A common trope among people not interested in boxing is that the best never fight the best in boxing and everyone just protects their records. I don’t believe this is true at all and its fairly obvious this isn’t much of a talking point anymore especially this year if you actually pay attention to boxing.
The problem that people have is they get hung up on Spence versus Crawford not happening and ignore the dozens of great fights that get made elsewhere. In recent times we’ve had Lomachenko versus Lopez, Jermell Charlo versus Jeison Rosario, Briedis versus Dorticos, Oscar Valdez versus Miguel Berchelt among many others. Even a match up between Joe Smith Jnr and Maxim Vlasov recently was a fight between two top 10 Light Heavyweights.
This year we are confirmed to have at least two undisputed fights in Josh Taylor versus Jose Ramirez and Jermell Charlo versus Brian Castano with a potential Joshua versus Fury fight on the horizon. How people can see all these great fights happening and then carry on with the tired narrative of boxers never fighting the best is beyond me. A few boxers and divisions have been slow in making 1v2 match ups and suddenly the whole sport is protecting their records and refusing hard fights apparently. In Football when Manchester City face Fulham you don’t see people complaining that it’s a mismatch but when a boxer takes a tune up fight its seen as some great travesty and they are indirectly called cowards which makes zero sense when they are quite literally risking their life in the ring no matter the opponent.
Obviously I think boxing could do better and have more competitive match ups but it puts its best against the best a lot more often than people give it credit for. I often see this argument from MMA fans who seem to have no problem with Usman-Masvidal 2 which is a blatant money grab after an noncompetitive first fight. If boxing had the propaganda tools of the UFC it would be seen as the greatest sport in the world but to an extent because of its long history the current champions are judged by standards which no human can possibly hope to live up to.
Boxing Fulcrum 