Why Julius Francis still fighting?

6 Pack · Post by **6 Pack** » 07 Sep 2004, 15:13

He was a decent enough fighter. He won a Lonsdale belt, beat Danny Williams among others, got a decent payday against Tyson.

But today he is 39 years old, fights in the 270's, has lost 9 of his last 10 fights, and has a record of now 23-18-(don't know his draws, but does it matter you get the point).

WHy is he still fighting. he never had a beautiful record, but it was respectful, and he had some good wins and was a good British champ. Now it is over. How can you keep fighting, being so way past your prime, way out of shape, and having not won in soooooooo long.

I wish he would retire. ANy one know if he plans to fight on?

stujones · Post by **stujones** » 07 Sep 2004, 15:17

I do agree, I don't like to see Francis as a punch bag anymore - We criticise Holyfield, but people don't mind old Julius continuing.

I made a thread about this many months ago - the response was that "Julius knows how to handle himself", and Holyfield doesn't then?

I hope he isn't fighting for financial reasons.

steve689 · Post by **steve689** » 07 Sep 2004, 15:18

Who knows? Some people just love the buzz and cannot stop, why is Evander Holyfield still fighting? He has way more cash than Francis, why did Greg Page carry on? Larry Holmes? It's just one of those things, despite his poor record Julius still gets decent paydays and assigments abroad so i suppose as long as the cash keep rolling in he will keep going.

REAL_DEAL · Post by **REAL_DEAL** » 07 Sep 2004, 15:24

For the money. he gets decent money as well and will fight on short notice. francis is a good person for the sport

6 Pack · Post by **6 Pack** » 08 Sep 2004, 14:36

REAL_DEAL wrote:For the money. he gets decent money as well and will fight on short notice. francis is a good person for the sport

Not in 10 years when a 'where are they now' story shows he has head injuries and can't remember his daughter.

REAL_DEAL · Post by **REAL_DEAL** » 08 Sep 2004, 14:52

do you actually watch his fights, he hadly gets a clean shot landed on him. harrison couldnt do it till late, skelton couldnt do it at all. dimentrko didnt hurt him. his not like medrick taylor and riddick bowe.

Matchfixer · Post by **Matchfixer** » 08 Sep 2004, 14:54

Maskaev was smacking him about though...

REAL_DEAL · Post by **REAL_DEAL** » 08 Sep 2004, 15:02

dud julius get finished off with bodys shots in that fight. sam only finished him off with body shots and francis was doing good in that match. Luan Krasniqi couldnt hurt him. Francis gets more money lasting the distance with european class fighters than a 9-5 job. you arent excatly going to get brain damage losing fights taking body shots.

hitman_hatton1 · Post by **hitman_hatton1** » 08 Sep 2004, 15:24

yeah as the others have said its all about earning money

any ambitions he once had r gone.

the thing with julius is that he isn't too tough for his own good. a better fighter can take him out early and he can hang with the european heavy's he always tends to fight.

Matchfixer · Post by **Matchfixer** » 08 Sep 2004, 15:34

REAL_DEAL wrote:dud julius get finished off with bodys shots in that fight. sam only finished him off with body shots and francis was doing good in that match. Luan Krasniqi couldnt hurt him. Francis gets more money lasting the distance with european class fighters than a 9-5 job. you arent excatly going to get brain damage losing fights taking body shots.

No. Maskaev chinned him. Francis was a walking punch bag in that fight.

However, like you say Francis is pretty durable as shown v Harrison.
What sort of money does he get for fights then?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 08 Sep 2004, 19:40

Apparently in the case of Julius, money talks. He can't be doing it for any other reason. Surely.

knockout · Post by **knockout** » 09 Sep 2004, 06:40

Matchfixer wrote: No. Maskaev chinned him. Francis was a walking punch bag in that fight.

Julius has never been "chinned" he isnt like Holyfield who keeps going when the battle is lost. If he feels he is out of his depth he will get out of there before getting badly hurt.

The Maskaev fight he takes a decent right, gets up gets a bit of stick on the ropes and the ref jumps in.... Julius was fine.

Against Sam i got the impression that once he had gone further than Danny did he was satisfied

adamiw · Post by **adamiw** » 09 Sep 2004, 07:48

He handles himself ok, become a bit of a defensive master actually. I dont see what the problem is, sure he's become a journeyman, but he's going round, going the distance with Europe's best heavyweights and picking up some nice pay cheques.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 09 Sep 2004, 08:54

The difference is that Francis isn't getting too brave in there at the age of 49. Holyfight has always fought every fight like his life depended on it, and as a result has taken a hell of a lot of punishment in his career, if Holyfield was doing just enough to survive in there without pushing fights it wouldn't be a problem, but he still thinks he can win the titles back.

