I Love Boxing ! Been a hardcore fan for the past 50 years ? I'm 65 and witnessed two of the greatest decades back to back ? The 70's and 80's were both great ! With the Heavy weight's ruling the 70's and the 80's belonged to the Welterweight's ? In my opinion of course ! So thank you for this post well done ! Someone ask me a couple of years ago ? Who do I think would win between "Sugar Ray Leonard " AND "Money Man Mayweather" ? Both in their Prime as Welterweight's ? 🤔 My answer after much thought being ? The Sugar Man not the Money Man ? Leonard by Unanimous Decision 🥊🤔
It's a great question Barry and thanks for the positive comment. I always thought Tommy Hearns would give Floyd trouble with his long levers, imposing frame, jab and power.
When serious, boxing has always been brutal as a professional sport. (Then again, now there’s the utterly barbaric ‘ultimate fighting’, using barely covered knuckles and even bare knees or feet for K.O. blows — yet it’s legally selling live-viewing tickets to eagerly excited individuals and commercial-time slots to legitimate business advertisers.)
It has always both bewildered and bothered me how a person can throw a serious punch without any physical provocation. Also disturbing are the only-too-eager viewers, with some girls/women among them. In the early 1980s, I’d see from a distance the mostly-male ‘audience’ at the after-classes fights between a pair of almost-always male students, one of whom was needed to initiate the barbaric exchange.
A few years later, during my own troubled-teen years, I observed how by ‘swinging first’ a guy potentially places himself in an unanticipated psychological disadvantage — one favoring the combatant who chooses to patiently wait for his opponent to take the first swing, perhaps even without the fist necessarily connecting.
Just having the combatant swing at him before he’d even given his challenger a physical justification for doing so seemed to instantly create a combined psychological and physical imperative within to react to that swung fist with justified anger. In fact, such testosterone-prone behavior may be reflected in the typically male (perhaps unconsciously strategic) invitation for one’s foe to ‘go ahead and lay one on me,’ while tapping one’s own chin with his forefinger.
Yet it’s a theoretical advantage not widely noticed by both the regular scrapper mindset nor general society. Instead of the commonly expected advantage of an opponent-stunning first blow, the hit only triggers an infuriated response earning the instigator two-or-more-fold returned-payment hard hits.
I’ve theorized that it may be an evolutionary instinct ingrained upon the human male psyche — one preventing us from inadvertently killing off our own procreative species by way of an essentially gratuitous instigation of deadly violence in bulk.
Regardless, matters would remain peaceful, or at least non-violent, if every party shows the other due respect. And of course everyone follows the basic rule: Only a physical first-strike justifies a returned blow.
I Love Boxing ! Been a hardcore fan for the past 50 years ? I'm 65 and witnessed two of the greatest decades back to back ? The 70's and 80's were both great ! With the Heavy weight's ruling the 70's and the 80's belonged to the Welterweight's ? In my opinion of course ! So thank you for this post well done ! Someone ask me a couple of years ago ? Who do I think would win between "Sugar Ray Leonard " AND "Money Man Mayweather" ? Both in their Prime as Welterweight's ? 🤔 My answer after much thought being ? The Sugar Man not the Money Man ? Leonard by Unanimous Decision 🥊🤔
It's a great question Barry and thanks for the positive comment. I always thought Tommy Hearns would give Floyd trouble with his long levers, imposing frame, jab and power.
When serious, boxing has always been brutal as a professional sport. (Then again, now there’s the utterly barbaric ‘ultimate fighting’, using barely covered knuckles and even bare knees or feet for K.O. blows — yet it’s legally selling live-viewing tickets to eagerly excited individuals and commercial-time slots to legitimate business advertisers.)
It has always both bewildered and bothered me how a person can throw a serious punch without any physical provocation. Also disturbing are the only-too-eager viewers, with some girls/women among them. In the early 1980s, I’d see from a distance the mostly-male ‘audience’ at the after-classes fights between a pair of almost-always male students, one of whom was needed to initiate the barbaric exchange.
A few years later, during my own troubled-teen years, I observed how by ‘swinging first’ a guy potentially places himself in an unanticipated psychological disadvantage — one favoring the combatant who chooses to patiently wait for his opponent to take the first swing, perhaps even without the fist necessarily connecting.
Just having the combatant swing at him before he’d even given his challenger a physical justification for doing so seemed to instantly create a combined psychological and physical imperative within to react to that swung fist with justified anger. In fact, such testosterone-prone behavior may be reflected in the typically male (perhaps unconsciously strategic) invitation for one’s foe to ‘go ahead and lay one on me,’ while tapping one’s own chin with his forefinger.
Yet it’s a theoretical advantage not widely noticed by both the regular scrapper mindset nor general society. Instead of the commonly expected advantage of an opponent-stunning first blow, the hit only triggers an infuriated response earning the instigator two-or-more-fold returned-payment hard hits.
I’ve theorized that it may be an evolutionary instinct ingrained upon the human male psyche — one preventing us from inadvertently killing off our own procreative species by way of an essentially gratuitous instigation of deadly violence in bulk.
Regardless, matters would remain peaceful, or at least non-violent, if every party shows the other due respect. And of course everyone follows the basic rule: Only a physical first-strike justifies a returned blow.
Thanks for sharing, Frank.
You are covering all my favorites. Thank you! I remember being so disappointed at the Duran loss. Sugar Ray was something special.
Glad to hear! Yeah SRL was awesome. The Hagler fight is still talked about today and the 'No mas' etc.