All due respect to Visoli, if you’re 22, you’d better be easily handling at 18 year old in the gym if you’re a future world title contender. There is a huge difference in those 4 years, as you see in every sport, boxing is no different. I don’t think it says anything about their long term ceiling.
Those are good numbers for boxing, considering it is generally lighter weight class fighters. The biggest fights are all yet to come. Pac-De La Hoya is going to be 2 million plus, no doubt. Pavlik-Hopkins and Calzaghe-Jones are going to be really big buys, so this is a very solid year.
Our sport is in good shape my friends, don't let anybody tell you otherwise. The heavyweight division has got to get going again somehow, unify those titles, and we're getting back to mainstream.
Those are the two biggest names, but some others that jump to my attention would be Pacquiao, Hatton, and Cotto is also getting there. Pavlik only one or two wins away from being a legitimate superfighter. Take
Pacquiao, Hatton, and Cotto, match up two of those 3, and your at least getting up over 700 000 buys I think (not that Cotto-Pacquiao would ever happen).
As mentioned, David Haye - Wladimir Klitschko could get a lot of buys.
If Pavlik and Calzaghe both win and they match up, that is a really big fight, not quite in the 1 million range but close if they do a 24/7 show.
Take Hatton/Pacquiao/De La Hoya/Mayweather, match up any 2 of the 4, you've got 1 million buys or more. Margarito versus De La Hoya or Mayweather would probably also get 1 million buys. The welterweight division is where it is happening right now. The problem is that these fighters make soo much money, that they only want to fight once a year and are all constantly thinking about retirement. I don't blame them, which rich boxers wouldn't think about retirement?
If we had a solid 2 years with each of those guys taking 3 fights a year, sometimes against each other, sometimes against other opponents, then boxing would take some huge strides in getting back to the mainstream.
Smith has to fight to win. The sparring partner mentality is absolutely there it seems.
I like Smith. He has his own website, and he goes onto forums and interracts with his fans personally. I once sent him an email asking what was up with him when he hadn't been fighting after the contender, and he personally replied. He seems like a really cool guy.
He just doesn't have that mentality that he is going to grab fights and take them. He is all too willing to lose close decisions.
Deontay looks much more ripped than what I remember. Maybe it's because his shirt is off but damn maybe the guy should move down to cruiser and do some major things.
I agree, I think he should just campaign at cruiserweight. He is 23 years old. Sure he might fill out a bit more as he gets older, but not that much more. He is a full grown man at 23 years old.
He weighed in at 208 his first fight, and I assume he was trying to put on as much weight as possible for it. This means he could almost make cruiser without even having to cut any weight.
He has a great personal story, and he has an olympic medal. If he becomes a world champion at cruiserweight he'll make lots of money because of this. He doesn't need to be in the heavyweight division.
hey man..boxing is boxing..color and race are only brought up by idiots..i dont care about,race,nation,or creed..just bring skills and balls to the table and im a fan
yeah, I immediately regretted bringing race into the discussion right after I posted that actually, so I apologize to everyone. I just have a feeling he might be perceived differently if he looked like the rest of America's top athletes. Once again, I don't really want to steer the discussion in that direction so I apologize.
I already respect his skills but he just dements me with his negative style! Just let ur F*CKIN hands go u giant fairy!!! And not just the jab.
Thing with Wlad is i think people (i know i do) actually WANT to like him, he just needs a bit more devil in him
Once again, I can draw on Lennox Lewis comparisons. Particularly after his fight with Tua, but in some other fights as well. A lot of people said he should have taken Holyfield out in their first fight. Eventually people will realize that the guy needs to get credit for winning.
First off im not big on Lewis, and i hated the Tua fight but in Tua he had THE hardest one shot puncher in the division in front of him, not Sultan Ibragimov.
I hear u tho, people epreciate u more when ur gone
That's true, Tua was pretty dangerous. Whatever the hell happened to that guy? If he kept training hard he definately would have been holding at least some sort of title belt by now. He was a really interesting character too.
I will root for the fatty because symbolically it means victory of the common man over the muscle bound robot who doesn't show his human failings.
At least Arreola's failings (at weight) are on display, so he's like the common man who enjoys a beer and a burrito, or 5 of each.
Thats interesting. Interesting take.
Yes he had gotten tortured, but it was HIS decison to go to the Armed Forces in a time of war, not anyone elses
Uhhhh... he was in the armed forces, but even if he wasn't he would have been drafted to go to war. Stupid hippie scumbag.
they are haters..the man only fights mandatorys and top 10 competition..what more do people want from the guy????
They mostly want better opponents, but the opponents aren't as bad as most people think.
I think Arlovski can do very well in boxing. I don't see him ever holding a title belt, but if his handlers are patient, and he trains exclusively in boxing, gets some experience, he can do well.