What worries me is that Holyfield somehow gets past Brewster, which is definetly possible, and winds up in the ring with a killer like Vitali K. Whilst Vitali is no fancy dan, he's big and strong and relentless, and Holyfield being who he is, could well wind up hanging tough and taking a merciless beating, just like Ray Mercer did recently against Wlad. Those kind of matchups late in a fighters career are really very dangerous, Holyfield's speech patterns have noticably improved from being out of the ring, but if he gets in with someone like Vitali, he could end up having someone wiping his bum for him.

Holyfield's original team have now gone, and with good reason, they don't want to be associated with him getting his brains beat out.

Interestingly, Angelo Dundee was once asked why he stayed with Ali right to the end, even though he was way past it. Dundee responded..

"I was with him at the beginning and I figured i should be there at the end, I figure if Ali is going to fight I wanna be there to watch out for him, and make sure he doesn't get hurt, I didn't trust other people to do for him what I knew I would do if he was getting hurt."

You can kind of see his point, now that Holyfield has new people around him, there is no guarantee they will be as concerned for his safety in there. The future looks very bleak for Evander.

KOJOE90 · Post by **KOJOE90** » 09 Sep 2004, 09:37

jamesmcdonnell wrote: Interestingly, Angelo Dundee was once asked why he stayed with Ali right to the end, even though he was way past it. Dundee responded..

"I was with him at the beginning and I figured i should be there at the end, I figure if Ali is going to fight I wanna be there to watch out for him, and make sure he doesn't get hurt, I didn't trust other people to do for him what I knew I would do if he was getting hurt."

I to have heard simular quotes from Dundee, but it's always bugged me that if what he said is true why didn't he stop the Holmes fight sooner? It was plane to see from an early stage Ali had NOTHING left.

Maybe he let it go on in the hope that it would convince Ali it was all over? Surely he didn't think Ali was going to win that fight?

I also heard Dundee say in an interview that towards the end of Ali's career when Ali's speak started to change that he thought Ali had "Took a shot to the throat"

J · Post by J » 09 Sep 2004, 09:48

funny he should say that I heard that he its possible (think this was in the book Facing Ali) that a neurologist reckoned it was form the way he held his gloves high round his head but caught so many cuffing shots to the back of the head and neck area, this he reasoned being a particularly sensitive area for nerves travelling to the brain.

this could and may well have contributed to Ali's present state.

as for Dundee well you cant blame him for getting sucked in, I guess he did see Ali pull off some remarkable feats, I mean he could have thrown the towEl in against foreman, ok he was amuch younger man then but I guess he just believe in the "magic". I dont hold that against him.

undoubtedly he has been a force of good over ali's life.

look what happened to tyson when his mentor passed away.

JimStone · Post by **JimStone** » 09 Sep 2004, 09:59

REAL_DEAL wrote:dud julius get finished off with bodys shots in that fight. sam only finished him off with body shots and francis was doing good in that match. Luan Krasniqi couldnt hurt him. Francis gets more money lasting the distance with european class fighters than a 9-5 job. you arent excatly going to get brain damage losing fights taking body shots.

Good post.

If you know what you're doing and fight to survive - rather than fight to win - it's fairly easy to get through a fight without taking (m)any big shots to the head.

Julius won't take any harm, as long as he's careful.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 09 Sep 2004, 11:42

KOJOE90 wrote:
jamesmcdonnell wrote: Interestingly, Angelo Dundee was once asked why he stayed with Ali right to the end, even though he was way past it. Dundee responded..

"I was with him at the beginning and I figured i should be there at the end, I figure if Ali is going to fight I wanna be there to watch out for him, and make sure he doesn't get hurt, I didn't trust other people to do for him what I knew I would do if he was getting hurt."
I to have heard simular quotes from Dundee, but it's always bugged me that if what he said is true why didn't he stop the Holmes fight sooner? It was plane to see from an early stage Ali had NOTHING left.

Maybe he let it go on in the hope that it would convince Ali it was all over? Surely he didn't think Ali was going to win that fight?

I also heard Dundee say in an interview that towards the end of Ali's career when Ali's speak started to change that he thought Ali had "Took a shot to the throat"

That's a good point, hmm, yes, there is the holmes fight where Ali shipped tremendous amounts of punishment. I never felt that Dundee was a parasite where Ali was concerned, perhaps as you say he hoped that it would be the end of the line. He surely knew also that Ali was terribly weight drained from all the diuretics he had been taking?

I've heard the quote where he mentioned Ali catching one in the throat.

Freiheit · Post by **Freiheit** » 14 Sep 2004, 12:16

Francis will meet Taras Bidenko next tuesday in Germany on a Sportlight card, so there should be a ghood chance that it will be shown on Eurosport.

bigped · Post by **bigped** » 14 Sep 2004, 14:21

how much he getting for these wee trips to germany?? ect