After the fight: Gabriel Flores Jr. and the malice of boxing fandom

After his second career loss, boxing fans gave Gabriel Flores Jr. the business in a scathing fashion, showing the toxicity of boxing fandom. 

Like most other sports, boxing celebrates its winners and quickly forgets its losers. The difference with boxing is that losing is more detrimental to an athlete’s career. Fans pick up on the negative energy and feed into it with social media toxicity. That’s the reality for Gabriel Flores Jr. since dropping his second career defeat.

No, things didn’t go well for Flores on Saturday, July 23. After being knocked down three times by Giovanni Cabrera at the Grand Casino in Hinckley, MN, Flores barely managed to finish the fight on his feet, losing a wide unanimous decision in the process. Two losses don’t seem like a lot, but they can be enough to derail a boxer’s career completely.

It was a particularly poor performance for Flores, who once had so much promise. The only way a coveted prospect can rise to champion status is by testing their mettle against proven elite fighters.

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Flores failed twice against good opposition, which makes a championship run for the 22-year-old youngster unlikely. That’s the nature of sports, but a loss in boxing is different than a loss in a team sport like baseball or basketball.

There, you can lose 10, 20 or 30 games and still be a success. Boxing is more finite. A high-level boxer may only have 30 to 50 career fights, and one loss means starting the road to the top back from the bottom.

Naturally, boxing fans react to the ring’s aftermath. However, more and more people feel safe in the anonymity of social media to say vile things about the loser. Many act like because someone lost a match, it’s justified to say mean-spirited remarks about a fighter.

It’s not.

No competitor wants to lose. It’s antithetical to sports. So why do people feel the need to harass and rub someone’s nose in their failure?

Usually, it’s because they’re pretty rotten people, to begin with, and have no empathy in any facet. You can’t win with someone who sees life through that type of lens.

On some occasions, boxers bring criticism on themselves by showboating and taunting their opponents and fans. They take on the heel persona, thinking that all attention is good attention. If you engage in ad hominem discourse with fighters and fans, you’re going to eat crow when you lose.

Gabriel Flores Jr. suffered his second loss to Giovanni Cabrera, but at 22, has time to retool and win once again

But what about a boxer like Flores, who is relatively soft-spoken and respectful? Why brutalize him when he’s already suffering the agony of defeat?

Our society has a problem. We revere and obsess over winning and perfection too much. We’ve built the mindset that winning is everything and losing is unacceptable, and that’s not logical. Sports need a winner and a loser to function, but society is continually becoming short-tempered with defeat.

Part of the problem is the public’s infatuation with potential. When people spot someone with potential, they heap expectations upon them, often unfairly. Fans cash that potential in too early, thinking that future stardom is a lock.

Nothing is guaranteed, and potential isn’t tangible. It’s imagined and perceived but unknown until it’s proven through success.

At 17 years old, massive expectations were set for Flores. He was a 12-time amateur national champion and signed with Top Rank as a teenager.

Flores won his first 20 professional bouts, including a victory over reputable Jayson Velez by TKO. When he succeeded, many assumed that Flores was destined for greatness.

Then, he suffered a nasty unanimous decision loss to Luis Alberto Lopez. Lopez is a good boxer but not a top-10 caliber fighter.

One bad loss could be a fluke, but two within a year are evidence that Flores has hit his high watermark. Again, that’s not guaranteed but a rational inference.

Even if Flores has hit a crescendo, that doesn’t warrant vitriolic tweets. Flores tried his best and lost. He’s young enough to grow and improve as a fighter, but his boxing potential is more shallow than people initially estimated.

It happens.

Conquest as an amateur doesn’t assure professional success. Punching power, endurance, speed, and strategic intelligence all factor into a boxer’s upward mobility. If one or more of those areas are lacking, they eventually get exposed in the ring.

Flores may never become a world champion like some believed he would be, but he can still compete and win at a certain level. Flores doesn’t need a championship belt to have a good career.

Flores took his latest loss well and showed a desire to improve.

“I should’ve kept on stepping to my left,” Flores said after the fight. “The game plan kind of went to blur. My father was telling me to keep stepping to my left, keep feinting, keep flicking my jab, and keep jabbing. I didn’t really do much of any of that.”

Flores is aware of some of his deficits. Some of those elements can be shored up with the proper training and mindset.

Hopefully, Flores can block out the harmful comments on social media and find solace in setting his own expectations instead of feeling the weight of others.