I always hear about these players in the NBA and NFL that would have been great boxers. Who are they? I don't see many of these athletes who may have been champions. Remember Larry Johnson? He was supposed to have had some type of amateur boxing career and in one of his basketball fights, he looked like a woman! Here are some guys to start with: Ron Artest (LAKERS) Adrian Peterson (VIKINGS) Lebron James (HEAT) (Reminds me of Michael Grant) Kobe Bryant (LAKERS) (Looks like he'd have a Thomas Hearns chin) Amare Stoudemire (KNICKS) Ronnie Brown (MIA) Julius Peppers (CHI) Vernon Davis (SF) Kevin Durant (THUNDER) Brandon Jacobs (GIANTS) (He was supposedly 43-2 as an amateur and is actually managing boxers now!) Who? Better yet, name the player and name the fighter they would most likely resemble
Just because a guy is a good athlete doesn't mean he's going to be a good boxer. it's really impossible to say if any of these guys would be good at boxing.
Brandon Jacobs is the guy I have always thought of when this subject came up. Ray Lewis also was a boxing fan but both of these guys never went into serious boxing because the NFL was a much better option. none of those basketball players are realistic as they are all 6'7 or taller. I love Larry Johnson but I would be surprised if he had a legitimate boxing career.. as mentioned just look at his fight with Alonzo morning! they threw about 6 punches each and they missed all of them
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I know this. My point is, who are these people that are supposed to be boxers if football or basketball was not an option? The story is how America does not have anymore good heavyweights because they are all in the NFL and NBA. I can't identify any of these so-called hidden champions. With the exception of Brandon Jacobs, I just don't get why people keep saying that's a primary reason why there aren't any good/great American heavyweight boxers!
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+1 Boxing is as much about intangibles like heart and will and brains. You cannot gauge those values from a chart which lists vital statistics.
Wrong. Smith is a bitch. He only has balls to throw punches when the other guy is taking a knee and looking the other way or in a dark room watching game film.
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A combination of factors which, when taken together, require a great deal more thought and appreciation of historical and economical factors than the old throw-away comment about "all our guys playing basketball now". Truthfully, the decline in the so-called American HW can be seen as starting as early as 1990, if not earlier again.
Right - and I don't mean to oversimplify it. But I do, however, think that the increased popularity of some of the other sports combined with the greater monetary and college scholarship advantages that these sports have is a major factor in the decline of American Heavyweights... even if it is absolutely not the only factor. I agree about the decline of American heavyweights starting in the early 1990's, and that's close to when lucrative television contracts and heavy tv exposure helped american football really explode as a dominant sports phenomena in this country. Not sure what the "so-called" comment is in aid of. This isn't a myth - for a long period of time the division was dominated by American fighters, and present day there are zero noteworthy, quality heavyweights in this country.
Early 90's is Fab Five territory...surprised they didn't touch on that in the Jalen Rose documenatary. The truth is, though, that if you can play basketball at a young age in this country...you can have a path mapped out for yourself before you even reach high school or college.
It can be simplified, up to a point, and in fact would have to be simplified in order to get most Americans to follow it {::}. There are a great many factors and they all play their role, to some degree or another. Maybe. But I doubt it. Football has as good as always been played in America and exponents of grid-iron who have tried boxing have always come up short. Relative to whom? The current non-American HW's, or the American HW's of yore??
