It's a common theme - the fans will freely label foreign journeymen as "bums" and "nobodies" and, of course, slag off the prospects for fighting them, but we daren't say boo about our own "paid losers". For example, anyone having the gall to criticise Peter Buckley on here would be tantamount to having committed treason.Glyn Leach wrote:I agree Ezzard, though I've been guilty of it myself. Seems to me that foreign fighters get it more than most, which has always struck me as ignorant — literally, because some of these fighters might well be the Johnny Greaveses of their countries, but those who slag them off wouldn't know that, they just look at their records.
As for Greaves, putting him in with Gavin Rees was about as gross a mismatch as the mind could conceive in terms of win-loss records and levels in which the two had won and lost, and if it had been in any other country we'd have bashed the matchmaking until it was paper-flat. But not in the UK, and not when it involves a "decent bloke".
That's not to criticise Greaves, by the way. He may be limited, but I've never seen him not do his best and try to win, which is more than can be said for Buckley in the later stages of his career.