How could old time fighters fight 60 rounds in a fight?

I watched the tapes of those heavyweight classic bouts in black and white colours. They fought 60 rounds in a fight. It's so amazing!

Can you imagine how they could do that? How could they have such stamina and energy?

They fought 5 times as much as we do today in one fight. :good

 

Those guys fight at such a slow paced with little technicality.

Most of them would not last 12 in this day and age.

 

I've only seen glimpses of these old tapes. And my thought was that, coupled with their far superior fighting mentality, they had the benefit of fighting with less pace, movement and workrate. I don't know, I could be badly wrong there. And I probably am. But from the few tapes I've seen, I've just noticed them being far less wasteful of energy with their legs. They seem to be just stepping around, as opposed to dancing/running.

 

:deal

Most of them would not last 12. Fact.

 

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Most likely because of the London Prize Ring rules of the time. A round ended when a fighter was knocked down, whether it was 5 seconds into a round or 5 minutes. Many fighters used to go down to get a breather, so it was possible to fight many, many rounds.

But on the other hand, grappling was also allowed, so if a fighter was floored or thrown down, the round ended. The grappling parts were really gruelling, and fights sometimes came down to who was the better wrestler, rather than who was the better boxer.

 

Different kind of fighting...today's fighters are better conditioned sure. But would they fight for hours in the hot sun, drinking whiskey between rounds like Sullivan & Kilrain did?
That's another kind of tough...

 

Thanks for the info. sir :good

 

Because they were human beings. They adapt to what they have to adapt to. If right now boxing became a 20 round sport, we'd see some gruelling matches and serious injuries from the exhaustion but 10 years from now boxers would have adapted to it.

 

and we would see more deaths in the ring then we used to see, right?

 

I hear being Hungry is a great motivational tool.

Style of fight could be different. Less punches, more clinching......

===

 

60 rounds is nothing, there were old boxing matches lasted over 2 days until a guy quit. Humans are tougher than we think.

 

Some of the Boxing Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome were badaass. But it was just a different level of crazy back then from equipment to how they fought.

 

You're welcome.

 

In a finish fight there's no scoring so it's okay to take a knee when you need a break. The round ends when somebody goes down, so every time someone stops to catch a breath and get away from their opponent, that's the round. That plus fighting slower and conserving your energy probably contributed to fights going several hours.