Something John Garfield said on the Tommy Bell thread made me think about this idea. To what degree do you hold losses early or late or even the odd setback in a fighters prime against that fighter? You can make the argument that in the older days, fighters were forced to fight better opposition, so the occasional loss shouldn't really be held against some of these guys. Today, a glossy record means so much more. The lone exception I can think of in the present day (well, almost present since he retired recently) is Gatti. Win or lose he was always going to get another good HBO payday because of his exciting style. But thats about it. Fighters seem to take the easy track these days because its so much easier to do that now, but the nearsighted fans will look at the record of an older figthter and disregard what he did because they see more than one or two losses on their record. This frustrates me more than anything else about young fans these days. They assume todays standard and ways of doing things has always been the way it is now, and have no idea that it used to be a lot tougher to get to the top.
