All the best American HW's are in the NBA/NFL

[boliodogs]

It's hard to believe this used to be a hot debate among boxing fans for years, where had all the American HW's gone? It was generally split, the Americans believed that statement while the Euro crowd would laugh it off. They believed the best we could produce were guys like Chambers or Thompson. The Americans weren't fooled though, we'd seen the quality of our athletes among various sports and knew how unpopular boxing had become in America.

That decade long debate all came to an end when one finally slipped through the cracks due to certain circumstances, a 20 year old with aspirations of playing collegiate football/bball, now a HW champion.

Just because Wilder had aspirations of playing football and basketball doesn't in the least mean he would have been good enough to make the pros. Thousands have those same aspirations and only a tiny few make them come true.

[Mr Objecitivity]

Oh, sure. All the Evander Holyfields (6'2"), Rocky Marcianos (5'10"), Mike Tysons (5'10") and Joe Fraziers (5'11") play basketball now.

It's as ridiculous as claiming that "Americans ruled in the Golden Age of Boxing because Englishmen played Golf".

The opposite is probably true: Some of the best Europeans HW's are in other sports such as wrestling, Sambo, MMA, fencing and etc,..

And I wonder why Muhammad Ali wasn't playing basketball if it was so much better. And I wonder why some of the current top basketball players or of the last decade didn't decide to step into the ring with the Klitschkos to earn millions, if it's so easy.

Probably that's also the reason why there is no Irish world champion: Because he's piping the bag instead of punching it.

[A.K]

Wilder is greater than anyone in the nba or nfl

[Curt Henning]

Oh, sure. All the Evander Holyfields (6'2"), Rocky Marcianos (5'10"), Mike Tysons (5'10") and Joe Fraziers (5'11") play basketball now.

It's as ridiculous as claiming that "Americans ruled in the Golden Age of Boxing because Englishmen played Golf".

The opposite is probably true: Some of the best Europeans HW's are in other sports such as wrestling, Sambo, MMA, fencing and etc,..

And I wonder why Muhammad Ali wasn't playing basketball if it was so much better. And I wonder why some of the current top basketball players or of the last decade didn't decide to step into the ring with the Klitschkos to earn millions, if it's so easy.

Probably that's also the reason why there is no Irish world champion: Because he's piping the bag instead of punching it.

another dumb idiot

this guy actually said "some of the best euro HWs are in other sports such as sambo, fencing and wrestling"...LMAOOOOOOOO

what a clown

ali made 2.5 to fight frazier and over 5 to fight foreman

you know how much bill russell made playing basketball in his era? 100k a year.....lololol

i done told you UK sillynannies...the balance in money shifted greatly in the mid to late 90s

there used to be money in boxing in the US....Lawrence taylor made less than 2 mil a year in the early 90s and he was as big as it got in the NFL...meanwhile bowe, holy and tyson were pulling down big bucks

now a top 5 draft pick on defense in the nfl is getting a 17 mil signing bonus and 20 mil contract off the bat before he plays a snap.........

you guys have no idea about the landscape of american sports....so stop talking about it...you are all clueless

[bojangles1987]

And we'd dominate soccer too if we gave a **** about it. It is a sport for women and children here, and our girls rape at it. We have pathetic soccer infrastructure for men. If you have one ounce of athletic ability you are steered towards other sports before you are even 12. The City of New York had more professional boxers in 1910 than the entire country does now. Joshua is still going down the second Wilder lands even half a right. If old ass, slow on the trigger Wlad can do that with half of one...oh boy

This is what people outside America refuse to understand, or at least pretend not to understand, no matter how many times we tell them. Anyone worth a damn athletically gets pushed towards something else before they hit puberty. That includes Wilder. Boxing gets less and less popular every year because no one is taking their kid to a boxing gym if they have any talent. They make them play football or baseball or basketball. If they don't want to do that, they play lacrosse or something else.

It's not a coincidence that boxing's popularity began plummeting when the NFL and NBA became the dominant sports of America. A clear dividing line exists in the late 20th century where boxing fell off and those sports became big.

There is absolutely zero culture in place for kids to box, and as a result all our best potential boxers do something else because it's much easier money, much easier to succeed in, and not nearly as hard a life. Why the hell would you bust your body up boxing for **** money in a corrupt, badly regulated sport when you can probably make more just from college boosters paying you under the table, let alone if you're good enough to make it pro? Plus you get a chance to go to college and actually learn something to do with your life. No one's offering a boxing scholarship, but thousands get one to play football or basketball.

It's willful ignorance to believe someone like Deontay Wilder is actually the best boxer America is capable of producing. I don't know how many different ways Americans can explain it, but it's honestly getting ludicrous to even argue. If you disagree about our best heavyweights playing other sports, then you plain don't know what you're talking about.

[bojangles1987]

There's just no way people can believe it's a coincidence that all our ****ing halfway large champions anymore were former football or basketball players that came to boxing late because of injuries or because they couldn't make it in college or as pros.

[Tom Cruise]

I don't have any issue with this statement. But it does annoy me when people assume that all we do over here (UK/Europe) is box.

Boxing is very much a niche sport over here as it is in the US especially with guys younger than 16-20 which seems to be a pretty common age for people to pick up the sport.

If anything its more of an even playing field right now than it was in the past when the US really had a huge boxing culture compared to ours being similar to what it is now

[Tom Cruise]

Another issue i have is when people put the issue purely down to the growth of other sports. The American system, post Cold War, put less and less investment into the Olympic amateur system and it is really starting to take its toll now.

Amatuer/Olympic boxing, for all its corruption, is like the wholesome PG version of the sport. Safe enough that parents dont have too many issues sending their kids to the gym to train. And it is great for developing skills in an environment where you often cant hurt your opponent and they cant hurt you (much!). Not to say there isnt a huge amount still to learn in the pros, but for most western first world countries, the am circuit is crucial for producing top level talent, and the American Am system is in tatters compared to where it used to be.

[Smash]

blah blah we not doing so well and it cause we dont play that sport any more LOL heard it all before, excuses excuses excuses, boxing is a minor sport in nearly every country, its bigger in USA than in most countries and USA is basically the size of western europe, its massive, plus boxing is a non sport in many countries IE nothing

[Cutthroat]

30 million tickets sold for pro soccer. I bet that's more than your NFL and NBA combined. In a country 1/6 the size.

You had no clue what you were talking about.

lmao that number is nothing compared to the amount of tickets sold for middle school, high school, and collegiate sports in America. We literally have more kids playing sports than the 30 million sold for pro soccer, forget tens of million, we sell HUNDREDS of millions.


American schools depend on sports for yearly revenue, they've turned it into a billion dollar industry. How exactly do you think a $72 million dollar stadium for high school, not pros, not collegiate, gets paid for?

There is no place on earth that has their schools and sports linked like we do.