do they box often enough?

am i the only person who gets annoyed with the lack of action in boxing? by which i mean 2-3 fights a year is pretty much the average at the moment. added to that the long delays we seem to get before the fights (thinking along the lines of cleverly/bramher, klitchsco/chisora), we can end up waiting months and even years to see fights. this wouldn't be tolerated in any other sports, either by the fans or the board of control.

now im aware that there is a lot of training needed for a fight, but if football players and rugby players can play the best in there divisions every weekend and train all week then im sure boxers could manage 5-6 fights a year. it could be evened up by making sure both fighters have the same amount of training time, or even by having a "season" so the fighters are given adequate rest.

im sure that "back in the day" the likes of pac man, barrera, morales and co were fighting 4-5 times a year, but now 2 times a year is fine. given that a fight can be built up for months and then could be over in a round or two it seems like change is needed. the worse thing about this is it takes ages for any prospects to get the experince need to challenge the top tops (ie price, povetkin etc).

does anyone agree with this or should it be left as it is? what would you do if you change things?

'Back in the day' fighters fought a lot of bums in between, this eems to be ignored by 'old timers'

old timer? im 23- i may very well be wrong but did pac man and morales have there rematch a month after the fought the first time?

I think you have to look at the Mexicans, they fight often and it doesn't seem to do them any harm, Alex Arthur has barely managed a fight a year since 2004, that's shocking, injuries or not.

This is the main reason why football I follow more than boixing. Quality stuff played a lot more general than boxing.

Boxing is a big business now, unfortunately money talks.

KO-KING wrote:'Back in the day' fighters fought a lot of bums in between, this eems to be ignored by 'old timers'

As opposed to every fight now being a carefully arranged classic between two equals at the top of their game ala Haye vs Harrison ....

KO-KING wrote:'Back in the day' fighters fought a lot of bums in between, this eems to be ignored by 'old timers'

They still fought a great deal more high quality opposition on a regular basis. Check the records of Ted ' Kid ' Lewis, Harry Greb and Ezzard Charles just by way of a small sample.

Absolutely KO-king.....Lot's of non title bum of the months just like JC used to do...

As for high quality opposition well that can be debatd..

The guys you mention are exceptions to the rule....

Feel free to take this post off if you don't like it..

If you have 80 fights before you get a world title shot and in that 80 fights 25% of the fighters you fight are decent you have fought 20 decent fighters before you get a shot. If you have fought 20 fights before your title shot of which 25% are decent fighters you have fought 5 decent fighters before your title shot. Of the two who is the better prepared and well rounded fighter?

The guy who learns more from the victories..

Truth is though Truss you would learn more in victories over decent opposition because they would push you and cause you to draw on reserves of heart, and utilise things you have learned in training rather than just being bowled over, seems fairly obvious to me if you have been called on to do this 20 times rather than 5 you will be better equipped to do it when it really matters.

its the pace of progress that annonys me, if i was a mandatory challenger waiting for a title shot, and the champion took a few voluntary defences it could be over a year before i get my shot- that seens unfair, i dont know any sport where the athletes compete as unfrequently as professional boxing. even the amatuer fight more often.

Truth is - you should be fighting more often.

Use Judo as an example. In judo - you fight and train with anyone. Doesn't matter if you can beat them in 10 seconds or it takes 10 minutes. You learn and drill all the time. If you're throwing them really quickly then you're practising your throws. Same with BJJ, same with MMA - you train and fight anyone.

Now in boxing, whilst you may still spar with anyone - there is a world of difference between a spar and a fight - and it is worthwhile training to get some practice in a real ring with a real opponent.

Take Haye-Klitschko as an example. There we have a HW champion who has had 50 fights and a HW champion who has 26 fights. Of the 2 - both have their share of dross on the record - but who were Haye's "testing" fights to prepare for Wladimir? Wladimir, meanwhile had fights against slicksters, speedsters, combination punchers, power punchers, and durable opponents.

Prep was better "back-in-the-day". Even if you're only fighting decent opponents a quarter of the time - you may still have 20-30 tough fights where you learn something. And if you can't learn you quit after 2 or 3.

How much better prepared would Williams have been for southpaws with a few more fights against southpaws? As it is, he repeatedly eats the straight left and has zero credibility at LMW.

They probably could fight more nowadays but not by a great amount.

The demand is only for top level fights. Nobody wants to see Pacquaio fight some guy with a losing record in between his big fights and there isnt enough top level opposition to sustain much more than 3 big fights a year.

There are pros and cons to fighting more/less often. Training camps are much more specialised nowadays and can be tailored to a specific opponent who can be studied in fine detail. However the trae off is you dont get as much experience.

A fighters development isnt exponential. They arent just going to keep getting better and better as a result of more fights. In some cases they may even regress if not matched strongly enough. There comes a point where a fighter peaks and after that it doesnt much matter how many more fights he has, hes not neccessariy going to get any better.

The last thing is the neccessary rest periods in betwee. Im not sure what the ideal rest period should be but I think in some cases with older eras, fighting every fortnight or month is probably excessive and leads to a higher risk of burnout and of not being in peak condition. Nowadays though, the danger is ring rust.

