Fun fight while it lasts, I could see Golota winning most of the rounds but I have no faith in him. He is a loser, one of the biggest losers ever in boxing. I've never seen a guy more pathetic mentally. He would to start to come undone. Like hut says, THAT IS WHAT HE DOES Eventually, Golota FAILS as always. Golota was a pathetic loser, every fight fan should hate his guts, but he doesn't have any.
I can dislike someone who makes no effort to battle those demons. And this is coming from someone who had plenty of them. I have no respect for people with emotional/mental baggage that don't fight and give everything they've got to persevere. I have known too many people, myself included, who didn't quit, who went through hell and came out of it better people to have a whole lot of sympathy left for a guy who was given one chance after another for years and made no effort to fight whatever was eating him.
Jake, you're my boy, and I understand this post is four years old, and I'm nitpicking one word. But didn't Tua throw as many or more punches than any heavyweight ever has vs. Ike?
Not to be an asshole (seriously) but did your friends have world class heavyweights throwing punches at their heads?
Even when you stand in front of him most the 'punches' Tua throws are those little 'crab touches' as I call them. Little arm prods from his cross guard, which compubox counts. In terms of punches with intent, Tua didn't throw that many. I watched round 4 at random and counted the genuine power shots.....you won't even believe how few I counted so I won't tell you. :: Maybe round 4 was misrepresentative so pick another round at random and count for yourself & see if you agree. Golota could throw proper punches and MOVE. Which I reckon is a very different proposition. He'd still find a way to blow it of course. Probably summersault out the ring in the 12th and start trying to face fuck the commissioner or something.
More people probably never get over serious emotional problems than do. It's not like Golota wanted to ruin his boxing career.....Life is hard, sometimes you need more than just 'trying'.
Whatever demons Golota had, he never faced them. Its why he was such an unstable guy. Ike was nuts too, but he never lost it in the ring. Once Golota feels his power, he'll shut down as usual and Ike puts him away.
no, but they also weren't given millions of dollars to do it on SEVERAL OCCASIONS after having already clearly shown a propensity for not caring. And yeah, I have known people, myself included, who went through far worse shit than having some punches thrown at them in exchange for huge sums of money. People who fought with everything they had to battle mental illness, addictions, all kinds of things. Golota is a guy with demons and that is a sad thing. What is not sad, and is just infuriating, is that he appeared to make no effort to battle them. He was happy to behave like a moron in and out of the ring. Hut says Golota never conned anybody but himself? Oh really, what about the trainers who invested their time and work in him? what about the fans who paid money to watch these fights he was in? Andrew Golota conned a lot of people and did nothing to battle the demons that haunted him. I don't have any respect or empathy for him. I would, truthfully, have respected him more if he'd put a gun in his mouth... either fight or give up, I can respect either of those, because they both take courage (anyone who thinks it doesn't take balls to kill yourself is nuts) and determination. But wallowing in it, feeling sorry for yourself, making no effort? No, I don't think too highly of that.
Nobody, and I mean, NOBODY ever lives with mental illness without trying. If it's bad, you need some drugs to help you, to make your body stable enough for you to feel strong enough to actually deal with things. You need really good care, you need a good doctor. You need at least one or two people in your life that you know you can count on, all of that. Nobody ever got there by just trying, you do need all of that other stuff. But, make no mistake about it, there is not a soul on this Earth suffering from Depression, Schizo-Affective disorders, panic disorders, bipolar issues, etc. running the whole gamut of mental illnesses, who got stable (I don't like "better" so much, because it makes it sound like shit goes away, which it does NOT for people with serious cases) and were able to manage their illness without TRYING and WORKING REALLY, REALLY HARD. You could have the best medicine, the best doctors/psychologists, the best family and friends, all of it... but at the end of the day, you never get to a liveable place without going through hell and forcing yourself to face everything head on, it is HARD. Without trying, you will get nowhere with mental illness.
Andrew Golota wasn't sitting in a mental institution all those years. He was making big money as a prizefighter. He was a man with more means than most people can ever dream of having. And he's not in an institution right now. I have known people like that, people who are now in places like that, people who were beyond help, people whose illnesses were so severe, so crippling that there was no alternative. Andrew Golota isn't one of those people, he's not a paranoid schizophrenic, he doesn't have an unmanageable illness. He just did the bare minimum to deal with it.
I read Riddick Bowe's recent biography. The opinion of Golota (from his own people) was that he feared performing in front of audiences. The fact that Bowe stood up to his shots didn't have that much to do with him breaking down, hell he brutally headbutted Danell Nicholson in a fight which he dominated and where Nicholson couldn't hurt him at all. Golota just hated performing, he felt huge mental pressure inside the ring and wanted out of there any way he could and as quick as possible. It was also said that he never wanted to be a fighter but instead an unknown truck drives, but people talked him into pro boxing as they realized he could make big money. So, is it correct to hate Golota or ridicule him for what he was? I really don't know. It is obvious that a guy with such mentality should not be a fighter in the first place. However, you can't really try to reason his actions either or say that he simply should have concentrated or that he lacked guts. It is not like he controlled his actions and made a decision to foul or quit, he couldn't control himself
I don't buy that for a single, solitary second. How come he didn't do these things in EVERY fight, then?
Because sometimes the mental pressure hit him harder than other times, it is not like he had fouled in the fights that made most sense now either. It's like people who suffer from panic attacks: they don't necessarily come when you expect them to. I do believe Golota was mentally ill. Not seriously enough so that he couldn't get through living and normal daily activities but so that he was not in full control of himself. It really is difficult to understand what goes through such person's mind. It is easier to approach it logically and simply conclude that he was weak or stupid, but I don't think it works like that
The only people I can't abide are bullies and the boorish. I try to judge people by their character, not their usefulness to me.
Well I don't think you or I know how much effort he made to fight his demons. But if anything is going to cause a meltdown for someone who's mentally unstable it would probably be fist fighting in front of a huge audience. Pressure can make anyone act irrationally.
And as I say, everyone else can do as they please, and I share your comtempt for those types. I just cannot stomach pea hearts either.
there are greater pressures than that, frankly. I'd say Golota's 85 blown second chances are a pretty good measure of how little effort he put in to fighting his illness.
ah, a Brother in Arms:love: yeah, I've been through the ringer a time or two, so I'm apt to be more understanding than most people... so you know I'm not just shooting off at the mouth
