Remember when you had to be patient? There were queues, and tuts, and it often felt like a test. “Wait your turn,” you were taught from an early age, and there was a discipline to it, all that waiting. In the wait, you learned about yourself. You learned how to sigh and smile at the same time. You convinced yourself that good things come to those who wait. You believed that by waiting you were being polite – a good person.
Nowadays you see evidence of the opposite – impatience – wherever you go. You see the sense of entitlement, the first-world anxiety, and the lack of both manners and appreciation. You also see how nothing means anything anymore, for nobody has to wait, wish or work for it. That goes for just about everything: food, toys, films, news, love. It’s perhaps only now that we have started to realise that the value of something is determined by the difficulty we had obtaining it and that convenience and quickness will sometimes lead to a feeling of emptiness rather than satisfaction.
In boxing, it’s no different. Winning your first pro fight, for instance, will not mean the same as winning a world title fight due to the latter’s level of difficulty and the feeling of it having been earned. By then, you will have really waited for it. There will have been a process of yearning and learning. You will, during this process, have conquered other contenders who shared the same dream and each January you will have asked yourself, “Will this be the year it finally happens?” The world title therefore is no more than a reward for your patience and self-belief. By exhibiting both en route to securing it, you reveal a maturity you will likely need when the time comes. You also give yourself ample opportunity, in terms of time, to improve and iron out any creases. This, again, will be invaluable when that title shot eventually arrives.
For most, this journey to a world title shot takes on a familiar shape and length; it cannot be rushed or shortened. Yet there are of course some boxers, particularly those who were patient, long-serving amateurs, who believe there is no time like the present and see no reason to wait. These boxers, often mature for their age, just go for it, suck it and see. They figure that even if they arrive prematurely and it all goes wrong, they will still have enough time to recover, try again, and get it right next time. To some extent, they are correct, too. Another chance will come. It usually does. But still, that doesn’t make the prospect of fighting for a world title ahead of time any less daunting or risky. Nor does it mean that impatience – different from ambition – should be seen as an admirable trait in a boxer set to turn professional.
Take poor Pete Rademacher, for example. He won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics and then, in ’57, wanted to become the first ever boxer to challenge for the world heavyweight title on his pro debut. So certain was Rademacher that he could beat Floyd Patterson, in fact, it wasn’t long before Jack Hurley, Patterson’s promoter, and 22 wealthy Georgians (who guaranteed Patterson’s purse of $250,000) offered to put their money where Rademacher’s mouth was and bring to fruition the strangest of all heavyweight title fights. It then took Patterson only six rounds to make a mockery of Rademacher’s pre-fight proclamations (despite Patterson having been dropped by Rademacher in round two). In the end, seven knockdowns put paid to Rademacher’s juvenile dream and that was that. He lost his next fight, too, against Zara Folley, and would never again fight for the world heavyweight title. His record, at the time of his retirement, was 15-7-1 (8 KOs).
Today, Pete Rademacher is known mostly for his impatience and that pro debut. He has in that sense become, if not a punchline, a cautionary tale; proof that it sometimes does us good to wait in line. Now, even if a boxer considers doing something similar, and few ever would, they need only look at what happened to Rademacher – not just against Patterson but afterwards – to settle down, breathe, and instead take their time.
That’s not to say boxers now fear being fast-tracked, mind you. In fact, in the 69 years that have passed since Rademacher risked it all, we have seen countless examples of boxers challenging for and often winning world titles having only had a handful of pro fights.
Leon Spinks, another Olympic champion, famously dethroned Muhammad Ali in his eighth pro fight, Davey Moore stopped Tadashi Mihara to win the WBA light-middleweight title in his ninth pro fight, and Jeff Fenech, the popular Australian, chopped down Satoshi Shingaki in only his seventh pro fight to claim the IBF bantamweight title. Before that, you had Saensak Muangsurin, who, in 1975, won the WBC super-lightweight title with an eighth-round knockout of Perico Fernandez. That was Muangsurin’s third pro fight.
Much later, another Thai boxer, Veeraphol Sahaprom, lifted the WBA bantamweight belt in his fourth pro fight, when beating Daorung Chuvatana on a split decision in 1996. You then had Japan’s Kosei Tanaka, who won the WBO minimumweight title in his fifth fight, and Naoya Inoue, also from Japan, who won the WBC light-flyweight title in his sixth pro fight, stopping Adrián Hernández inside six rounds.
More recently we witnessed Murodjon Akhmadaliev become WBA and IBF super-bantamweight champion in 2020 with a win over Daniel Roman in pro fight number eight, and last weekend we saw Andy Cruz attempt and ultimately fail to become the IBF lightweight champion in just his seventh pro fight.
All that means now is that Cruz, a gold medallist at the 2020 Olympics, must dust himself down and follow the Vasiliy Lomachenko route to world-title glory. That, you might recall, was still quick, yes, but not straightforward. In fact, Lomachenko, like Cruz, felt he could be fast-tracked on account of his amateur pedigree only to discover in pro fight number two that Orlando Salido, the WBO featherweight champion, was a professional with hard edges and a master’s degree in the dark arts. It was a close fight, of course, but Lomachenko that night fell short, pipped by Salido on a split decision. He had the moves and the skill, absolutely, yet what the Ukrainian lacked was experience in the kind of battle Salido, a veteran of 55 pro fights, was desperate to enforce. This inexperience led to Lomachenko’s downfall, with impatience getting the better of him. It left his record at 1-1 after two pro fights.
Still, Lomachenko learned from that early blip and made no mistake next time. In his third pro bout, there he was again challenging for a world title – the same WBO featherweight belt – and this time Lomachenko was fortunate enough to share a ring with an opponent more to his liking. The opponent second time around was Gary Russell Jnr, a fellow technician, and this difference, both in style and level of experience, permitted Lomachenko to properly express himself and demonstrate to us all the type of champion he would go on to become.
The same could now happen to Andy Cruz following Saturday’s narrow points loss to Raymond Muratalla. He would have known going into that fight that there was a chance he had taken it too soon, but he would have known as well that there is as much to gain from losing a fight like that as there is from winning it. After all, once a boxer tastes setback early, they start to understand both what they are made of and the importance of timing. They also learn the power of patience in a fast-moving world.
