Retiring

With Ricky Hatton coming out of retirement it's got me wondering why few boxers in HISTORY have retired at the right time?

They all have common sense so I'm just wondering why it's so hard for most of them to call it a day before it's too late and they tarnish their legacies?

p.s what fighters would you say hung up their gloves at the right time? (besides off the top of my head, Marciano).

Lewis.

Lewis
Calzaghe
Ottke

There must be plenty that retired at the right time:

Lewis
McGuigan
Michael Spinks
Calzaghe
Ricardo Lopez
Hagler
Herol Graham

Gene Tunney

Alan Minter retired at 30 and stayed retired.

Dempsey.

fearlessBamber wrote:There must be plenty that retired at the right time:

Lewis
McGuigan
Michael Spinks
Calzaghe
Ricardo Lopez
Hagler
Herol Graham

Hagler and Spinks both retired one fight too late, but I get your point. It's great that they retired at a decent age.

Ottke should have fought someone before he retired. It was the wrong time for me... but not for him!

I would have loved to have seen him get hammered.

actually i did

Very few have retired at precisely the right time, ie on top, no more worlds to conquer, all their faculties intact and as rich as Croesus, relatively speaking, and stayed retired.

The outstanding examples are Tunney (arguably the best example of all, in fact), Marciano and Monzon, with Calzaghe and Ricardo Lopez also choosing an excellent time to go. Don't think that Barry McGuigan, for example, would have wanted to go out on a cut eye stoppage loss to Jim McDonnell.

Truth is that only a couple of comebacks have genuinely enhanced the reputation and legacy of those who launched them - Eder Jofre's and George Foreman's. Others have initially prospered but ultimately come off the rails. The odds, it has to be said, do not favour Ricky Hatton.

Often its hard to know what the right time to retire is until it is too late.

Mayweather?

McGuigan?

Atila wrote:

fearlessBamber wrote:There must be plenty that retired at the right time:

Lewis
McGuigan
Michael Spinks
Calzaghe
Ricardo Lopez
Hagler
Herol Graham

Hagler and Spinks both retired one fight too late, but I get your point. It's great that they retired at a decent age.

Think their bank balances benefited from those last fights. They both lost and realised they were on the decline so quit. Hagler not fighting Leonard would have been madness - he should have come out fast and right on 160 though.

I stand by McGuigan too. He needed that loss to McDonnell to show him he was done.

I dont really agree with the Hagler and Spinks calls, unless retiring should occur for a fight you are not certain to win. In hindsight it seems unlikely any version of Spinks would beat Tyson. So I dont consider it a case of a fighter staying on past their best as much as a fighter just losing to a better one.

Likewise with Hagler, Leonard was a fight he could and many would argue should have won. Definately a fight I think he should have gone through with.

McGuigan admitted that he realised when he fought McDonnell that the hunger and desire was no longer there

I think fighters who come out of retirement still believe they have the same speed and skilll they possesed when they were in their prime and have never lost it,thats the mind set.

Ricky Hatton will tell everyone how he is fitter than he's ever been how he's timing and power is just as good as when he was champion,who will he be trying to convince the fans or himself.