That would be a terrible style matchup for Tyson. A great jab and right cross, tall fighter, all wrong for Tyson. I'm pretty sure Klitschko would win, provided he is smart enough to grab Tyson when he gets in close.
****, I hope Roach is working with him a lot on his defense. To be a world champ Khan needs to become a really great defensive fighter, which hopefully he can do.
I blame ODLH for making this fight. I DO NOT blame Pacman for taking this fight. Pac will come out of the fight better than when he went in regardless of the outcome. Oscar on the otherhand, is lose/lose everyway you look at it. I don't like the fight and I think it's a joke, but yeah, I'll be watching it. Not paying for it, but I'll be watching it.
Oscar is lose/lose? The 30 million he is going to get plus the incredible exposure for GBP isn't exactly a loss.
At the end of the day, the two guys still have to weigh in in the same weight class. At the time of the weigh in, 24 hours before the fight, they both have to be within the same 7 pound range. That has to count for something. You've used Paul Williams fighting Klitschko as an example, but I don't see those two weighing in within 7 pounds of one another.
The bottom line is this was the biggest fight to be made in boxing, and they made it. I don't have a problem with that.
It just really echos my frustration. There are all these people that have the power to help and improve our sport, and instead these people sit around whining about how it is dying, rather than helping out at all.
Hasnt this article been posted about 2000 times here already.
Haha, my sincere apologies if it has. I just read it for the first time today, and I haven't been on this site in the last couple of weeks. I suppose by posting an apology message I'm doing more damage than good by bumping the thread back up, but oh well lol.
What David Haye is doing makes no tactical sense at all. I don't know why he would want a Klitschko in only his second heavyweight fight. He should at least take one tune-up fight against a guy 6'6" or over, because he hasn't seen that shit at cruiserweight. Jameel McLine would be perfect. A capable trialhorse with a good chin and similar size. In my opinion two or three more fights, done frequentle, 2 months apart, would be better. It also would give time for some excitement about Haye to gather to promote it.
In conclusion: he is really extremely cocky (not necessarily a bad thing) or he is in it for the money (probably a bad thing)
How many of you are following Andre Ward's career? Ward couldn't possibly be more humble and polite. He's hella talented...he might be the next P4P king if he can get the right fights. Basically, he's everything a lot of people claim to want Mayweather to be. But I truly believe that's the reason why he flies under the radar.
I'm not going to deny that PBF comes across as an a$$hole a lot of the time, but I don't believe for a second that you all would like him better if he didn't act that way. Because if that were true you'd all be Andre Ward fans. There are very few people on here who give two $hits when Andre Ward fights and he fights way more often than Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Mayweather hasn't fought in over a year and this board has ALWAYS been filled with Mayweather threads. I'm a fan of his, but I get tired of it. We get it...most of you don't like him. But I don't see you all propping up young fighters who're consciously trying to set a positive example. How about starting threads about positive role model fighters instead of ALWAYS starting the same lame threads.
Andre Ward flies under the radar because his toughest opponent so far in 4 years has been some guy called sugar poo. If Andre Ward gets to be a P4P top 10 he will be huge, I have no doubt, especially with the olympic gold.
Hagler clearly doesn't follow the sport all that much anymore. There is no way he would have said that if he knew about Tarver - Dawson result.
The fight that I personally would most like to see Calzaghe take, would be against Glen Johnson, but there isn't enough money in that one.
All three should be on the same card, and then we'll have a real PPV event. Boxing needs the type of infrastructure where these type of things can get done!! Actually, maybe the European one should be on a different card, since it has to take place in Europe.
Good poll, but I think that Povetkin is a nobrainer. David Haye only has one heavyweight fight, Arreola is still very unproven and to be honest, I don't think he is all that good. Nobody else on that list has even remotely come close to stepping up.
I don't think there is any way English could be his first language. We've heard plenty of Nigerian fighters talk over the years, and they don't sound anywhere near as bad as that. Whenever I hear a Sam Peter interview, I begin to think more and more that the guy might actually be mentally challenged.
Felix Trinidad was a really big puncher at 147, a bigger puncher than Miguel Cotto at that weight, and Trinidad always did really well against guys who would come forward against him. He lost to fighters who were slick boxersand gave him movement, I think Margarito would be tailor made, so I'll pick Trinidad.
I don't think that smaller gloves makes boxing safer, which is the implication here. And we don't know that the fight would have been over in round 1. Maybe it would have lasted until round 10, and since the punches were coming in harder it would have put the guy into a coma.
I kind of see your argument that in some cases quicker knockouts would improve safety, but overall, saying that punches landing with harder impact would make for a safer sport flies right in the face of logic. If nothing else that would have to be scientifically researched a lot before being put into play.