Your favourite boxers growing up

Mike Tyson was my childhood hero ...and strangely enough I also had a huge crush on Robin Givens

 

Muhammad Ali, Marvin Hagler

 

I grew up with a grandfather who was an old Italian who boxed in the army and he showed me all the tapes of the old Italian fighters, so mine were Rocky Marciano, Willie Pep, Jake Lamotta, Rocky Graziano, Ect, I grew up in the 90s and 00s tho, so my friends had no clue who I was talking about when it came to boxing lol

 

Johnny Wilson and Steve O'Dowd.

 

John Ruiz
Adrien Broner
Oscar DeLaHoya
Floyd Mayweather
Antonio Tarver
Wlad Klitschko

*(these are the exact opposite of my favorite fighters growing up).

 

Little Red Lopez.

 

Marquez brothers
Trinidad
Tszyu
Calzaghe
Holyfield
Toney
Finito Lopez

 

Holyfield and Roy Jones

 

GGG
Callum Johnson
Oleksandr Usyk
Billy Joe Saunders
Chocolatito

Then a bunch of guys from the past.

 

The first was Ken Norton. I started becoming aware of boxing at age 8-9 and probably saw him on one of the Saturday sports anthology shows. Or maybe vs. Ron Stander on the Ali-Young telecast.

Later Gerry Cooney. As a white kid growing up in a rural community, I had no understanding of racism or the struggle for civil rights and fair treatment that African-Americans have gone through. I thought I was just rooting for someone on "my team." Had I caught wind of the fact that Cooney started using coke after the Norton fight, the young me would've hated him for that.

Other favorites were Sugar Ray Leonard, Alexis Arguello, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Yaqui Lopez (who used to bring his amateur team to box our kids in the early 80's), Matthew Saad Muhammad, Salvador Sanchez... there were so many.

As I became an adult I pretty much stopped rooting for specific fighters (with a few exceptions here and there) and rooted more for the good of boxing: good decisions, fair stoppages, inspirational performances, etc. I've come to realize that the fighters are human beings and that many are flawed.

 

I grew up in 2000s and mine were Prince,Maywather,Gatti and Ward!
But when I grew up I used to watch Foreman,Marciano,Mancini,Benn,Tyson,Morrison,Liston,Dempsey,Charles,Frazier,Quarry,Walcott...they were my idols and still they are!

 

When I was a kid, it was Duran, Ali and Frazier, who are still 1, 3 and 4 for me now. When I became a teenager, Hagler and Sanchez were making their mark and are my #s 2 and 5. Some things never change.

 

Brilliant