One quit is not the end

“I’ll tell you what comes of this: Career is over. I think he’s done.”

Those words were spoken by Tim Bradley on ESPN’s airwaves a few minutes after Robeisy Ramirez turned away from Rafael Espinoza and held up his glove in the universal sign for “no mas.”

Before I embark on the task of pushing back on Bradley’s comment, I should pause and apply several asterisks in support of him:

First, Bradley is an ex-fighter who has walked the walk. He’s earned the right to express his opinions about other fighters and to have those opinions heard and respected.

Second, it’s live TV, and analyzing the situation off the top of your head, without that opportunity to process all aspects (the way I can in a column written a day or two later), is part of the job description. Any words spoken under those conditions can to some extent be pardoned (should they need pardoning).

And third, relatedly, Bradley moments later inserted an important caveat, as he seemed to be stopping short of fully speaking his mind: “I don’t want to judge the man. You want to see what his diagnosis is first.”

OK, asterisks applied. Now I’m ready to push back.

Ramirez’s career is not over. He’s not done. At least not because he surrendered one time when the going got rough.

As it happens, Ramirez reportedly suffered an orbital fracture against Espinoza, arguably further justifying his decision to walk away, but it’s not material to the crux of the matter either way. The main thing we heard on Saturday night was that the greats don’t quit. We all agree it’s a fighter’s right to preserve his health, and maybe it’s even the “correct” decision, but on the broadcast and on social media, we heard the insistence that you’re sacrificing your legacy and your case for greatness if you do that.

“What all-time great fighters do and how I define a fighter is the guy who’s willing to make a decision that others aren’t,” blow-by-blow analyst Joe Tessitore said shortly after the fight was stopped. “The great fighters aren’t happy with that decision. They do not accept ‘no mas’ results.”

Fellow ESPN broadcaster Mark Kriegel struggled to find the words to express his clearly mixed emotions over the fact that what’s best for a fighter’s reputation and what’s best for his health are at odds, but he was leaning in the direction of demoting Ramirez: “This is the game,” Kriegel said. “I’m sorry, but this is the game.”

Again, all the caveats — it’s live TV, they’re speaking extemporaneously, their only editor is the voice in their head.

But you can’t say that all-time great fighters don’t quit. You can’t say refusing to surrender is what separates the legends from the also-rans. You can’t say Ramirez has proven he doesn’t have the heart to be a special fighter. The history books tell us that just isn’t true.

You need look no further than the late Israel Vazquez to know that.

Kriegel even name-checked Vazquez, who’d received the memorial 10-count shortly before Espinoza-Ramirez II, as he tried to express his disappointment in Ramirez’s waving of the white flag: “On a night that we paid homage, that we gave the highest respect to Israel Vazquez, who lost his eye! I just … ”

On March 3, 2007, seven rounds into a stirring, almost dead-even rumble with Rafael Marquez, Vazquez quit the fight with a broken nose. He was widely criticized for it. Five months later, he stopped Marquez in a rematch even more thrilling than their first fight. Seven months after that, he won a split decision in a rubber match that was somehow better than either of the first two wars.

The notion of “live to fight another day” was perfectly epitomized in Vazquez yanking himself from the first Marquez fight. That withdrawal did exactly what it was intended to do, preserving him to score two career-defining wins afterward. He died of cancer last week, remembered for the thrills of those fights, not for any lack of heart. He blatantly quit one time facing the sort of adversity that some boxers would have fought through, and nobody holds it against him. Vazquez will likely go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame someday soon, despite a surrender in a fight that looked an awful lot like Ramirez’s on Saturday night.

Vitali Klitschko is already in the Hall of Fame despite quitting with a shoulder injury against Chris Byrd. He was derided as “Quit-schko” afterward, and the shaming was amplified by the fact that if he’d simply finished the fight on his feet, he was too far ahead to lose a decision. But the Ukrainian giant was in pain and was worried about doing permanent physical damage to himself and didn’t realize that the American boxing culture deems any sort of capitulation to be unacceptable, so he threw in the towel (with his good arm, obviously).

