John Ruiz retires

That doesn't mean he deserves it. And thanks for putting that in italics 'cause God knows i wouldn't have been able to read it otherwise.

The problem is that boxing standards have become very low. I don't know how many times I've had to listen to tell me something "isn't so bad".

They might as well get it over with and change the name to The Hall of Pretty Good".

 

That is the only fight of his remotely worth watching.

 

do you agree that gatti may be inducted?

 

Could it happen? Sure, folks can be plenty dumb sometimes. And...there's that whole lowering of standards that I was talking about. But that doesn't make it a good call.

Should it happen? Absolutely not. He is not deserving.

I guess I'm a harder marker than most, and I don't let my personal feelings about a fighter determine whether a figher is HOF worthy or not.

Gatti was a pretty good fighter who wouldn't have been a "champion" if there were not multiple titles per division.

 

I am not sure who you mean by most but at least in this thread nobody so far has disagreed with your take

 

Standards are intermittently low. They wax and wane.

 

gatti definitely should nOT be inducted to the hall of fame. but i wont be surprised if he gets in there.

just out of curiosity do you consider Namath's career numbers to be hall of fame worthy?

 

LOL. I should preface this by saying I'm not really much of a fan of Namath and especially not the dirty rotten stinky Jets (yuk!!). My forum handle is a name some of my friend gave me here in RI when I moved to New York and it ended up sticking. So if you were trying to make some point based on me being a Namath fan, it's not gonna work. ::

As for your question. If we go strictly by the total career numbers, probably not. But football is a team game and is therefore different than boxing...so I don't see a direct parallel between the two sports. Namath was one of the best QBs in the league (and probably the best during the 60's), but he spent quite a few years playing for bad Jets teams, which had a negative effect on his career stats.

Namath was as big of a deal as football ever had and was involved in a lot of big NFL moments: He was QB of the AFL's first Super Bowl champion and that win made the merger between the NFL and the AFL legitimate. Without that victory for the AFL, the merger may never have happened and who knows where the NFL would be now. Namath was also the first QB to throw for more than 4,000 yards in a season and that record stands to this day as the record for a 14 game season. And he was basically the Ali of football...a HUGE star who also crossed over into television, movies and commercials. And when Monday night football had its very first broadcast, the Jets were one of the teams playing...and that was because of Namath. Unfortunately for Namath, the Jets got worse and worse and he took a beating each year in the 70's until finally leaving NY for LA and subsequently retiring.

So if we strictly look at his career stats without knowing anything else about his career and the impact he had on the game, then no. But...Namath's impact on the game was more than just the stat line. I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid he was as big of a star as there was in any sport.

Considering how important he was to football and the milestones he achieved, I have no issue at all with his inclusion in the NFL Hall of Fame.

 

I don't know about that, but they are definitely low now.