Well, you may disagree but I really believe that it is one of the key factors in a multi-faceted explanation for the decline of American Heavyweights. Doubt all you want, it's a fact. The NFL is significantly more lucrative, attractive and advantageous now then it was back in the 1980's. It has become a bigger draw of the country's athletic talent pool than in prior decades. You saw the top ten American Heavyweights thread started last week. Do you think the fighters listed in that top ten are as good as a top ten list from 2005, 2000, 1995, 1990, 1985, 1980, 1975, 1970, 1965, or 1960?
honestly no one is asking for you to chime in if you don't want to. i have been open in this that I really don't know the full answer... but i like to discuss it with people who also like to talk about it and have given it some thought no one has been able to give me a good straight answer without some agenda behind it
I would never argue that the recruitment impetus has removed some fighters from the path of boxing and diverted them, like an aquaduct, into the realms of other sports. As I say, there is a lot to it. In 1900, HW boxing in America bore no resemblance to what it would become by 1940. Take, just for instance, the Corbett/Jeffries/Sharkey and "White Hope" ages. These periods were responsible for defining the entity that would become recognised as the "Heavy-Weight Champion". Jeffries, Sharkey and Corbett got the ball rolling, featuring in the first fights to be recorded by cameras. Fighters later flooded in from all angles, eager to avail of the financial windfalls created by the "need" for a "White Champion". Guys like Al Palzer, Gunboat Smith, Luther McCarty, Stanley Ketchel and eventually Jess Willard, became well-known. Willard won the Championship, and was then himself ruthlessly dispatched by Jack Dempsey. Dempsey is responsible for the game moving beyond a brutish, hard-scrabble pursuit, laced with all manner of profanity, some of it racial, most of it plainly physical, and into the "modern" era, where the HW Champ was as much celebrity as he was fighter. Dempsey actually did precious little fighting. Instead, he posed, and preened, and bankrupted small towns, and knocked out French light-heavyweights. But he defined what it was to be THE man. He did massive numbers for his fights with Tunney- who himself continued the dynamic of fighting nobody and looking good for the cameras, marrying heiresses, and basically being known for reasons which had nothing to do with boxing. In otherwords, Dempsey and Tunney transcended the sport. The point is that the HW division, and boxing itself, is in a constant state of flux. Everything stays the same but everything changes too. Joseph Stalin was in his pomp when Joe Louis was beating Max Schmeling. The Iron Curtain was well and truly descended by the time Marciano retired and Patterson took over. That was 1956- when Budapest was being shelled by the Red Army. 1900 to 1940 saw the abolition of the color line, the introduction of the 15 rount title fight, the decline of the bare-knuckle era and the move into regimented, disciplined, "organized" fighting with rankings, venues, TV etc. In 1956, half of Europe and most of Asia Minor stayed pinned back behind an Iron Curtain. The Cold War saw politics played out through Sports. Ferenc Puskas, the greatest footballer of his era, was known as the "Galloping Major"- started his career at Budapest-Honved, a sports-club with a military background. Not necessarily Communist, but from 1945 onwards you an imagine whose thumb they were under. Same in Russia- ZSKA was the predominant sporting club. These clubs received the best supplies of everything necessary to turn out the best athletes possible, to compete with their American opponents. Both Klitschkos and Oleg Maskaev had military backgrounds. Vitali won World Military Honours as a boxer. Maskaev boxed for The Army. By 1996, and with an innate decline already preciptant in the ranks of American HW boxing, athletes who were being produced by these clubs now made their emergence onto the World scene. Many of these athletes moved West, to the now recently-unified Germany, which only 6 years previously was divided into East and West Germany. Germany provided the finishing and "final assembly" for the ex-Soviet raw materials. Dieticians, nutritionists, new training methods, TV, grooming, you name it. Professional "Box-Haus" outfits like Universum, which could, and did, provide professional services such as sparring and accomodation to burgeoning fighters. Its no accident that Wladimir Klitschko won an Olympic Gold, then World Honours, within 4 or 5 years of each other. He was German-based at the time. So was Vitali. So was Dimitrenko, Michelczweski, Artur Grigorian, Zsolt Erdei, etc. This is history. America came out of the bare-knuckle era, through the white-hope and color-line era, and into the 1940's and the TV era. Thanks to global events, and thanks to Americas own innate industry, boxing flourished and produced great champions. As the country got richer, the