By Shawn Krest

And he was never the same. 

There may not be six sadder words in boxing.  They are usually accompanied by a doleful look downward and perhaps a shake of the head. 

There was this guy that had us all excited.  No one could stay with him.  He had it all.  But his trainer pushed him too fast.  Or he fell in with the wrong crowd. Or he started to believe his own press and forgot what put him on the map.

Whatever the reason, he was caught by surprise one night against a tougher-than-expected opponent.  He got hit, went down, and…

And he was never the same. 

It might have been the local guy a few years ago who intoxicated you with his talent and personality.  Surely he would be able to generate the escape velocity necessary to leave the armory behind and represent the neighborhood on televised title fights. 

Maybe it was prospect that you tracked up the TV food chain.  From a local show like Ballroom Boxing or Broadway Boxing, he moved up and made ESPN2’s show must-see every month or two.  Then it was on to ShoBox, a Pay-Per-View undercard. 

Until…

And he was never the same.

The knockout has perhaps the toughest road to recovery in all sports.  Blown saves and missed kicks will shake an athlete’s confidence.  An athlete’s first major injury combines pain and frustration. 

The combination of mortality, vulnerability, and muddled senses that come from a knockout, however, shakes a man like nothing else. 

Samuel Peter is staring it down now, less than two weeks after being stopped by Vitali Klitschko.  Sure, he’s lost before, but a 3-point decision can be disputed.  Judges can be criticized.  Strategy can be rethought.  A beating that leaves a fighter lumpy faced and questioning his will to get off the stool is a different order of magnitude. 

Perhaps the Nigerian Nightmare will recover, adjust, and find himself at the center of the sport’s spotlight again in the future. 

Or maybe we’ll be sitting on press row or in the cheap seats in a few years, talking about powerful heavyweights.  Someone will mention Peter and his fight against Klitschko.  We may forget if we were in the Garden or Atlantic City when we saw it.  We may not remember if it was on Showtime or HBO, but at some point, we’ll sigh over the lost promise and utter those words.

“…and he was never the same.”

For some fighters, the first loss shows the world that they’re not the baddest man on the block.  That 0 in the loss column pops like a balloon, and so does their aura of invincibility.  Think Mike Tyson after the Douglas fight, or the way MMA fans are already viewing to Kimbo Slice.  Vic Darchinyan also comes to mind.

Knockouts are the epitome of a blowout win (or loss), but sometimes the stoppage can be so fast and ferocious that it’s hard to ever look at the victim the same way.  Zab Judah never truly lived down his wobbly legged trip around the ring courtesy of Kostya Tszyu.  Jaidon Codrington is still trying to recover from his brutal loss to Allen Green three years ago.  It’s a journey that Amir Khan is just beginning.

Other times, a knockout merely shows that a fighter has reached his level.  He won’t end up in the Hall of Fame after all.  Perhaps he was overly protected in the early going which led to his being overrated.  Jermain Taylor and Miguel Cotto had their share of doubters before getting stopped by Kelly Pavlik and Antonio Margarito respectively.  Calvin Brock, Michael Grant and Jameel McCline are the first three heavyweights to come to mind in this category.

A knockout can also be a sign that no one fights forever.  That first ‘KO By’ can open a flood of lopsided losses that have friends and neutral observers offering advice on when to finally hang it up.  Oscar de la Hoya crumpled to the mat after a Bernard Hopkins body shot, and the retirement talk began immediately.   Roy Jones Jr. lost a pair of brutal knockouts and has had everyone in the sport weigh in on his future.

Even if a fighter isn’t quite that advanced in his career, the first knockout often begins a rapidly shrinking countdown to the next one.  Arturo Gatti saw his knockout losses get closer and closer together before back to back stoppages convinced him it was time. 

Then there are those rarities:  The “but then they were the same” guys.   They are boxers who lose by knockout and come all the way back to be as good or better than they were in the pre-stoppage part of their career.

Wladimir Klitschko is the most prominent example from recent years.  He managed to hit just about every category of knockout loss in a career slump four years ago.  His second round loss to Corrie Sanders—a smaller and clearly inferior opponent—popped Klitschko’s reputation as a unbeatable knockout artist.  The sight of him flopping on the mat, unable to get back to his corner, in a loss to Lamon Brewster 13 months later made it seem impossible to envision a time when he would be considered a serious factor in the heavyweight division again.  After going five years between knockout losses, Klitschko made it less than five fights before his next one, and there was little doubt he’d suffer more losses if he kept fighting.

Except that Klitschko did keep fighting.  He rebuilt his style into a more cautious one under the tutelage of Emanuel Steward, taking full advantage of his superior height and reach against most opponents.  There were some shaky moments, including the decision over Samuel Peter where it was a question of whether Peter would be able to knock him out before time expired.  But knockouts of Chris Byrd, Brock, and Ray Austin put him atop the heavyweight division as undisputedly the best big man in the sport. 

It seems that heavyweights are the most likely to live down a knockout, with Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and even Hasim Rahman (though he seems destined to keep repeating history) living down their share of stoppages to wear the title belt again. 

Among non-heavyweights,  Kostya Tszyu, who went down to Vince Phillips in the upset of the year for 1997. He went on to win 12 more fights and the world title, then take more than a year off before returning to win one more. 

Manny Pacquiao also came back from two knockouts, early in his career, although few fans in this country had heard of him at the time.  Still, if a fighter is knocked out and no one notices, he still goes through the same personal hell.  There’s no question that he’s made it all the way back and more. 

The choice here for the top comeback from a stoppage by a non-heavyweight is an easy one, however.  Diego Corrales’ rise to true boxing fame didn’t begin until his first knockout loss.  His willingness to absorb a horrendous beating and keep coming back reminded fans of a horror movie villain.  Five knockdowns at the hand of Floyd Mayweather, a mouthpiece driven through the roof of his mouth resulting in an ungodly number of stitches, and then, of course, his epic against Jose Luis Castillo. And like those Halloween classics, we couldn’t tear our eyes away.

The joy of watching a Corrales fight resulting from his willingness to live on the edge of the knockout.  One slip up, one solid shot too many, and it would all come crashing down.  The fact that his slip up came on the roads instead of in the ring took him from us too soon. 

We watched Corrales, and Gatti, and The Beast Mugabi, because we knew how much they had to lose.  We knew that all it took was one wrong move and…

And we’d be saying he was never the same.