Does having losses on a record take away from a boxer’s wins?
What the L? Former police officer wins a fight.
Hardly a headline that is going to shake the trees in terms of devastation as people wake up on a morning after the night before to see that Tiara Brown is the new WBC featherweight champion having dethroned Skye Nicolson at home in Sydney, Australia at the Kudos Bank Arena.
As part of the Kambosos Jr. return to action, as he faced and eventually held off Jake Wyllie’s attempt to debunk his attempt to become a world champion, Nicolson was making a third defence of her crown at home in a fight that everybody expected her to win.
It was a fight that Nicolson could have won, should have won, ought to have won, but ultimately it was so close that you accepted that either one deserved to walk away with a belt, though a draw would have also have been fair. It was competitive, it was tough, and now Nicolson is the one of the two who has an L on their record.
An L on your record… What does an L on your record mean? And what should it mean?
Recently Joe Calzaghe was asked as to whether he should have gone for his 50th victory, retiring with 49-0, at a point where he probably could have picked somebody out from the long tail of people clambering after him to take his baubles and decide that he would walk out with a rounded record.
The fact that he is seen as possibly the best British boxer ever is enhanced by the fact that he was never professionally beaten.
As part of that freakish thinking, of course, many think back to the 50th victory that the man credited by most with this obsession of not losing your unbeaten record, Floyd Mayweather Jr. decided to do – fight Conor McGregor to get 50-0.
It is hardly the cherry on the top of anybody’s cake.
Calzaghe was clear that he didn’t want to get back in the ring because he was done with the sport.
I suppose, in a sense, that ability to be done with the sport is massively important for any boxer contemplating his end.
But that L on your record… that can be obsessive for many.
Over the last few weeks and months, we have seen a number of prospects and champions consider what it means to look up from the canvas and realise that you’ve lost your title or your opportunity.
But the perfect record is something that nobody ought to chase. George Foreman never chased it. There’s a man whose ability to straddle across sport is demonstrated not just by his ability to box, but his ability to rebound. Muhammad Ali once said, it is not how many times that you get knocked down, but how many times you get back up again that defines who you are.
And that definition has to include falling over yourself, tripping over your opportunities, not managing to scale the heights, but going back, thinking again, raising yourself back up there and managing to come back.
That comeback, especially for someone like George Foreman, who did it in order to become the oldest world champion in the heavyweight division ever, is something we should treasure.
And so if ‘The Monster’ Naoya Inoue does not manage to retain his unbeaten record, does that make him any less of a champion?
Do the two losses on Canelo’s record make him any less of a champion or superstar than Terence Crawford?
Does Gennady Golovkin’s losses make him any less of a champion?
Or does Oleksander Usyk’s unbeaten record make him more impressive?
Being unbeaten, whilst taking all the belts, and being the best in your division does make you more impressive.
And that’s where the likes of Usyk, Crawford and Inoue probably stand above the rest.
In an age where there are competitive boxers and competitive fights, we look back and think of ‘The Four Kings’.
We think of Frazier, Ali, Foreman and we don’t contemplate the losses they had to each other. Ali is still referred and revered as ‘The Greatest’, even with the five losses on his record.
Domestically, for example, within the heavyweight division in the UK, where the likes of Danny Williams, Audley Harrison, Matt Skelton, Michael Sprott fought the pinnacle of domestic fights. Would we say Frazier Clarke is not as good as he could be because he suffered a one-round knockout to Fabio Wardley? Will Fabio Wardley become a genuine world champion, not just because he might beat Kubrat Pulev to become the “Regular” WBA champion, but because he may do it undefeated?
But losses in any division where we have incredible competition should never be seen as anything other than a plus on the record. Because if it wasn’t their last fight, it demonstrates that the boxer has the ability, not just physically but mentally, to tough things out. Why, because the loss affects you mentally for some more than physically. It brings into question whether or not once you lose that unbeaten record you retain the desire to go back in and fight for anything other than just a redemptive final match.
And so, as Nicolson is contemplating her future and perhaps falling down a few rankings here and there, Eddie Hearn has been suggesting that he hopes that the WBC will make her mandatory for her old title.
Of course, the other contentious issue, particularly that Matchroom have peddled over the last few years, is the rematch clause.
It is nice to hear that there wasn’t a rematch clause for Nicolson, and that she’s going to have to find her way back into contention. The lack of depth in women’s boxing at the moment would probably mean that that will be sooner rather than later. However, of course, Kariss Artingstall was sitting there in the wings waiting to see who would triumph. Little, I am sure, did she expect it was going to be Tiara Brown. But Brown now has the green and gold.
What will happen next?
All of these questions add to the depth and colour of boxing discussions. But most importantly, it should be that the fear of loss should be part and parcel of the intellectual make-up of fighters going into a ring.
Why? Because it makes them better. It adds to the jeopardy that we as fans feel when they go in to fight. And it has been a pleasure over the last few months to see those, people that I thought were going to walk away without a blemish in their record, stumbling and falling with an L being cemented onto their legacy.
That, for me, makes them better in my eyes, because if they come back, it means they were a champion in the first place.
And if they don’t, it may mean that the time has come not just to throw in the towel, but to retire from one of the hardest, toughest and most dangerous sports on this planet.
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