Amateur matches are glorified sparring sessions :P

Now that the hyperbole bait title caught ur attention.
There is 100% no reason for anyone who's over the age limit of a pro for his country should have amateur matches.

This may have inspired by a bias at first that makes me hate older guys who stay amateurs forever and beat up kids, but this is unrelated to this threat.( Damn you CHE!)

Humor me...

1-"but but.. it can really give you a good base to prepare".. umm no, it can only get u more used to amatuer boxing style, and everyone is forced to adapt. The arguable Amateur boxing Goat Loma even after a decent pro boxing debut KO still had an awakening facing the dirtiness of Solido's pro experience. And this guy is even an exception... striking majority of accomplished amateurs still are forced by their trainers to pad record a bit to get more comfortable in pro boxing style and improve. An extreme rough example to that would be the example of Jushua, none of us with a brain thought he was ready for a title shot early on obviously.

2-"How about the glory that can get u under the radar " ... eh no, not even close. If I've learned anything from RR, is that amateur wins mean shit on a negotiation table. He has stated so many times.
1 example is when Queen B suggested some guy that beat Williams and Marcus in ammies, and thus might deserve a shot at Bowne again as a pro. RR stressed it's impossible.
Example 2 when I asked if Ryota Murata could be considered to face BJS, as he's not only an olympic gold medalist, but fucking ranked 3rd in WBO which is the belt Joe holds... Yet RR stressed it was impossible and that it was no offense to the fighter... not only that, but that BJS would be more likely to fight a can.
Hype of piling up pro wins would be more relevant.

EDIT: Beterbiev's win over Krusher aint doing him shit either, no matter how many times he spouts it to teh media.

Egor Mekhontsev isone of the greatest amateur HWs of all time, probably the best one not from cuba arguably, he's signed by Top Rank, didn't do his reputation shit even after 12 pro wins... oh and he just got a draw with a bum.

 

I'm 31 and I compete as an amatuer. I fucking DREAD getting matched with some 19-20 year old kid.

 

I've only watched a few of the olympic fights but I have been underwhelmed.

 

Why? just curious. When I was 31, I didn't really feel that much different than I ever did. by my mid thirties I did notice it was easier to injure myself doing the same things I always did and it seemed that I lost a little wind. Nowadays, I really honestly don't notice that much of a loss but in one thing; i'm fat, that's a huge one, that kills everything else, can't jump rope for shit, my handspeed suffered. But I still feel that if I lost all this weight, I wouldn't be all that much different. Power is about the same and my speed wouldn't be that much different. Weight is horrible. I don't even eat that much different.

 

Loma isn't GOAT TS. He's one of the best amateurs, not pros, but amateurs in boxing history. However, there are a small handful that have accomplished even more than he did there. There have been three triple Olympic gold medalists. He didn't go for the triple crown because it would've been a waste of his prime years to not turn pro for another 4.

Floyd isn't #TBE either but he's one of the best of all time based on his accomplishments and skill. He's one of the best technicians of any era. Many ATGs got their start from strong amateur backgrounds and many didn't. But it is a good platform to spring off of in most people's opinion mostly because of all the styles you meet along the way in international competition and on the world stage against the best each country has to offer.

You need to embrace greatness once you've recognized it. Hating isn't healthy.

 

They're faster and stronger and don't have the schedule constructions of someone like me with a wife, kid, and career. They could be looking to make a real run at things and take their training very seriously. Weight cuts are a lot easier for them.

My only thing i assume I have better than them is discipline. When I'm competing my diet is impeccable and I am religious about my conditioning

 

When I was 20 I just upped my work rate on older guys like yourself. I noticed a lot of dudes around 30 and above were more prone to lead right hands and other quick shots but were better at dealing with the fundamentals.

Edit: I never fought above national level. So take my anecdote as you will.

 

ya, that's a lot of restrictions. when I was 31 or 32, I got myself out of a bad friendship with my mentor, I dedicated myself to training without not a whole lot else. It took awhile but I got myself in pretty good shape. Still, compared to what I saw daily in my mma gym, at least on a striking basis, I was way past anyone I saw. If I didn't have a problem with being tapped a million times to get better on the ground, I probably would have fought. Anyway, I didn't think I'd lost that much. I wonder why the kids would be stronger than you though, usually, older men have a distinct strength advantage.

 

national level? that's pretty high isn't it? I remember Ali responding to the question of who was better, the young ali or the comeback version, of course he responded that the younger version would win because he had his legs but then said he was more confident and stronger as an older man. When Ali lost to Norton the first time, he did improve for a few fights where he really wasn't that much different than he was in the 60's. the second Norton and frazier fights saw ali at the lightest weights he'd ever be at again and he danced all night long against both. After Foreman he was still a great fighter but he often looked lackadaisical. he was fat for the third frazier fight.

 

Lomas definitely up there for ammys, but I'd say Rigo was more accomplished, Papp, Savon, and Stevenson as well probably. Shiming seems pretty well accomplished too.

