I was born in 1974, a time of greatness in boxing, in my opinion. In 1974, Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) beats Joe Frazier in a rematch to regain his heavyweight title. 1974 also boasted the great RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE featuring Ali and George Foreman. There were a lot of good action fights in 1974. For example, you had the two matches mentioned above and then you also had Foreman vs. Norton, Frazier vs. Quarry II, Duran vs. DeJesus II, and Arguello vs. Olivares.
Over the years, boxing has given us many stars and many great moments. But the question has now become CAN boxing give us any great stars and any great moments?
What happened to the days when a fighter had to EARN his way to a championship match? Now, we have fighters who are made not by their skill and their talent, but by the big corporations that back them and hand pick their opponents. We no longer see the classic 1 - 2 punch combo. We rarely see body work. Footwork is a thing of the past. Conditioning, I don't think many of today's fighter's know what the word means. We are being given a watered down, money hungry version of the sport we used to consider great! And they wonder why the sport is losing fans!?!
Today's fighters are more concerned about their image and their wallets than their legacy and their fans. If we are lucky, we'll see a fighter once a year, maybe twice if they are on the decline of their careers and want to pad their wallets a little more. And then we only see them in matches that are long overdue or that are complete mismatches. We can only see them if we have cable and the good fights, you know the headliners, only if we pay 60 bucks to watch that fight and 3 other meaningless fights before that.
