Wtf is the minimum age to become a Thai prizefighter???

There's learning the ropes (metaphorically and literally) - and then, ideally much later, there's applying those years worth of honed craft and strictly regulated & supervised competition in parity with other kids your own size and relative age into hard sparring, and then ultimately the next & final step of going pro.

Mayweather and other early starters like him, in this country, wore headgear, fought exclusively other children matched carefully within like weight & dimensions of physicality, and was never put in a situation where it was basically human cockfighting and they were just ripping into each other while uncaring adults leered on placing bets. The latter is what passes for a Thai amateur scene.

 

I think Barrera could have started off in 1992 hitting the ground running against the likes of Josefino Suarez (or comfortably reaching that point within 3 fights or so) without skipping a beat. I'm not really sure facing the likes of David Felix, Federico Lara x2, Ignacio Jacome, Oscar Granados, Sebastian Amica, Pedro Martinez, Jose Yanez, Ivan Salazar, Esteban Rodriguez, Abel Hinojosa, Juan Facundo Lopez, Jaime Rojas, Sergio Aguila, Javier Diaz, and Miguel Pina with their combined 81-65-5 record informed him becoming the ATG he did. I doubt he needed that many tomato cans to learn enough to become what he became. It could have been a far more truncated process, beginning in the early 90's rather than in 1989, with MAB still carving out pretty much the same career.

 

Eh, I think everyone knew in advance, no? There was controversy around it for sure but no sneakiness IIRC. You might be conflating it with the Olympic...runner, I want to say? I want to say her name, weirdly on the nose as it was, actually contained the word "semen"..