Does every good fighter have a dark side in them?

There are several all-time great fighters who outside the ring are the most humble and nice people.

Pretty often it turns out that these media darlings have done some fucked up shit in their personal lives. Bowe, Leonard, Mosley, Louis, Robinson etc were not as nice people as you could think based on their interviews.

Ray Leonard talked about this in his book. He claimed that there was Ray Leonard, the regular average joe, and Sugar Ray, a sadistic fuck who wanted to beat people up and loved to cause pain. At some point these roles got mixed up and the Sugar Ray started to show outside the ring too, doing drugs, cheating and beating up women.

So I begin to wonder: does every good/great fighter have a dark, sadistic side in them?

Can you be a successful fighter if you do not ENJOY beating people to pulp?

 

I would imagine the vast majority of successful ones do. The fighters that don't probably stop the sport early on.

 

On the other hand, Maxie Rosenbloom was quoted as saying "I never wanted to hurt nobody"

overall, I'd agree... You need to be a lot meaner than the average person

 

Yeah but could Rosenbloom have hurt somebody even if he did want to? ::

 

Maybe his dark side came to play on other areas of life. I bet he loaned money to his wife and charged huge interest rates from her.


I remember reading that Buster Douglas was known as 'too kind' and his father called him a pussy.

 

Good point :l2:

 

Have I got a deal for you!

 

I'd say no- you have to be a bit fucked up. But I think that might abstract across extreme success in most fields

weirdly I had this convo with a (non boxing fan) friend at the weekend who said he wanted to keep watching Joshua's fights because he seemed such a nice guy. Me: 'he makes his living enthusiastically and remorselessly smashing people's faces, pretty sure he'd be the biggest bawbag any of us have ever met'

 

Andre Ward, Chris Eubank Jr and Keith Thurman are three good examples of fighters with dark sides.... as well as white sides.

 

Good point. Even though chess is superficially very far from boxing I have read that chess players are sadistic fucks too. To be able to spend all your life playing chess you have to really like defeating your opponents. The best business leaders might be that way too

 

:drl:

 

I don't think Bowe counts as a fighter with a dark side, as I attribute his problems to brain damage.

Prior to losing his marbles, I think Bowe was always known as a gentle giant and good guy.

 

I think this goes for any hugely successful person in any walk of life. Takes a certain amount of aggression and sociopath-ism to be successful.

In answer to your question:

I think boxers have to have the desire to hurt people to be successful in this business .

 

True.

Michael Jordan is a bigger asshole than probably 97% of boxers in history.

 

:laugh11:

 

Sometimes you see a kind of noble mercy like Holmes waving the ref (Mills Lane was it?) over so he wouldn't have to beat up on Marvis Frazier any more ...

 

Though I suspect that was also out of respect for Joe as much as anything

 

It's hard to punch someone in the face. Even when you're angry it's a hard thing to do . For me anyway. It takes a really aggressive person to easily punch another in the face. Therefore if you're doing that 24/7 and as hard as you can, gloves or not, you have to be wired differently to most .

 

Probably. Betcha if Holmes was teeing off on Foreman like that he wouldn't have wanted any ref to step in.

 

I read it differently. I didn't see it as mercy, per se, I saw it as Holmes showing everyone how much of a mismatch it was, and therefore how great he is, by showing that he's calling on the ref to stop it.

 

I dunno if I'd call it all out sadism but a certain all encompassing drive, self absorbsion, entitlement etc. Something not far off sociopathy, probably

 

True

 

Marvis Frazier was a motherfucking bum, but I digress....

 

Everyone knew it was going in so that probably helped ... I do think Larry didn't relish beating Marvis up, though

Joe rushed that kid and tried to make him a heavyweight... He would've made a good cruiserweight ... He was too small for the heavyweight division

 

As a heavyweight, yes

 

No, it was definitely what Cdogg said.

Holmes had known Marvis since he was a young kid from Joe bringing him to the gym, and didn't wanna seriously hurt the overmatched scrub. He wanted Lane to step in, but Lane took AWHILE to do so, so Larry pounded the shit outta Marvis about 10 seconds longer than he wanted to.

 

Yup

 

I just never saw Holmes as a merciful fella. I guess I'm tainted by seeing him butcher Ali in the first ever boxing fight I saw live . I always saw him as a sadistic cunt after that.

 

If anything, Holmes was merciful in that one.

The jump kick over a car against Berbick demonstrated Holmes' crazy side

 

Yeah Holmes issued a pretty reluctant thrashing to Ali, I thought