We all know that no boxer has ever said one thing and done another, or clinched when they were in trouble, or danced.
"Why do you think so many guys are completely willing to play with concussions?"
Because they are professional athletes. How is this unique to NFL players? Besides, are you now trying to draw a parallel between "gameness" and injury risks? By that logic, horse jumping wich has deaths occuring on a yearly basis must require more "gameness"
419 - We all know that no boxer has ever said one thing and done another, or clinched when they were in trouble, or danced.
But when they do, they get called out on it. The bottom line is that you can fake injuries in NFL and guys like you will buy it and say its only to slow the game down (how can you tell wich is wich?) while in boxing, a guy who looks for a way out of the fight will get called out on it
Look at how much shit Golota took. That would never happen in the NFL, nobody would call Lewis a coward if he took big hits and stayed down because he was hurt
lot of tough guys in the nfl, with off the chart athletic ability that if they were taken to a gym in childhood would have turned into very good fighters.
Who is currently the best American heavyweight prospect? Probably Deontay Wilder right? (it's either him or Bryant Jennings IMO.)
Well he was going to play football or basketball in college. But had to quit school in order to get a job to support his daughter who was born with spina bifida.
That's when he got into boxing, very late relatively speaking. Yet he has already gone on to win a bronze medal in the Olympics at a time when Team USA isn't winning much of anything. He also has won 29 straight pro fights, all by knockout.
How many Deontay Wilder's has boxing missed out on thanks to dreams of an NFL and NBA career?
There is no doubt that when you improve the gross numbers of participants in any sport, competition improves and guys get better. A bigger pool of competitive athletes = a better product. This is exactly why it is incumbent upon anyone who loves boxing to take the time to teach the fundamentals of the game to a kid interested.
I'm not seeing anywhere close to the kind of kids we had when we saw the likes Shane Mosely, Stevie Johnston, Vernon Forrest and Oscar De la Hoya, Floyd Mayweather etc. anymore. Guys who have just ridiculously amateur backgrounds. Now it is much more common that we are seeing guys who played on the College football team and didn't get drafted and "oh well, I'm a pretty good athlete, I guess I'll try to be a boxer."
That's great, but there is no substitute for a solid amateur background from a young age. You just can't replace that level of experience with athletic ability.
If you are someone who loves boxing and you want to see it improve, take the time and teach boxing!
buddie - There is no doubt that when you improve the gross numbers of participants in any sport, competition improves and guys get better. A bigger pool of competitive athletes = a better product. This is exactly why it is incumbent upon anyone who loves boxing to take the time to teach the fundamentals of the game to a kid interested.
I'm not seeing anywhere close to the kind of kids we had when we saw the likes Shane Mosely, Stevie Johnston, Vernon Forrest and Oscar De la Hoya, Floyd Mayweather etc. anymore. Guys who have just ridiculously amateur backgrounds. Now it is much more common that we are seeing guys who played on the College football team and didn't get drafted and "oh well, I'm a pretty good athlete, I guess I'll try to be a boxer."
That's great, but there is no substitute for a solid amateur background from a young age. You just can't replace that level of experience with athletic ability.
If you are someone who loves boxing and you want to see it improve, take the time and teach boxing!
i know what you mean, guys with 200-300 fights in the ammy's beat all the local, then national, then international comp. guys now are literally, like seth mitchell, trying to learn on the job. not going to happen
pharochuck -
lot of tough guys in the nfl, with off the chart athletic ability that if they were taken to a gym in childhood would have turned into very good fighters.
As buddie says, more guys doing it equals better competition and I am sure some of the guys could have been very good.
However, just because Deontay Wilder is a good fighter doesn't necessarily mean that anyone currently in the NFL would have been as good or better than him.
Each person will not be equally as good at every sport, and skill is a large component of being a good boxer. I don't believe the ability to run fast, jump high or lift heavy weights predicts how well an individual will pick up a skill.
Brian Urlacher didn't even know how to make a fist. Have you seen Terrel Suggs hit the heavy bag? Pretty poor by any standards. Brock Lesnar's punching got worse the more he trained. I don't know for sure, but I would be reasonably confident that on Deontay Wilder's first day in the gym he showed more natural aptitude for punching than all those guys, even though he would probably not be considered as athletic.
I have no doubt that if the NFL did not exist there would be better American heavyweights but I doubt there would be as many as people think. I also believe that if everyone in the NFL took a break for a year to train boxing it would be nearly impossible to predict who would be the best. Some guy you would never expect could end up being the best, and tough guys like Urlacher may not be cut out for it at all. Some guys that weren't good enough to make it to the NFL will be better suited to boxing than some hall of famers.
