What do American Stephen Fulton, Briton Callum Smith and Italian Michael Magnesi have in common? At first glance, very little—aside from the fact that they are all professional boxers. Their styles differ, as do their weight classes, skills, and personal stories. And yet, when you look closely at their most recent performances, one after another, a red thread begins to appear—a thread that leads to a seemingly trivial yet too often forgotten truth: boxers are not ordinary people.
Clint Eastwood understood this well and captured the idea perfectly through the words of Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris, played by Morgan Freeman, in his masterpiece Million Dollar Baby:
“If there’s magic in boxing, it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys, and detached retinas. It’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.”
And it’s precisely because you’re the only one who can see that dream that you succeed where an ordinary man would fail. That’s why your threshold for pain, fatigue, disappointment, and the beatings life mercilessly throws your way is just a notch above that of anyone who’s never stepped through those sixteen ropes. That’s also why you keep surprising people, stunning those who insist on counting you out.
For Stephen Fulton, the world had come crashing down. Once undefeated, highly rated, and on the verge of entering the experts’ pound-for-pound Top 10, the American was left picking up the pieces of a shattered career after his crushing loss in Japan to the pound-for-pound phenom Naoya Inoue.
His next outing—a narrow and controversial win over Carlos Castro—led many observers, including the author of this article, to believe that Fulton wouldn’t have the grit, the determination, or the self-belief to make it out unscathed a second time against the relentless Brandon Figueroa, whom he had narrowly defeated four years earlier.
An ordinary man would have stepped into the ring filled with doubt, discouraged by the bookmakers’ odds, and intimidated by his opponent’s impressive winning streak. But Fulton is a boxer, and boxers are not ordinary people. So, on February 1st, “Cool Boy Steph” delivered one of the best performances of his career, completely neutralizing the dogged Figueroa.
Then there’s 35-year-old Callum Smith, who seemed to have swallowed a bitter pill far too big to digest. Broken down round by round by the fearsome Russian puncher Artur Beterbiev, Smith came to realize he wasn’t equipped to compete with the best in the world—and that the gap could not be bridged. Not surprisingly, after such a painful defeat, rumors began to swirl about a possible retirement for the British light heavyweight.
So what kind of ambitions could he possibly have had flying to Riyadh to face the unbeaten and hungry Joshua Buatsi? I knew Smith had enough technical skills to beat his fellow Brit, but I thought he lacked the character to cross yet another scorching desert. An ordinary man would’ve gone to collect his final big paycheck and waved the white flag at the first sign of trouble. But boxers are not ordinary people, and Smith reminded us of that by being hoisted in triumph after twelve furious rounds of toe-to-toe action.
Which brings us to our own Michael Magnesi. Just over a year ago, he left Italian boxing fans stunned and heartbroken, suffering a dramatic, cruel, and painful defeat in an incredible fight against Japan’s Masanori Rikiishi. Magnesi had dominated large portions of that match, only to collapse just shy of the finish line under a violent downpour of punches.
It was the kind of defeat—physically and mentally—that could have easily jeopardized his future ambitions. So when the final rounds of his bout two months ago against France’s Khalil El Hadri came around, many of the Italian’s supporters were gripped by a dreadful sense of déjà vu.
Behind on the scorecards and outclassed during the middle rounds by Magnesi’s superior hand speed and punch variety, El Hadri went all-in at the end, pinning his opponent to the ropes and unloading a series of heavy shots. I was watching the fight live, sweating bullets, thinking: “Here we go again. He’s going down.”
An ordinary man would’ve been haunted by the ghosts of that catastrophic final round from the year before. In his mind, El Hadri’s face would have morphed into Rikiishi’s, in a spiraling mix of doubt and dread. But boxers are not ordinary people, and Magnesi emerged from that critical moment like a lion—managing to push his opponent back in a memorable eleventh round, and then gritting his teeth through the final three minutes.
The locations change. The protagonists change. So do the tactical dynamics and everything else. But the lesson from these episodes—and from countless others like them—remains the same. Those of us who follow boxing, report on it, and try to analyze it for the broader public, all too often forget just how vast the heart, courage, and will to win are in those who lace up a pair of gloves and risk their health climbing those fateful steps in pursuit of a dream. So vast, in fact, that they can blow away like a tornado the predictions built on the mistaken assumption that a boxer is just another ordinary man.