 

The ammys are weird though. Sometimes guys with relatively little accomplishment end up killing the pros, and sometimes multiple time medalists end up disappointing or fizzling out. A lot or the guys end up not sitting down on their shots because it's not really necessary in the ammys.

That said, the ammys always bring up questions about who the best really is. Seeing all the Cubans and ex-Soviet or ex-Warsaw pact guys coming out now makes you wonder how different boxing history would have been had they been allowed to compete in the pro ranks. We saw the odd Cuban or ex-soviet/Warsaw Pact guy here or there and they always seemed to do pretty well, guys like arbachakov, nazarov, gavilan and Ramos all had high level careers. Even North Koreans bring up questions. There was a guy named choe chol-su that won gold in 92. Some gold medalists end up pretty unremarkable pros, choe only had a pro record or 3-0 before disappearing, but when you look at who choe fought in the Olympics, he best three future titlists (peden, kovacs, and ingle) then in the gold medal match schooled a high level Cuban named Raul Gonzalez 12-2. Beating a Cuban is hard enough, but schooling one? That's reserved for a special few. Makes you wonder how good choe really was

 

There are also more inclined to nor give a damn and be a bit more overzealous and reckless when sparring.

 

Rigo won some more medals, an extra world championship, some world cups and the pan ams etc but he did all of that in a single weight division. Lomachenko won the Worlds twice in two divisions and the Olympics in two divisions, Featherweight and Lightweight. He was forced to move up after the AIBA got rid of the Featherweight division. He also has a Val Barker trophy that he won at the 2008 Olympics for being the best (most stylish) boxer at the Games and has a better overall amateur record than Rigo with his only loss avenged twice.

Papp, Stevenson and Savon are the most accomplished because they're the only triple Olympic gold medalists in the history of the Games. Savon won everything there was to win, the World Championships 6 times and a silver medal there as well on top of the Olympics 3x, on top of the World Cup multiple times, the Pan Ams and Central American and Caribbean Games. He did this all at Heavyweight. Stevenson won all of his gold medals at Heavyweight too except one World Championship at Super Heavyweight. Papp won the Olympics in two different divisions, Middleweight and then twice at Light Middleweight and the European Championships twice in those divisions. The World Championships weren't around back then for him to win since they didn't come along until 1974. Papp never won a Val Barker trophy though, Stevenson and Lomachenko are the only 2 out of these guys that did.

 

That's true, and I think Rigo has some losses; also, Loma competed as low as flyweight for the world junior championships. However, the big thing about lomas record (that I've seen at least) is a lack of high level Cuban scalps. He has two from what I could find (though I'm sure there are more I don't know about): yasniel Toledo (a very good Cuban) and a guy named Alberto Portuondo.

On a side note, upset of the year is KMB's ascendence as a very good, reasonable, informed poster. KMB, I'll be real, when I saw that you had Loma in your AV and kovalev in your name, I thought you were going to be one of those trollish MMA-crossover, Eastern European fetishizing casual posters that had been overrunning this forum, but you defied the stereotype and turned into one of the best posters on here.

 

I edited my post to include more info. But all of the guys mentioned are among the very best amateur boxers of all time of course. Thanks for the compliment but I'm still a biased poster at times, I try to be less of one. The biggest fanboys I've seen are in the UFC forum. That's why I don't post there much.

 

Haha no problem, you're a good poster, welcome here any time

Stay away from the heavies, it's gone downhill heavily recently

 

Yeah he didn't have many Cuban scalps and the only ones that are easily accessible to us are those that you already named on the world stage at the Junior and Senior level. He beat Toledo twice (Olympics and World Championships) and Portuondo, who I really don't know anything about. Through international comps he might've beaten more, not sure.

You're right that he competed just the previous year at the 2006 Junior World Championships and won gold in the Flyweight division before moving up to Featherweight the next year and competing at the senior World Championships. He absolutely ran through them as a Flyweight that year.

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php?title=Human:659771

But with junior level stuff I normally don't care about it. You made a good point about him starting as a Flyweight though and moving up to Featherweight the next year and after having to move up again to Lightweight. That was a nice jump from Fly to Feather in only a year but I never watched his Junior level WC's so I don't know how much he grew over the course of that year between them.

 

When I'm in shape, volume punchers don't give me much trouble, but thinkers totally vex me.

it's more my build than anything, I'm 5'10 and compete at 141, walk around 150. I've got good fundamentals so I hit pretty hard, but I get muscled around by shorter, bigger guys.

 

oh, ok, that's about my weight/ height if i'd ever competed, but I would probably be a lot stronger than guys shorter than me, I don't know. You should have more knowledge though, you should be able to divert their strength and give angles. I can't say I had strength issues when I sparred with bigger guys, even heavyweights but it's not really a thing where strength is being exerted much. In real streetfights I've been in, I've had some guys who I knew were way, way stronger than me, in those kinds of cases, it was bad because you always want to hold a reserve so in case the other person is getting hurt, you can reel it in easily. some guys were too damned strong to do that with, at least for me. Bad position to be in.

 

I gotta say as bad as American boxing is, the team of 84 would probably not even break a sweat fighting the best of the us today. I haven't even looked though, anyone good from here?