country got softer. Civil Rights, the absorption of the Irish, Italian and Jewish minorities into the American political and economical mainstream would eventually whittle the talent down. Oleg Maskaev, for instance, arrived in America with no money and no representation. He was forced to gut it out through thick-and-thin and eventually succeeded. When he lost, he lost to a still-hungry Sam Peter- who is from Nigeria. In otherwords, what happened to Oleg Maskaev is what used to happen to other American fighters. None of this is accidental. In the absence of real competition, the American scene got soft. It was soft when a former 175lbr and a fat, former great, George Foreman, were fighting for the titles in 1995. It was soft when Riddick Bowe was throwing the belt in the bin and refusing to fight Lennox Lewis. It was soft when Andrew Golota, a man who came to the USA to drive trucks, despite being the owner of an Olympic medal, utterly boxed the ears of Riddick Bowe. Proof of the softness was the response of the crowd at MSG- rioting. It was soft when soft-fuckwit Max Kellerman was telling us that Wladimir Klitschkos name would never be mentioned in the same sentence as Roy Jones Jr. That the soft-witted mentality I am talking about. There was a whole other World out there that wanted to try its hand and wanted to succeed. Sure, there are other factors- the commercialisation of basketball and football. The recruitment drive in those areas. You have to WANT to fight. These Europeans have wanted it. I think thats a key difference.
There's a good post Irish. I would say that in addition to the desire to fight, there also has to be an element of NEEDING to fight to escape certain dire economic circumstances - a desperation, if you will. And in this country the increased popularity, lucrative nature, and college scholarship feasibility has increased the talent drain to other sports such as basketball, wrestling and american football and has given people many more options, in some cases much more intelligent options, than stepping inside a boxing ring
His post isn't that good, he fails to take into account is that there are far more avenues in sports to succeed in this country - and others - today than there were previously. You want to compare the minimum NBA salary to the minimum a boxer can make in this country? Or compare how many high school or college scholarships you can get by boxing?
Well then- the Soviet System promoted gymnasts, swimmers, runners, pole-vaulters, long-jumpers, weight-lifters, you name it. The truth of the matter is that they found out what you were best at and they made you stick to it. Of all the kids who take up boxing in the US, of those of them who do not stick to it, how many of them drift into big-time football and basketball? None. Of all of the top-top basketball players in the USA, how many of them would be better boxers than they are basketball players? None. It is not like there are guys who actively make a choice between being ATG basketball players on one hand or being ATG fighters on the other. They ultimately end up in basketball as they are better at it. Sometimes, being better at something is a simple question of wanting to be better at something. Ultimately, it is the same thing. People were desperate to be good at something in the Communist countries. If all they could do was fight, they fought. You got better food, better housing, better privileges if you made up some part of the "Systems" athletic corps. Better to box and get a better education and better food than rot on the sidelines. They wouldn't let you into the basketball programme if they thought letting you in there meant a guy who was slightly better at basketball than you were got forced out.
Maybe if boxing gyms were as abundant in this country basketball gyms and outdoor courts and every school that played basketball in P.E. and had basketball teams also had boxing, you'd be able to gauge this better. As it is, it's a meaningless statement.
I am meeting him halfway - he states in his post "Sure, there are other factors- the commercialisation of basketball and football. The recruitment drive in those areas." I think that he minimizes just how important a factor that is in the whole equation, but I think it is proper that he at least acknowledges it. I don't remember Irish ever even acknowledging it before (and granted i have not read all the posts by him or others on this matter.)
How many boxing gyms existed in the USSR during the same period? None. The private practise of martial arts was illegal in the USSR. Did you know that? Everything was done under the auspices of the STATE. However few gyms the USA had, the USSR had NONE. Not fewer....NONE.
This matter is like a Swiss-Watch. Remove some of the cogs, and the watch stops working. Remove other cogs, and the watch runs perfectly but you lose the date or the alarm or something. I think in this argument there are vital cogs and less-vital cogs. Its a matter of opinion as to which is which. That will differ as between individuals.