Theres probably some kind of middle ground to be found but Im not quite sure where you would draw the line.

From a monetary perspective and expecting all fights to be on PPV now I can understand the thinking behind it but for the fighters themselves I don't think it does them any favours on the whole. If your Mayweather or Pacquiao then it doesn't matter so much because the raw talent is so high they would be good no matter what but in the cases of Martinez and Hopkins do think they'd have benefitted from fighting more to gain the experience they have now sooner.

look at the difference to a career an event such as prizefighter can make, gaining 3 wins in one night is sometimes enough to gain a title shot, it would take about a year to progress your career that far fighting the same opponents the normal way, thats got to be proof that fighting more often would increase your career a lot more rapidly.

eddyfightfan wrote:look at the difference to a career an event such as prizefighter can make, gaining 3 wins in one night is sometimes enough to gain a title shot, it would take about a year to progress your career that far fighting the same opponents the normal way, thats got to be proof that fighting more often would increase your career a lot more rapidly.

Upcoming fighters do tend to fight more often in general though. Prizefighter boosts a career but in reality I dont think anyones ever got a world title shot off the back of it? The closest thing was probably Harrison getting a European title shot against Sprott.

Your assuming that fighting more often means winning more often which isnt neccessarily the case. What if you lose a fight when you didnt need to? What level of opposition are you fighting?

I personally don't see the benefit of prizefighter in the grand scheme of things, it's one thing being prepared for a 10 round fight against a journeymen that your probably not going to knock out early compared to a 9 minute slugfest against what is now very poor opposition.

It's the modern climate of losses being the be all and end all, just look at Arguello and Duran both of whom lost tune up fights against Fernandez and DeJesus respectively, meant very little as it what was understood that they were merely tune up fights.

i'll give you an example, Robinson fought lomatta 6 times, where as now the most would be three time(rubber match), Hagler fought 50 times before a title shot, Chavez Jr fought(approx) 43 before a title shot and he's 24

Chavez didn't have an amateur career...like Ramirez and most mexicans they learn in the pros....You'll find he's beaten some roadsweepers twice...

I would like to see fighters fight more often. James De Gale only fought 4 times last year 3 of those fights were finished before the half way stage and the Paul Smith fight was a one sided 9th round stoppage. He only boxed 17 rounds in 2010 that's no where near enough.
He fought regularly in the amateurs and now he has turned pro he is fighting 3 or 4 times a year against limited opposition with the exception of Groves.
It's all well and good getting good sparring and doing the work in the gym but if you aren't putting it to used in the ring then what's the point?

All about money for the major fighters, however I do agree that the younger promising fighters should be fighting much more often than they do.

Imperial Ghosty wrote:I personally don't see the benefit of prizefighter in the grand scheme of things, it's one thing being prepared for a 10 round fight against a journeymen that your probably not going to knock out early compared to a 9 minute slugfest against what is now very poor opposition.

It's the modern climate of losses being the be all and end all, just look at Arguello and Duran both of whom lost tune up fights against Fernandez and DeJesus respectively, meant very little as it what was understood that they were merely tune up fights.

i think prizefighter is a great platform for up and comers or even ex-champions trying to make the come back (junior witter comes to mind). with names like michael lomax, gavin rees, paul smith, sexton, sprott, harrison, prince arron and mike perez all previous winners i think its hard to deny that it does boost a career- or a least opens up the oppertunitys to do so- and was it manfredo who was in the america verison, gained a world title shot at calzaghe.

It does but I don't think because you're fighting 3 guys in one night it makes you a way better fighter (Meaning I don't think it gives you the same experience as fighting 3 different fights as of the norm)
As I feel the fights are completely different giving the fact they are only 3 rounders meaning it's usually get in there and win 2 rounds pronto and usually big knockouts happening all over the shop.

However it most certainly is a great way for raising confidence levels and raising a boxers profile or getting them back into the scene also for some of the up and comers the prize money allows them to concentrate more on boxing and make the most out of there potential.

to be honest im a fan of most of the tournements (ie prizefighter, super 6, contender etc) just because the set up at the moment of fight whoever you want whenever you want with no qualilty control is clearly not working, we have the fights people wanting to see not happening (ie manny/floyd) yet we get stuck with farces like manny/mosley. a premier league style approch would be bliss, where everyone in the divison most face each other at one time. but ill keep dreaming and carry on putting my hand in my pocket till then.

You mean like once you become ranked inside a certain place you have to fight people in and around your rank.
Say you make Top 10 ranked you're not allowed to fight anyone ranked outside of the Top 15? Not a bad idea however would cause a couple of problems for fighters like PBF inactivity and he becomes unranked so has to come back through the rankings? Tricky, unless you hae some kind of loophole with fighters that used to be ranked a certain place... But then that could create more loopholes and then making people not adhere to the system... Am I rambling?

its a good idea, but with 4 differnent govering bodys it would be impossible to make happen. plus promoters, trainers, managers etc will all be against it because they will have to risk losing there incomes if a fighter loses. we can live in hope though.

Yeah they would never swing it!