Has There Ever Been Worst USA Heavyweight's Than Today?

[nomadman]

Maybe they are.....then again, can you really call guys who play a girl's sport "athletes"? :thinking9:

Whether you consider soccer a "girl's" sport or not is irrelevant if we're talking about potential talent. Even if you're not, there are more than a few examples of failed soccer players taking up a combat sport at a relatively late age and going on to compete at a high level, and even become champions. More so than failed NFL or NBA players at any rate.

As for whether they're "athletes," try playing the sport to find the answer to that question.

[New England]

Maybe they are.....then again, can you really call guys who play a girl's sport "athletes"? :thinking9:

Poet

the diving turned me away from soccer for a long time, along with the sort of sporting culture that comes with it. i don't really get it in the least, other than the fact that there is one referee for a field larger than an american football field, and the rules are strict and the play requires serious monitoring.


however, i will say that the men who play european soccer are some of the best athletes that the world has to offer.

soccer is the worlds game, and only the best of the best athletes can rise to the top due to the worldwide competition

in the average game a midfielder will run 6, 7, 8 miles
there are usually no subs for top tier players
the games are 90 mins long and play very rarely stop for long periods


it's a supremely athletic game



i do understand what you are saying, of course, these men are not playing a sport that is violent. there is no way to say for certain how well their athletic gifts will hold up when somebody is trying to murder them

it took maravilla martinez more than a decade to be able to deal with an antonio margarito type, even though martinez is the world class athlete and margarito's best asset is his ability to get hit in the face

and martinez still doesn't react well to being hit in the face (even though he's shown he's got heart.)



unrelated notes:
zdeno chara has some fast hands and he's wearing elbow pads when he fights (chara is a 6'9" 260 lb czech defenseman on the boston bruins. he's a beast.)

maybe some great HW's, lhw's and CW's (maybe even big MW's too,) are playing hockey




the next great canadian HW champion is playing hockey in minnesota.
quote me on that





seriously, though, for big men, other sports will suck away the talent pool from boxing in the states for the foreseeable future. these sports are just bigger than boxing and have a greater pull on big men.


if you're a world class talent level BW, though, nobody is drafting you to the NBA, and we get to see you fight.
thank you nonito donaire for not being 6'10 and 245 with lean muscle

[nomadman]

My major beef with this whole NBA/NFL argument is that it just assumes that the US is the only country in the world in which big money sports are sucking potential talent away from boxing. Name me a country in which boxing is far and away the number one professional money paying sport and I'll give you green k. Far as I know there aren't any, and boxing will always suffer a dearth of talent to whatever the sport of the masses might be, be it American football, European football, Cricket or Ping Pong, simply by virtue of sheer numbers. And if you're talking potentials, then the toughness of any of those sports becomes irrelevent.

[New England]

My major beef with this whole NBA/NFL argument is that it just assumes that the US is the only country in the world in which big money sports are sucking potential talent away from boxing. Name me a country in which boxing is far and away the number one professional money paying sport and I'll give you green k. Far as I know there aren't any, and boxing will always suffer a dearth of talent to whatever the sport of the masses might be, be it American football, European football, Cricket or Ping Pong, simply by virtue of sheer numbers. And if you're talking potentials, then the toughness of any of those sports becomes irrelevent.

if we're talking about the HW division in the argument the key factor is the size of the men in the NFL and NBA

the rim in the NBA is more than 3 meters off the ground. most of the guys in the NBA are well over 2 meters tall.

for scale
lennox lewis would be medium sized and truthfully on the small side in the NBA. every night he'd be playing against guys who were taller and longer and stronger than he was. every night. i am not exaggerating. almost every team in the league has at least one guy who would be a head taller and 40 lbs heavier than lennox in his prime (about 235)

25 year old lebron james is bigger than lennox lewis was at his largest, lebron is 265 lbs and he looks like he was chipped out of a block of new hampshire granite

it's really something you've got to see (i'm assuming you aren't from the states here, i don't mean to be a dick)


the nfl and the nba have athletes that are almost exclusively HW

i can think of a few other sports that operate almost exclusively with 200+ lb men in fighting shape
certainly not with money and talent like the NBA and NFL



i think the main argument is that the HW division has historically been dominated by the states
and now that other sports put boxing in the backseat for big men, the lack of american dominance in the sport is evidence that the other american sports are diluting the division and robbing boxing of its next great american champion


it's not set in stone that a great american HW champion will ever come around again