Its being mooted already. Is this Seth Mitchell any good??? I need to know in advance, for the records like.
What a shame it would be for Vitali to fight past his prime and be consequently beaten by a retired football player.
Why did he have to come out of retirement? Not good enough to be a footballer perhaps? But good enough to be a boxer? Seems congruous with the established wisdom alright.
To my knowledge, there has never been a professional boxing champion who played in the NFL. To my knowledge, there has never been a professional boxing champion who could have played in the NFL. To my knowledge, there has never been an NFL player who could have been a professional boxing champion. While we all wish to think otherwise, it seems strange that there is not a single example, doesn't it? Perhaps being able to run fast means you are lacking something necessary to succeed in professional boxing? Perhaps the body type for one sport isn't the ideal body type for the other. Perhaps it is something else. Or perhaps it is just a fluke and there are 1000's of potential boxing greats who have wasted their athletic primes wearing helmets.
Hold on fellas, here we go again!!!! Damn, sometimes I wish Chisora had only started to fight earlier, we could have avoided this mess altogether. Don't ask too many smart questions Mike, or the talented amongst us will labour like archaeologists over the ornateness of your handle.
Vitaly is really fighting the bottom of the barrel right now. I know the talent pool is very thin right now but he could obviously do better than Seth Mitchell
exactly, it's not even worth to waste my time naming names. Anyone with a modicum of boxing knowledge simply knows that Mitchell has no business in a title fight
You mean nobody's been able to, or been inclined, to pursue and excel at the highest levels two endeavors, each one requiring decades of preparation and devotion that must coincide with the athlete's physical development and peak? I wouldn't say it's a coincidence and I wouldn't say it's at all surprising either.
Plenty have been inclined to. Decades of preparation and devotion is false. It is not all that unusual to find people in the nfl who have played football less than a decade and it's not that difficult to find people who have become boxing champions with less than a decade of boxing experience. While it shouldn't be common for people to make the jump between the sports at a top level, imo, it is perplexing that there isn't even a single example of someone who has done it.
Some fine day the unique nature of the sport of boxing is going to dawn on people. Boxing is all about composure and resilience under fire. EVERYONE gets hit. Its how you deal with it that counts. If anyone from football makes it as a boxer, its going to be the QB. Only the quarterback knows what it feels like to stand in the pocket, with considerable force bearing down on you. Its the only position in football which accurately reflects that most important quality in a fighter- poise under stress. The stress is coming from all angles. All the RB or WR has to is receive the ball. The QB has to receive the snap, get his head up, avoid the incoming and get his own ball off, successfully. The Running back is fleet, he can always run out of bounds, pull his hands back, outrun his tormentors. The linebacker knows the blow is coming and where it is coming from and only has to take it once, at once. Yet every boxer of note whose roots are in football comes from an area of football where athleticism or strength are key factors. Defensive end Charlie Powell. 6'3", 215lb+. A giant of a man in the 50's. Never made it. Had a few big wins but fell short. This expression of "elite athlete" has become the norm in sports circles these days, but athleticism only helps after you have decided how to apply it. Chris Arreola, despite being described by man-boobs Goosen as an "elite athlete" {yes, that happened} over comes his physical "shortcomings" by knowing how to box and by being, innately, a boxer. The aforementioned Powell had stints at everything- basketball, baseball, football, before he landed in boxing. You have to want to be a boxer, in my opinion. Boxers are just different, upstairs. Its not an athletic concern alone.
