(In hindsight): If you could call time on a career...

Afternoon all,

Having a slow day in the office so thought I would post a discussion topic to help me through the rest of the day debating with you fine folk….

When thinking about the careers of my favourite fighters I often pinpoint a night when I think to myself ‘I wish they would have retired that night’, whether this has been following a great win, a gallant effort in defeat or a devastating loss. As we all know boxing more so than other sports sees competitors continue way beyond their best for a majority of reasons, to pay off a large tax bill, the need to rekindle past glories or simply failing to accept that you are past you best.

Regardless of the reasons why they carried on (as that is a separate discussion) which of your favourite fighters do you wish would have retired earlier and on what night and after what performance?

One of mine for example would be Roberto Duran who I wish would have called time on a brilliant career on the night of 24.02.1989 after he wrestled the WBC middleweight belt away from Iran Barkley in a thriller. I would have loved Duran to bow out on top as a world champion and end with a career record of 85-7-0 (61 KO’s). At this point all his world titles had been won and retirement would have spared him a lacklustre third fight with Leonard an unnecessary beating at the hands of Joppy and further defeats to fighters who he would have dismantled at his best.

Although personally I don’t feel by continuing to fight for another 12 years after this date harms Duran’s legacy in terms of his all time standing as what he had achieved prior to his declining years cannot be taken away from him, but do any of you feel differently, do you feel that fighting on too long and damaging your record effects a boxers overall legacy? If so, is there anyone you would rank higher if they had retired earlier than they did?

Cheers

Holyfield after the second Lewis fight.
Roy Jones Jnr after he won a heavyweight title.

Think Roy Jones would have a better legacy and would be generally better refgarded had he called it a day after the Ruiz win, would not have had the embarrasing loses to Tarver, also has become slightly fashionable to dismiss the Ruiz win with the passing of time suspect had he gone out on this it would perhaps not be as such.

Yeah Jones after Ruiz for me.

Ali after Shavers, possibly before.

Ali after the third Frazier fight.

There was nothing left to prove and his career from that point on became little more than a sad parody of what had gone before. Awful performances, unnecessary losses, the stigma of the decision handed down at the end of the third Norton fight, and the shocking toll it extracted from his health make the whole thing sad and unsavoury, for me.

HumanWindmill wrote:Ali after the third Frazier fight.

Yeah I almost said that, dunno why I changed my mind.

Leonard after Haglar. Norris and Camacho not needed.

morales could have retired after his win over manny, but he has given us some entertaining matches since so not complaining

Audley after he won the Olympics

Frank Bruno after Alladin

George Foreman after the Grill

But, on a serious note I think there are a few that just went on two long, recently you have Jones and STILL Holyfield, but there are also people who you wish had continued, Naz for me, would be one.

Thought RJJ after Ruiz would be a popular shout. As for Holyfield i would have been happy with him just having the one more bout after Lewis II which as it turned out was also a win against Ruiz for the WBA belt.

Maccarinelli after Haye
Holyfield after Lewis 2
Lewis after Tyson
Ruiz after Tua (would've saved us a lot of dull fights!)
Jones Jr after Ruiz
Bruno after Lewis
Benn after McClellan

Another one, for me, would be John Conteh.

His gallant but losing effort to recapture his old WBC lightheavy title from Saad Muhammad was followed by an immediate rematch, for which Conteh turned up in shocking condition and very probably drunk. A meek and inglorious surrender followed, and Conteh would only ever step into the ring on one more occasion.

A far from fitting end to the career of a marvellous fighter and potentially a genuinely great one.

Agree with Ali after Frazier III but there may have been a certain poetry to him calling it a day after Zaire. Old champion comes back to defeat the young monster and then calls it a day having already avenged his loss to Frazier.

Morales after his win over Manny. His legend would be enhanced ten fold given what Manny has subsequently done.

Johnson after beating Jeffries.

SRR after he avenged his loss to Basilio in '58.

Audley after his first fight against the fat P.I. from Miami.

Truss on about 5 separate occassions.

Jimm Watt prior to commentating.

HumanWindmill wrote:Another one, for me, would be John Conteh.
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Conteh isn't one i would have necessarily thought of HumanWindmill- thanks for that.

Cheers for the other suggestions too guys-how about the other part of the question do any of you downgrade fighters on all time lists due to them campaigning past their best or do you look at their peaks only when ranking them?

By the time, he fought Rocky Marciano, Ezzard Charles was already a good bit past his best. He'd long since lost his killer instinct, was dropping decisions to men like Harold Johnson and Nino Valdes that he probably wouldn't have three years earlier and was generally about half the fighter he had been.

So gamely did he perform against the Rock on two occasions, though, that we'd have to allow Ezz his last hurrahs. However, that would be it. I'd draw stumps on his career immediately after that second fight with Marciano, so sparing us the indignity of five years of miserable scuffling and a lot of losing to men who, once upon a time, couldn't have beaten Charles with a hammer.

It's a good question, ermietrude - I think that you make allowances for disastrous tail-offs in boxing careers (as posterity, no doubt, will do for Roy Jones), but you can't ignore them altogether. With someone like Charles, if he had stopped at age 30, immediately after losing his title to Walcott, I'd probably rank him all-time pound for pound number three, ahead of Greb and Ali. If he'd gone straight after Marciano II, Charles might have sneaked ahead of one of those two on the list. However, so protracted was his dismal slump from 1954 to the end of his career in 1959 (compare this to Ali's twilight losses, which only numbered three), that I don't believe that it could or should be completely effaced from the memory. As a result, I make Charles the all-time p for p number 6. Not a huge difference, perhaps, but some.

