a 100 - 0 record to market in the early career. Sugar Ray Robinson was also marketed to have and 85 - 0 amateur record, even though in other places it was reported Billy Graham beat him. You think they don't do that today, when amateur boxing is hard to get a report on?
Because they want to win gold medals for their countries. If they win Olympic gold, they get guaranteed lifetime income from their government.
Because they are happy to hide in the amateurs fighting teenagers and getting a comfy wage off their governmenrs. Plain and simple.
Typical dumb statement. Lomachenko won his first Olympic gold medal when he was 20 and everyone he faced in that Olympics were older than him. There are a few teenagers at elite amateur level nowadays.
I often thought that. You'd think in 100 fights you'd have at least one bad day, especially in a 3 round fight.
this is the right answer. It is very comfortable to get a wage from your country for smashing teenagers in the olimpic selection matches. It's not so comfortable when you have real talent to turn pro at 15 like JCC did, or to fight a world champion at 17 yo like benÃtez. I know extremelly talented fighters in my country who just refused to turn pro, in my country they dont pay very well, so they squeezed the olimpics all they could and retired to become trainers at 30-33 yo or so. Not a single match as pro. Cubans are a different case, for obvious reasons. It's normal they have 400 fights in amateurs, national sport plus they cannot become pros. They are competing in amateurs since they are how old? like 8yo or so?
The only thing that matters is the big amateur tournaments where we do have the fighters records. Obviously they get paid but not like they do in the pros. Does their popularity effect their wage sin the amateurs?
It's an Eastern European and Eurasian thing. Back in the day it was impossible for boxers from those areas to fight pro. Boxing there formed around strong amateur programs. Its changing obviously. Fighters from the former Soviet bloc can now go pro and have had some success with it. I'd expect young and talented boxers from these countries to increasingly turn pro sooner. I think its happening but is a process. It maybe never get like Mexico where kids turn pro at 12 but it will evolve to the more pro oriented direction. Basically evolve to go where the money is.
