If a fighter can not get top fights

[Finito2K]

Then he should at least try to remain active and somewhat relevant.

It worked for Bernard Hopkins, who prior to Don King's 2001 middleweight tournament was making chump change.

[pacmanis1]

There's a happy medium between giving up some to make the big fights and selling yourself too short. If Pacquiao said he'd only fight Floyd for 60% of the pot most reasonable people wouldn't hate on Floyd for walking away from that.

[John Locke]

Is this deja vu or has Larry already made this thread...several hundred times?

[MPX309]

Difficult to say really. The days of Don King are over (I know he's still about) but I mean boxers in general have more say now, and they ain't letting their promoters mug them off so easily. Everybody wanna get paid, especially if the potential opponent is dangerous. Buuuut, truth is, if the money is there fighters will fight. I bet my bottom dollar if Jacobs was offered what Brook got for the GGG fight, that fight would have been made in an instant.

[The Comic DON]

Challenges and guys still climbing the ranks should be the only ones expected to take short money.

When you're the champion you don't take less money because the challenger isn't willing to go through the same lengths you went through to become the champion.

For example, Golovkin was willing to take short money to face Martinez, Pavlik, and Strum but those guys said no. So instead he paved his own way to the champion position.

Now it's up to guys like Quillin, Jacobs, and Saunders to take short money to face him. Why should champions be expected to take shot money when they already took short money to get to where they are.

That's not fair or just. Fighters need to man up and stop trying to bend the system in their favor. It doesn't work like that.

The only time this rule should be ignored is if the champion is fighting a superstar hall of Famer so they can add the Hall of Fame name to their resume.

[boxcityusa805]

Should they instruct their team to offer their opponents more and even take less to get these fights made and get the big money on the back end? Or just keep taking meaningless fights?

Define top fights?

If you want to become a titleholder easiest way is to move up the rankings and become a mandatory and you will get a shot at the belt. Don't take a step aside and force the fight.

Viktor postal could have done that with cherry Garcia but took step aside money and a Garcia fight never came. He was fortunate to get a unification with Crawford after he picked up garcias vacant belt.

Postal had a chance to potentially be on a 3 fight win streak over Garcia, mathysse and Crawford, all top fights and in the pound for pound discussions.

[yngwie]

If i'm confident that i would win, i would take less money, that's for sure.
But if i was an avoided fighter, i would fight the top ranked fighters by every organism, so the fight would become mandatory at some point.

[Sparked_26]

The problem is when established fighters get very good money for fighting guys that can't beat them and then standard logic dictates they should be sufficiently compensated for fighting someone who could beat them.

If you were Andre Ward and you could get away with it you would just fight Paul Smith every 3 months for 3 years and call it a day. It is a dangerous sport. Well in that scenario, it is at least for Paul Smith. Andre Ward would be fine!

I don't think any elite boxer we discuss in these boards is taking short money for a fight they might lose. They're are barely taking very good money for a fight they might lose and why should they really? The networks have made a rod for their own backs.