Its a hard thing to predict. I can see how fascination with NFL style athleticism could really hurt boxing in America. If you are looking for running and jumping ability in a boxer you are looking for the wrong thing imo.
But like I said they would have needed to have got to a gym as kids. I'm not saying that their physical skills would have made them great fighters. I'm saying that if they would have starte as kids and we could tell after several years as amateurs who had an aptitude for fighting and then factor in their pure physical gifts you would have some really hard to beat guys. 
It appears like you are using 'gameness' to mean the opposite of 'looking for a way out.' Again, I can't speak for you but when a guy allegedly screws up a baseline test so the doctors are less likely to pull him from the game when he gets his bell rung, it sure looks like he is doing the opposite of 'looking for a way out.'
Some, but not all, guys in the NFL play through injuries. If they were 'looking for a way out' they wouldn't be playing hurt. Again, not every NFL player would be a heavyweight champ, but at least a few of them are 'game' enough, but choose to go to college for free and have a higher likelihood of making big money than if they went into boxing.
And you can tell that guys are faking injuries by context. If the guy 'cramps up' when the other team is going no huddle, then comes back into the game after one play, it sure seems like strategy and not 'looking for a way out.'
"Some guys that weren't good enough to make it to the NFL will be better suited to boxing than some hall of famers."
That possible, but it's also possible that a guy who made the NFL, but isn't a hall of famer, would be better suited than both the HOFer and the guy who didn't make the league. We will never know, because they didn't grow up boxing.
We know that fewer guys are growing up boxing.
"It appears like you are using 'gameness' to mean the opposite of 'looking for a way out.' Again, I can't speak for you but when a guy allegedly screws up a baseline test so the doctors are less likely to pull him from the game when he gets his bell rung, it sure looks like he is doing the opposite of 'looking for a way out.'"
Not really. Again you are defining "gameness" by the risk an athlete is willing to take. You keep saying a player who fakes his baseline test is "game" because he is willing to compete despite the risk he faces. By your own definition, horse jumping or Formula 1 or Nascar requires more "gameness" because those guys/gals risk death every time they step into their arena. And im not talking about some freak accident risk, horsejumping has had more deaths in the past few years than NFL has ever had. If they dont get killed, they end up in wheelchairs
Gameness is more related to the "fight or flight" syndrome than your arbitrary criteria for it. You dont measure a pitbulls gameness by wether or not its willing to fight 3 weeks later with an injury. You find out if a pitbull is "game" by matching it against another until one of them quits. Boxing replicates this somewhat, football does not
"And you can tell that guys are faking injuries by context. If the guy 'cramps up' when the other team is going no huddle, then comes back into the game after one play, it sure seems like strategy and not 'looking for a way out."
Whatever you say
Listen. You would probably not even bat an eye if your kid told you he was playing football with his friends, but you would probably get worried if you found out he was boxing his friends
There is a reason for that. At the highest levels, the speed and power changes but the sport is still the same fundamentally. I already conceded a few NFL guys probably are "game" and could be champs had they chosen it. But thats more of a statistical coincidence rather than football weeding out people who are not "game"
buddie - Is he in training for Bas?Damn it just saw this. Late to the party.
LOL, I played high school football and boxed as an amateur. My position on this issue is based on personal experience, discussions with other athletes and observing guys at the highest levels. Football requires some gameness.
You are also missing the point of the concussion example.
George Foreman has always been very quick to talk about the tough bastards who play football. I think that being in the NFL, you have to be pretty tough. I also think that you have to be a great athlete and having a tough mindset and being a good athlete make a person very dangerous. That isn't to say they'd all be good professional fighters, but they'd be better than a collection of accountants and stock-boys. A good athlete can get fairly far if he's ambitious, properly surrounded brought along right.
Everyone is different though. Overall guys are better when they learn from a young age, but it isn't always necessary. Some guys develop late. You look at how good Mercer and Marciano were. Both those guys were in the service before they learned to box.
Quitters don't last very long in football. If they were looking for a way out, they wouldn't survive Oklahoma drills in two-a-days. They wouldn't take on a pulling guard, or get up off the turf and make a special teams tackle.
Just because it's a team sport doesn't mean there aren't individual matchups.
Like boxing, guys attempt to impose their will and dominate the matchup. The goal may be to move a ball across an imaginary line, but they know that knocking the other guy down until he mentally quits makes that task a lot easier. That's the difference between football and F1 that you are purposefully ignoring. Hiding concussions isn't solely about assuming risk. It's like a boxer pleading with anyone who will listen not to stop the fight when he's cut.
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