Six fights later, with his eye looking like it had gotten stuck in the garbage disposal, he refused to surrender against Lennox Lewis, and the narrative was entirely reversed, permanently. He quit one time. He went on to greatness.

The most famous mid-fight quit-job of all is the original “no mas” by Roberto Duran in 1980, and while it continued to haunt him for a long time and certainly has not been forgotten, it sure as hell wasn’t the end of his career. Davey Moore and Iran Barkley, among others, learned that.

And then there’s a certain living legend who was sitting right there at ringside Saturday night in Phoenix, providing Spanish-language commentary: Julio Cesar Chavez, who is widely considered the greatest Mexican boxer of all-time. For all his exceptional ability, for all his toughness displayed in most of his fights, Chavez did develop a tendency in the back half of his career to look for the exits.

It was most clearly on display in the second fight with Oscar De La Hoya. Chavez gave all he could but it was never going to be enough to beat this opponent nearly a decade younger, so with his lip busted open, he stayed on his stool after the eighth round. That wasn’t the only time Chavez showed less spunk than he did on, say, the night he rallied with two seconds left to stop Meldrick Taylor. The technical decision win in the rematch with Frankie Randall certainly comes to mind. But his occasional acquiescence has no bearing on his ranking among the all-timers.

Need a more recent example? How about Daniel Dubois. It’s too soon to say if he’s going to the Hall of Fame like the aforementioned fighters. But against Joe Joyce, he took a knee and took the full count with a fractured eye socket — same injury as Ramirez. Against Oleksandr Usyk, it was less obviously something that could be labeled quitting, but he again took a knee under duress and then pulled the “I’ll get up just after the ref counts 10” routine.

And, what do you know, three wins later Dubois is widely viewed as the best candidate to rule the division when the Usyk-Tyson Fury era is over, his previous submission(s) more footnote for now than defining characteristic.

We are all prisoners of the moment. We see a man go out on anything other than his shield, and our instinct is to say he’s just not tough enough to cut it in this most unforgiving of sports. And sometimes that proves to be the case.

But sometimes a boxer goes the “live to fight another day” route and that other day is the day he’s remembered for. We’ve seen it happen more than enough times now that we shouldn’t be writing off a guy like Ramirez the first time we see him submit.

We can write Ramirez off for other reasons, of course. Based on his amateur credentials, he was built up to be something he has not been, thus far, as a pro. And the ESPN crew was building him up on Saturday to be a little more than what he is, they felt he was doing better in the fight than I believe he was, and so maybe that helps explain the disappointment across the board that he exited suddenly in the manner he did.

The bar for what we expect of boxers is outrageously high, and quitting will always be a complicated subject. Ramirez said in the ring afterward, “I had to make a decision for my own health. … I had double vision. I had to make sure that I leave this ring with my health. … I am happy with my decision.”

How can you argue with that? He knew something was wrong with his eye, and he prioritized his long-term health. We all have to choose between work and life sometimes. This is far lower-stakes in every possible sense, but how many of us as parents have been faced with a decision at some point between going on an important business trip and staying home so you can be at your kid’s birthday party? The latter is probably the right thing to do in the big picture, and it shouldn’t be the end of your career if you make that choice. But maybe it costs you something in office politics and you have to put in extra hours to get back to where you were.

The risks and the rewards in boxing are far, far greater. Ramirez, in the ultimate pressure cooker, with no time to deliberate, made his decision. He said he was happy with it.

Perhaps that moment, 12 seconds into the sixth round on Saturday night, will define his boxing career. But he will have opportunities to prevent that from being the case. His career isn’t over — not because, one time, he chose what’s best for his health over what could be best for his wealth.

Ramirez couldn’t see clearly on Saturday. And neither could any of the people suggesting he threw his boxing career away with a single decision.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].