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Who's to blame for keeping a zero in the L column of a boxers' record?
Years ago, fighters retired with hundreds of bouts under their belt and a few dozen losses (Think Sugar Ray Robinson). Nowadays fighters have longer breaks between fights, sometimes having just 1 bout a year, and it seems like having a perfect record is key. Obviously a modern take on safety measures is the cause of this, but it brings with it this obsession with not having a loss on your record.
So who's to blame for this? Is it Frank Warren? Or maybe promotors in general. Its definately a great marketing tool anyway.
But lets look back to 13 or so years ago when Frank Bruno had the nation behind him in his bid to beat Tyson for the world title. We all know the outcome, but the fact is we had a not so fantastic fighter with a few losses to his name in there and the whole nation behind him.
Now Hatton has lost just his second fight, he's suddenly a poor boxer and out of his depth at world level. Calzaghe retired undefeated, but never came up against anyone on top of the P4P ladder.
It seems if you lose in todays times, you could be forgiven. But lose again and your fans turn on.
But come on, all the best boxers through history have lost fights except for Marciano and Calzaghe and these guys come under serious critism.
To sum up, back in the mid 90's a few losses didn't seem to be such a bad thing and the nation still backed our fighters. Now it seems the be all and end all.
Years ago, fighters retired with hundreds of bouts under their belt and a few dozen losses (Think Sugar Ray Robinson). Nowadays fighters have longer breaks between fights, sometimes having just 1 bout a year, and it seems like having a perfect record is key. Obviously a modern take on safety measures is the cause of this, but it brings with it this obsession with not having a loss on your record.
So who's to blame for this? Is it Frank Warren? Or maybe promotors in general. Its definately a great marketing tool anyway.
But lets look back to 13 or so years ago when Frank Bruno had the nation behind him in his bid to beat Tyson for the world title. We all know the outcome, but the fact is we had a not so fantastic fighter with a few losses to his name in there and the whole nation behind him.
Now Hatton has lost just his second fight, he's suddenly a poor boxer and out of his depth at world level. Calzaghe retired undefeated, but never came up against anyone on top of the P4P ladder.
It seems if you lose in todays times, you could be forgiven. But lose again and your fans turn on.
But come on, all the best boxers through history have lost fights except for Marciano and Calzaghe and these guys come under serious critism.
To sum up, back in the mid 90's a few losses didn't seem to be such a bad thing and the nation still backed our fighters. Now it seems the be all and end all.