Is boxing the only sport that has fans of Classic fights?

no, there are many othere sports, even though in the others peoples are not obsessed in stating that they were stronger in the past;
For example, many classics soccer matches of 30 or 40 years ago are still well remembered and discussed; or many F1 and motociclistic competitions; or many chess players ( fischer, kasparov...)
Even in tennis, a lot of peoples knows very well the players of 30 years ago; thinking again, even in the other sports some peoples likes to claim the pasts were stronger: tennis, for example: average height and weight of the tennis players have increased a lot, to the point that there are players that bases their strategy mainly in hitting the ball stronger than their opponents;
technical, "weak" players are declining, but still there are peoples that likes to say the small players of 40 years ago would have schooled the actual players.

 

I always like watching cricket classics and old AFL matches probably as much as watching current games really. Just like with boxing a classic clash transcends time and changes in fashion and tactics because when it all boils down "the contest" is still what captivates us all.

 

That sounds like a really interesting book, Flea.

 

I prefer Classic Boxing simply because Boxing is my favorite sport, but I always was a bit interested in classic Football(soccer if you´re american)...but sadly there isn´t too many old games avaliable like in Boxing.

 

Funny enough I've been playing golf now a couple years and I'm starting to get interested in the old fellas. I was asking a fella I played with last week, he used to play off scratch when he was younger, 4 now and he's in his 60's. I asked him how he compared the old timers to the modern players like we do here on the classic about boxing. He said the new fellas are better athletes with better equipment, balls, clubs etc but the old fellas had better tecnique. Sounds familiar eh :yep

 

With all sports the drama of it all happening is more exciting than the artistary of it

Ahh that explains it, is your old man from Leeds? And weren't you a team of complete thugs in those days, I wouldn't want to watch them either :yep

I do pine after footballers (soccer) from the 80s/90s. There doesn't seem to be as many individually brilliant footballers these days, not sure whether that's tactics or players attitudes

 

I think is due to the type of attitude the players have today.....at least in here the young players are celebreties just too soon, they have too much money in such an early age and stop to evolve, they think they already know everything and don´t listen to the trainers.....

I think that´s the secret in Barcelona, they teach the fundamentals and the kids listen to their trainers, a lot......

 

I'm a bit of a baseball history buff. Baseball lore is huge in America, and people like to compare and contrast players through the ages much as we do boxers.

The chess mention is a very good one too. "Brilliancies" are studied like small works of art and dissected.

 

No, but boxing is distinctly advantaged in this respect, well formatted for preservation.

In the States, professional and collegiate gridiron history is well established through footage, particularly in the professional ranks through the efforts of 96 year old cinematographer Ed Sabol and his late son Steve, starting with the 1962 NFL Championship game. [John Facenda's "Voice of God" narration catalyzed these efforts for NFL Films.] The 1958 Championship "Greatest Game Ever Played" brought that league squarely into the televised era, and is frequently viewed by nostalgic gridiron fans. Color footage of earlier famous gridiron events date back to the 1930s.

However, it must be remembered that the history of movie film coincides with the history of Queensbury era boxing, uniquely documenting the evolution of of both. We can view Fitz-Corbett. Known extant radio recordings date back to Tunney-Dempsey II. On television, we have Charles-Louis and other kinescopes from the outset of the 1950s. Like professional wrestling, it's ideally suited to the medium (and while not a competitive sport, vintage pro "rasslin'" is a major industry). Field sports don't translate as well to visual media as ring confinement which concentrates the action.

Boxing was originally one of the big three sports in the States, along with baseball and horse racing, giving it a huge advantage. In horse racing, extraordinary performers like Secretariat do get modern viewing.

Olympiads starting with Leni Reifenstahl's amazing chronicle of the 1936 Games featuring Jesse Owens paved the way for Bud Greenspan's eventual documentaries, with the sober narration of his brother David.

Newspaper sports writing was a high art form by the late 1800s, with boxing and baseball the main beneficiaries in the States, inspiring and spawning great sums of noted literature, commercially profitable. There's plenty of terrific writing on obscure subjects by starving authors addressing a miniscule readership. [My guitar teacher likes to say that, "Rock is five notes of music for 10,000 fans, jazz is 10,000 notes for five fans."] Yes, the sports writing was of extraordinary quality, but it was also commercially profitable, read by a wide audience. That's a big difference between then and today, that quality could then be lucrative.

Right now, in today's culture, Paris Hilton is nostalgia, Kim Kardashian profitable. [I'd like to see a television series titled, "Tomorrow's Has-Beens," where the Kardashians should quickly go, now that their "star's" been knocked up by *******-to-******* sex, in her's, by another. Will their child's name be Rectum, after both parents?]

Today, boxing's much more of a specialty interest, so many fans look back to a time when this sport was Page One news [sometimes with banner headlines in the New York Times, as was the case with each of Dempsey's Title fights].

Eventually, as the former prominence of boxing recedes further into the past, and the fans of it age and die out, interest will fade over time. Because of the international passions Classic boxing inspires, it may well be the last sport to have significant fans of vintage events, not being confined to, or excluded from, fanfare in major populations, like baseball, gridiron, cricket, or kickball/soccer/football [whatever the hell we're to call it on this forum].

 

I think the key element is that every fight is somewhat different: different lengths, different routes to victory, different personalities etc. It's in individual sports with this variety that the history of the sport becomes interesting to significant numbers of people.

 

I think it's part of diving to earn freekicks, rather than ride a tackle and beat a player. Players going on mazy runs bar Ronaldo/Messi is rare but maybe teams are defensively better drilled these days. Playing 4-5-1 gives teams less space too. Also maybe the unbalance of football where only 2-3 teams can afford all the best players means games are maybe less competitive and the smaller teams just try and defend for 90 minutes to get the draw, giving less open attacking football

 

I know plenty of fans of different sports who have collections of taped ballgames from the past who watch them.

Big difference is it's a 3-hour investment to watch a classic football or baseball game (maybe 2 for basketball) while you can look up a first-round KO and watch it in a minute.

 

I don't think that brevity is one of the major appeals for classic sports. The longer a good fight goes on the better, in my opinion. I want my fifteen rounders back. The best fights aren't the first round blowouts, but the even ones that end with a definitive knockout in the final round. One of the things keeping me from enjoying Muay Thai more is that they only fight for fifteen minutes. I can get double or triple that watching a boxing match. Stamina and conditioning barely even comes into it when you just fight for five rounds. It's practically an amateur bout at that point, which explains why they can do two or three hundred of them in a career.

 

Whoa! When they fight five rounds every other week and often against the best opposition, especially considering the whole body getting worked over, I can see hundreds of fights being very, very gruelling indeed.

Most Nak Muay turn pro' around 10!

 

I loved watching the greatest NBA games when they were aired when I was kid on ESPN Classic (Maybe NBA TV, too, which you get occasionally nowadays). From Celtics-Lakers in the 80's to my favorite era and team with the 90's Knicks (Of course I grew up and watched those games when they happened too). Basketball was actually my first love when it came to sports. I was not a geek when it came to stats but I was pretty damn close. And I'd watched plenty of old footage whenever it aired.