![]() In the west we tend to see fighters fighting a dozen or so bouts before they take a real step up in class. We often hear about how great they are going to be whilst they defeat opponents who simply aren't fit to be sparring partners. Sadly as a result of this mentality we often wait 3 or 4 years before we have any idea if the fighter in question is actually that good, of if his opponents are just that bad. Sadly the “western” system means we have cases like David Price, who looked like a million dollars as he climbed to 15-0 (13) in a little under 4 years. Those 15 wins however so him face opponents who he blitzed through without being tested,in fact at best those 15 were domestic opponents. It's an unfortunate system that often sees fighters taking baby steps when they don't need to, and can often see them leaping from facing domestic fighters to world class fighters. Sometime they can make that leap, whilst other times they won't manage to do it, and in other cases they might need a second bite of the cherry, such as the case with Gary Russell Jr who looked like a fighter who was under-developed as a professional when he took on Vasyl Lomachneko, but looked a much better fighter in his second world title fight, against Jhonny Gonzalez. Thankfully not everywhere has that same mentality and in some places the idea isn't about running up a long list of wins to build a name but instead about racing to the top, trying to make a point early in a fighters career and not bothering to pad a fighters record. With that in mind I've decided to look at the “Top 5 Under 5”, the 5 best prospects with less than 5 bouts. The only rules for this is that they must have made their professional debut and must have fewer than 5 fights in the traditional paid ranks, so bouts fought under WSB and APB rules don't count towards their records.
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Thinking Out East
With this site being pretty successful so far we've decided to open up about our own views and start what could be considered effectively an editorial style opinion column dubbed "Thinking Out East" (T.O.E). Archives
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