Do you believe that any of the changes over the years in punches, footwork, strategies, etc have removed any good old techniques?
No. Not over the past 60-70 years. What I do think is that the talent pool has gotten bigger. Sure, there have been highs and lows but overall we have a larger number of talented fighters in recent years.
Just rattle off some big names over the past 20 years- HW/CW- Holyfield, Bowe, Lewis, W. and K. Klitschko, Tua, Ibeaubuchi, Moorer, Byrd, Haye, Toney, and even past prime versions of Tyson, Holmes, and Foreman just to name a few. Even Mercer, Morrison, and a past prime Witherspoon were pretty good Adamek, Jirov, Mormeck, Bell, Cunningham, and others were good at CW. LHW/SMW/MW- Jones, Hopkins, Ward, Tarver, Michalczewski, Nunn, Rocchigiani, Ottke, Maske, Hill, and others. Calzaghe, Kessler, Froch, Bute, J. Taylor, A. Dirrell, Abraham, Martinez, Chavez, Benn, Eubank, McClellan, J. Jackson, and many others. JMW/WW/JWW- DeLaHoya, Mosley, Pacquiao, Mayweather, Marquez, Whitaker, Chavez, Trinidad, Vargas, Quartey, and many others. LW/JLW/FW- Morales, Barrera, Hamed, O. Canizales... even Gatti, Kelley, and J. Jones were awesome. McKinney, Bungu, Ncita, Casamayor, Freitas, Coralles, Tapia, Carbajal, R. Lopez...you get the point I'm not saying any of these guys were better (some were, some were not) than those who fought during the 20 years prior but I do think that the modern era gets underrated sometimes. I am saying that we have had many quality fighters in recent years that were actually great... but maybe not considered great due to all of the other quality fighters in or around their division at that time. Morales, Barrera, Marquez, and Pacquiao are greats IMO.
I just rewatched Foreman-Ali today and noticed how Foreman would stick his right out to measure for his left hook. Many fighters today don't even know how to measure let alone do it with the rear hand.
Foreman has underrated skills though. Especially his ring cutting was magnificient, Ali trained to stay the whole fight in the middle yet Foreman directly got him in the ropes... Foreman still lost, but he succeeded in cutting off the ring and Ali failed at staying in the middle. It's just that Ali's durability was bigger than Foreman his stamina.
When you see old timers like Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe, Ike Williams, Sandy Saddler, Willie Pep, you always see them in the big fights against other greats, so they don't look that remarkable to the naked eye. Then you catch some of their clips against average fighters and you see what a nasty bunch of ass-kickers they actually were.
Feinting and drawing out actions from other fighters was done frequently by a lot of fighters in the 40s and 50s. Even rough and tumble brawlers like Basilio and Marciano could be seen baiting oponents into throwing so they could counter. I'm not saying it's competely gone, but it definitely is not used nearly as much now as it was then. Hopkins drove Pavlik crazy with his feints and little traps he set to get Kelly to do what he wanted. Erike Morales is another throwback in the regard that he'll use feints heavily to keep his oponents doing what he wants.
interesting I think this also shows Ali's ability to be spontaneous and improvise. He didn't take as much punishment with his rope a dope as I originally thought he did
Somehow less technical than some of the past boxers things were supposed to progress faster, stronger, harder punching better knockout artists More exiting fighters....
Nah, Ali was punished. He was simply tougher than Foreman had stamina. It's is no improvising when your toughness saved you.