Comments Thread For: The middleweight malaise of 2024

[wrecksracer]

Not true. Boxing is the most political sport in the world. Watch the fighters fight instead of just reading articles about them. Too many fans confuse great fighters with famous fighters. All divisions are as stacked with talent as ever. All it takes is for the unknown guys to get their chance.

I wouldn't even take today's Middleweights to beat an undersized Sergio Martinez

[The D3vil]

Sheeraz is special.

The division will be his very soon.

[steeve steel]

To mention Eubank and an old Lara pretty much says it all.

[pnut901]

Lara didn't lose to Paul Williams. That was a terrible robbery.

[pnut901]

the talent pool in boxing altogether is weak these days. It's a rare weight class that has more than 2 good fighters, and they won't fight each other. Back in the day, the money wasn't as good. The best literally had to fight the best to make the most money. Nowadays it's all eyeball test.

I disagree strongly about the talent pool. But you knocked it out of the park about how it's all eyeball test these days. Well said.

[elfag]

well the thing with watching boxing for 25 years then you have a real idea how things always were. 160 was a weak division when hopkins run it, look at his 20 title defenses, robert allen 3x, antwon echols x2, mercado x2. howard eastman, all these randoms. the real excitement was down at welterweight and those guys were too small when they moved up to 160.


Also look at GGG's run, that division was also pretty weak, jacobs is like a jermaine taylor level guy. Most of the rest, euro champions like martin murray and mathew macklin, those guys are just filler and sergio left overs. we missed out on the big perog fight.

sergio had his short little run and then came in with knee braces with cotto, that fight should have never went through, the man could barely stand up, they cashed out and to me the cotto win meant very little when the guy cant even walk, not cottos fault but not a real passing of the torch,


middleweight has been mostly vacant the last 25 years with an occasional champ. and im not talking ABC champ i mean real champ.


I guess atleast GGG-canelo I and II happened, it was the biggest fight since probably hopkins-trinidad. Hopkins-DLH lost its edge when DLH got that gift over Sturm we knew he wasnnt really up for middleweight. trinidad atleast had his ko power and proven power at 160 over joppy going into it over an aging hopkins.



what this era HAD was big potential at 135. Loma, haney, shakur, tank, teo, ryan we could have had a tournament and it would be been great and most of the guys refused to fight each other. when someone viewed as lower risk like aging luke cambell or kambosas made some noise, everyone raced to fight them, they were too scared to do a super six style tournament and just all fight each other. That was the biggest waste in recent boxing IMO.

Failure for AJ and Tyson the two guys to beat wlad to fight each other to just determine a real heavyweight champ was also a failure.

[TheOneAboveAll]

I wouldn't even take today's Middleweights to beat an undersized Sergio Martinez

Maybe not, but fans who deride the present day often compare only the stand out, famous fighters. Compare the Top 10 fighters of the divisions of today to those of yesteryear before saying that today's fighters, or even certain divisions, suck today. A few months back I engaged in an argument with some fans who were saying that the WW division was sh.it. That, of course, is not true. Nor has it ever been true or ever will be true for even one day. There may be less commercial superstars in a division at any given time, but the talent will always be there. I assure you that the WW division is filled with killers. You just may not know their names yet. I insist that too much emphasis is placed on fame when fans discuss greatness. After Crawford and Spence fought and decided to move up, half the fans on this site were saying the WW division was a barren wasteland with no competition left for the heir apparent Boots Ennis. Then a couple months after the Crawford-Spence fight Giovanni Santillan completely wrecks WW contender Lex Rocha and puts himself at the front of the line to fill the WW void. Then, in his next fight (for the WBO Interim belt) Santillan gets brutalized and completely taken apart by undefeated, but largely unknown Brian Norman Jr. It doesn't matter who Brian Norman Jr. fights next, but you can pretty much guarantee its going to be another killer, even if you never heard of him.