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My answer to that question is a resounding Yes. The current thread on Oscar/Tito got me to reconsidering.
To historically come out on top of your generation, or not to, that is the question.
The L in the record books means everything, despite our protests to the contrary as living contemporaries.
Recognition for a deserved victory would have put Oscar over the top. By that time people and maybe all of boxing were thinking they were just a little satiated with everything Oscar. The official loss can in some respects be regarded as a guarded admonishment of one who was simply too successful and goody-goody for his own good at the wrong time in his career with respect to legacy.
Hell, people are still wont to say that Oscar could never win the big ones. It is easy to she where that part of his reputation got started.
In fact, I posit that even horrible decisions can affect a man's legacy in a big way, but I am going to let you vote on it. I believe even moderately bad decisions can affect legacy quite negatively. Enough generations go by and you are left mostly with what is written in the win/loss column of books. Even where you can go review films for yourself, that does little to mitigate the impact of an unjust decision and its long reach down the corridors of history.
Even where it is recognized that a fighter got a raw deal, there is never anything official about this. A few people like us might write about it on a boxing forum read by a few hundred people; a few scribes try to keep the notion going against the forgetful tide of history.
But the boxer is never given his due for that fight and it may have been the biggest fight of his generation. No stamp of approval for all time to come, despite a few protesters lifting sleepy heads from time to time..
You go vote now.
To historically come out on top of your generation, or not to, that is the question.
The L in the record books means everything, despite our protests to the contrary as living contemporaries.
Recognition for a deserved victory would have put Oscar over the top. By that time people and maybe all of boxing were thinking they were just a little satiated with everything Oscar. The official loss can in some respects be regarded as a guarded admonishment of one who was simply too successful and goody-goody for his own good at the wrong time in his career with respect to legacy.
Hell, people are still wont to say that Oscar could never win the big ones. It is easy to she where that part of his reputation got started.
In fact, I posit that even horrible decisions can affect a man's legacy in a big way, but I am going to let you vote on it. I believe even moderately bad decisions can affect legacy quite negatively. Enough generations go by and you are left mostly with what is written in the win/loss column of books. Even where you can go review films for yourself, that does little to mitigate the impact of an unjust decision and its long reach down the corridors of history.
Even where it is recognized that a fighter got a raw deal, there is never anything official about this. A few people like us might write about it on a boxing forum read by a few hundred people; a few scribes try to keep the notion going against the forgetful tide of history.
But the boxer is never given his due for that fight and it may have been the biggest fight of his generation. No stamp of approval for all time to come, despite a few protesters lifting sleepy heads from time to time..
You go vote now.
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