Liston after Ali 1.
Ricky after Floyd
RJJ after Tarver 1
Tyson after Holy 1
Bugner after Lyle

David Haye before Klitschko.

Don't think I've ever seen general opinions of a fighter change that quickly.

I completely agree with you captain that allowances can be made for a fighter in the
twilight of their career. In the case of Charles losing over half of his last 20 or so fights looks disastrous on paper but when you factor in that these fights have been taken for financial reasons (sadly a common situation for many a fighter) should the individual be punished in terms of their legacy standing when it may be the case that they themselves know they are past their best but are trying to earn a living the only way they know how. Thankfully, in your case with Charles this has only cost him a couple of places on your pound for pound list.

Thomas Hearns needed to retire permanently sooner. It's crazy to see the skinny 20 something year old in 1980 and know that he was fighting at cruiserweight 26 years later!

He definitely should've retired before Uriah Grant.

Joe Louis should have retired after the second Walcott fight for me. I know that his hand was forced and he had to keep fighting, but in a perfect world, I think that would have been as good a time as any for him.

Jeffries should've stayed retired.

Duran after Leonard. We'd be discussing him on a much higher p4p pedestal if Leonard had been the finish -and we'd missed the disappointing performances against Laing and Simms.

RJJ after Ruiz.

Manny after Hatton or after Cotto. Before any of the PED debate, or the catchweight debate became an issue. Before the Floyd debate became such a bitter source of contention.

Barkley after Hearns 2. He'd already taken a few defeats and Hearns was his last hurrah. Whipped by Toney, and we'd never have to see the embarrassing defeats to Petridis, Washington et al.

Amazingly Barkley won titles from middleweight to heavyweight. Goes without saying afew of these were about as recognised as my new boxing organisation WBCowBoys.

John Bloody Wayne wrote:Amazingly Barkley won titles from middleweight to heavyweight. Goes without saying afew of these were about as recognised as my new boxing organisation WBCowBoys.

And even more amazingly (for me) he isn't in the HoF and there doesn't seem to be any sign that situation is in danger of changing.

I know he's lost about 20 times - but - his victories were mighty impressive (some of them). Deserves more recognition.

Real sad story - lives broke and destitute (in NY I think) - when you think of all the money he made - that's sad.

I read an article that said they caught up with him for an interview on a subway train where he was sleeping. I feel plenty of his money ended up in the pockets of promoters.

Dspite his highs, his lows outweigh them. I can see why he won't be in the Hallf of fame. There was no point in his career that had any kind of consistency.

Nice topic. tough one, i for one accept most elite fighters lose a couple on their way out. The passing of the guad and all that. So not necessarily one to wish they all stopped when endefeated type think but

Holy after Lewis 2
Eubanks after calzaghe
Benn before the 2 collins losses
morales after manny 2

Tyson (altho i dont care for him) after lewis
Ali after spinks defeat- i know his skills were diminishing before it but until he lost that what motivation did he have to stop

what about good retirements? for me Clinton Woods did good retiring when he did, showed he wasn't willnig to become cannon fodder for next generation

Sugar ray leonard....the first time ha, but then of course he came back. Silly

oxring wrote:Duran after Leonard. We'd be discussing him on a much higher p4p pedestal if Leonard had been the finish -and we'd missed the disappointing performances against Laing and Simms.
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Interesting post Oxring, Duran retires as a 2 weight world champion with only 1 defeat (avenged twice)-never would have considered retiring him that early in my 'playing god' topic as you can see form my original post i had him retiring 9 years later. Suppose you are right the Simms and Laing defeats plus the devastating KO to Hearns wouldn't happen but on the flip side there would be no world title victories over Moore and Barkley and no impressive showing against Hagler taking the middleweight king the distance for the first time in championship reign. Plus whatever your thoughts on the ‘No Mas’ fight we would miss out on a notorious night in boxing history…

ermietrude wrote:

oxring wrote:Duran after Leonard. We'd be discussing him on a much higher p4p pedestal if Leonard had been the finish -and we'd missed the disappointing performances against Laing and Simms.
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Interesting post Oxring, Duran retires as a 2 weight world champion with only 1 defeat (avenged twice)-never would have considered retiring him that early in my 'playing god' topic as you can see form my original post i had him retiring 9 years later. Suppose you are right the Simms and Laing defeats plus the devastating KO to Hearns wouldn't happen but on the flip side there would be no world title victories over Moore and Barkley and no impressive showing against Hagler taking the middleweight king the distance for the first time in championship reign. Plus whatever your thoughts on the ‘No Mas’ fight we would miss out on a notorious night in boxing history…

We'd miss out on a lot of highs - Hagler, Barkley, Moore. But we'd also miss Benitez and Hearns - and the other lethargic performances.

Post Leonard 1 - looking at his career - he seemed very human - and easier to connect to - but pre Leonard - some of those performances at LW seemed almost superhuman. Especially the second and third deJesus fights. Most historical lightweights would have struggled with him those nights.

Certainly - if he'd gone out Leonard 1 - he'd have given us less to talk about.

ONETWOFOREVER wrote:Leonard after Haglar. Norris and Camacho not needed.

Funnily, I was thinking about Hagler, maybe after the Hearns fight but definitely after Mugabi.

Also, Larry Holmes. I wish he hadn't fought Spinks to try and equal/surpass Marciano's record, it really wasn't that important.

Interestingly, if both Holmes and Tyson had retired immediately after beating Carl Williams, both of them would have retired unbeaten. If Tyson had retired after Willaims, he'd have reached mythical status by now.

Ivan Calderon before the Segura fights. Although Segura is very good seeing a guy like Calderon basically give up at the end of there first fight was hard to watch. He would have schooled Segura in his prime. The second fight was a joke.