(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)
Two recent events made me thinking, "Shouldn’t there be an age cap for professional boxers?"
The first event happened just moments ago when Filipino bantamweight Gerry Penalosa, 36, threw in the towel in the ninth of an agonizingly lopsided championship battle against the unbeaten defending champion Juan Manuel Lopez, 25.
Penalosa did not win a single round against the younger, quicker, and more powerful Lopez. The event turned out not to be a boxing match but a public execution before Lopez’ hometown crowd at the Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez in Puerto Rico.
At the end of eight rounds, trainer Freddie Roach had motioned for a stay for Penalosa, but the grizzled warrior asked for one more round.
In an apparent desire to complete the execution, Lopez once more moved in to deliver the final blow, but Penalosa’s corner was quick to stop the execution by calling it quits.
The second event was when Mexican-American boxing superstar Oscar de la Hoya, the 36-year-old former 10-time champion in six weight divisions, announced his permanent goodbye from professional boxing.
De la Hoya made his announcement four months after he was unceremoniously beaten to a pulp by Pacquiao, his fourth in seven fights in the last five years.
A combination of age and fading skills had him losing in recent years to Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and finally, Pacquiao.
At his peak, the iconic de la Hoya frequently spoke of retiring at age 30, but by the time he actually made his retirement announcement, he had become irrelevant as a boxer.
"These last four months have been very difficult for me," he recently told his fans, friends and supporters at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.
He admitted wavering over his decision. "This is the love of my life, boxing is my passion," he said. "When I can't do it anymore, when I can't compete at the highest level, it's not fair. It's not fair to me, it's not fair to the fans, and it’s not fair to nobody."
De la Hoya needed the support of his family to make this decision, because in his own words “boxing is what I was born to do.”
But if the family is not strong enough to dissuade an aging boxer from fighting in the ring, then someone else has to step in to tell the boxer to stop, because most boxers, including de la Hoya and Penalosa, do not know when to stop when left to decide on their own.
If well-meaning friends (Manny Pacquiao for Peñalosa) and family (wife Millie for Oscar) are not enough, then shouldn’t there be a boxing body to step in to allow aging boxers to fade away gracefully and with dignity?
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