When is it ok to retire?
When someone works in a competitive field and is great at what they do, whether it’s a NBA player, NFL player, a poker player, etc, it makes it hard for them to walk away. The question I’ve been asked many times over the years is: When is it ok to retire? To answer that question I must first think about the reasons a person would want to retire, such as: age, decline in job performance, injury, or burnt out, to name a few. So when you are looking at a boxer asking if they are done, you have to find out why they are retiring.
Over the years I’ve watched fighters like Joe Calzaghe that retired undefeated and a fighter like Evander Holyfield that fights way past his prime. Both fighter scenarios make boxing fans cringe because Calzaghe left with so many more great fights that could be made, and Evander is a future hall of famer and his fans hate watching him get pummeled when he has nothing else to prove. Out of all the fighter I have seen retire, they were always critics that either said he should have been retired or that he is retiring prematurely, so is there ever a time when fighters can hang up their gloves before they are really past their prime?
Lennox Lewis faced every great fighter in the heavyweight division, that would fight him, and he retired towards the end of the heavyweight divisions competitiveness, but this still proved to not be a good time to retire. He was coming off a win over Vitali Klitschko, where the doctor stopped the fight due to a cut over Vitali’s eye, and the world wanted to see the rematch. Since his decision to retire and stay away from the sport many people say he retired so he did not have to fight Vitali Klitschko again, but considering the fighters he did face in his career, why would he fear Vitali? I think that was an opportune time for him to retire because I believe in fighters retiring from the sport before the sport retires them.
Fans of this barbaric sport love to see fighters put it all on the line until the very end of their competitiveness and beyond, but this has proven to be a bad decision most of the time. There are so many retired boxers that have life changing illnesses that came directly from the sport, so I believe retiring when you notice frequent injuries or changes in your physical and/or mental makeup is the perfect time! Why fight until your body has been through so much that you CAN’T fight? Unfortunately that “CAN’T” usually makes its way into the fighters life outside the ring because now they CAN’T think straight, which is evident when you notice they CAN’T talk like they use to!
