How were old timers so good?

Old fighters fought too often and were always injured. By definition, this lowered the bar for their performances, sometimes so much that two fighters would mutually agree to dog it in the ring.

Modern fighters are able to give their utmost by properly resting, recuperating and honing their skill set between bouts.

 

We hear too many fighters say 'I went in with an injury' to see that really. IMO anyway.

 

Training is NOT the same as fighting. There is a big, big difference.

 

This, so much this. So, so much, this. Bodhi is as correct as he can be.

I've always said that my time in the gym was high school.

My 200+ fights were college, grad school, and my damn dissertation.

 

Also, just because you're wearing a head guard you're losing brain cells and not getting paid for it!

 

If you think the Mayweathers and Wards acquired their skills in their actual fights and not beforehand (in training), then you're out of your mind. Fights put your training to the test, but you can't replace training with more fights and expect good results.

 

Mayweather

 

How many pro fights have you had, professor?

You just aren't correct in this statement, mate. I get what your driving at, but you gain the comfort and the nuance to your game in the ring, with a live opponent. The "skills", as you call them, aren't near as important as learning to use them in live fire scenarios. The best mechanics on earth that unravel under fire with buy you a candy bar if you have a dollar.

 

Weak. It's like me asking you - how many championships have you won?

You can approximate live fire scenarios in sparring. People get hurt and knocked out in sparring all the time, ask Chad Dawson. If instead of learning the skills, you just work out and have 3 fights a month, it's not going to work. You talk about mechanics unraveling under fire, but what's going to happen if you don't have the mechanics in the first place? I agree that you gain comfort and nuance from actual fights, but all the comfort and nuance in the world wouldn't have helped Gatti against Mayweather.

 

are you comparing average fighters or the top level? be consistent.

stop saying things are more important than experience, in any endevour, in any walk of life, training is important but experience is king.

example 1. new drivers have finished their training, new drivers suck

example 3. a mechanic could explain to me how to strip an engine, i still wouldn't be able to do it first time
example 4. anyone with a degree, you learn for 3 years, then get a job and learn how to actually do the job

listen to people like magnasaki who know about boxing first hand

edit: sparring partners often get told what to do, this is important practice but not the same as a fight
: you seem to have the idea old timers didn't train, obviously they did, it was more stamina based, but they trained hard.

 

Gatti could have trained as much as he wanted, he never would have beaten Mayweather. Same argument.

Sparring is not fighting either. It´s a controlled environment. Accidents may happen but they are not the standard.

What´s your job? After you learned it, where you good it from the start because you knew the "how" or did you need a few years of practice until you got there?

There are prodigys like Mayweather and perhaps Ward but they are rare and not the standard. You don´t judge scientists by einstein or Newton, are you?

Boxing can be a profession - and for 99.9% of fighters it is, where you learn your profession but get good through experience - and it can be an art - which is the tiny minority at the very top, the Grebs, Armstongs, Robinsons, Alis, Leonards and Jones of the world who just have a talent that transcends the sport. However, those are NOT the ones to go by.

 

You can't compare a mechanic explaining something to you with hard sparring that you actually do. The rest of the comparisons are similarly invalid.

Training (real training, not bull****) is more important than random "experience." Experience is only worth something if you actually succeed in what you're doing or at least survive. If you go and get knocked out 3 times in a month, you're no better off than you were when you started. Haven't you ever seen a guy just starting out defeat a much more experienced opponent? Happens all the time. In his fourth fight, Dmitriy Pirog fought a guy who was 25-5 and beat him. There are many other examples. I am not saying that experience in actual fights doesn't matter, but I don't think it matters in the way you imply.

Boxing is a skill-based sport. Any attempt to downplay this in favor of "experience" is mistaken.

 

Sparring is what you make of it. Some sparring isn't worth a damn but you can practice some very real things if you want. The problem with your analogy (starting a job and not being good at it) is that you don't recognize that sparring is a kind of experience. It's not the equivalent of simply "knowing how" to do something.

 

It´s an experience in a protected and controlled environment. I don´t say it´s invaluable, it is very much but not as much as actual fighting experience.
and aside of that, the "old timers" - what do you understand there? - sparred. A lot. Probably more than most fighters today.

 

i give up, why ask a question if you don't want the answer