Originally posted by The Old LefHook
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I fully agree, lad, that a resume speaks for itself, but I also happen to think it is a long, involved document, not the simple one some people view it as.
A full resume includes a lot of information besides the win/loss column, in fact, ideally, it includes every available piece of information, with each piece weighted properly. A win over a big name only means squat if they were still formidable at the time of the win. Geezer hunter Joel Calzaghe gets nothing but his pot of money for beating RJJ, for instance. And the list of other examples just as good is a long one.
The sickening trend of fighters chasing after senior citizens about whom it is public knowledge they are washed up, is what makes boxing boring, lad. Get 'em while they're fresh, goes for bagels and boxers and most anything except wine and violins.
One good thing about our present: we produce a much more thorough record than our predecessors. Because of film and its prevelance and because of the internet, our descendants will not have to guess over the kind of questions that nag us. We can tell from the record book that young fighter X fought a crafty veteran of 38, but have to guess and interpret the few or biased words of others on just how faded the veteran was and of what value the win was to X, since we were not there to view it for ourselves. Our descendants will be able to see.
If you interview ten witnesses to a crime, you will get ten different stories. Police have known this forever. Eyewitness accounts of bigtime boxing matches (which includes TV viewers) are also notoriously unreliable. I have been wrong many times about some strong opinion I held from the old days on this or that match, until I bothered to review the films. Sometimes one is shocked at the part emotion must have played in the forming of such conclusions. My strong opinions have had their wings clipped on multiple occasions, so that leads me to be su****ious of the accounts of others, as well, if I couldn't even trust my own.
Video is god now. We don't have to trust anyones, even our former selves, if the fight was taped.
The record is not just who fought who, and who won, it is the whole Mary Anne. The Record requires one to mentally synthesize the complex of all known information into one mental document. In a sense, one becomes a computer, to arrive at a final impression which is still a guess.
A full resume includes a lot of information besides the win/loss column, in fact, ideally, it includes every available piece of information, with each piece weighted properly. A win over a big name only means squat if they were still formidable at the time of the win. Geezer hunter Joel Calzaghe gets nothing but his pot of money for beating RJJ, for instance. And the list of other examples just as good is a long one.
The sickening trend of fighters chasing after senior citizens about whom it is public knowledge they are washed up, is what makes boxing boring, lad. Get 'em while they're fresh, goes for bagels and boxers and most anything except wine and violins.
One good thing about our present: we produce a much more thorough record than our predecessors. Because of film and its prevelance and because of the internet, our descendants will not have to guess over the kind of questions that nag us. We can tell from the record book that young fighter X fought a crafty veteran of 38, but have to guess and interpret the few or biased words of others on just how faded the veteran was and of what value the win was to X, since we were not there to view it for ourselves. Our descendants will be able to see.
If you interview ten witnesses to a crime, you will get ten different stories. Police have known this forever. Eyewitness accounts of bigtime boxing matches (which includes TV viewers) are also notoriously unreliable. I have been wrong many times about some strong opinion I held from the old days on this or that match, until I bothered to review the films. Sometimes one is shocked at the part emotion must have played in the forming of such conclusions. My strong opinions have had their wings clipped on multiple occasions, so that leads me to be su****ious of the accounts of others, as well, if I couldn't even trust my own.
Video is god now. We don't have to trust anyones, even our former selves, if the fight was taped.
The record is not just who fought who, and who won, it is the whole Mary Anne. The Record requires one to mentally synthesize the complex of all known information into one mental document. In a sense, one becomes a computer, to arrive at a final impression which is still a guess.
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