Sonny Liston vs. Vitali Klitschko

This post is off the wall, but how I look at this ahistorical point of view.

Let's imagine the president of country X calling in his chief military advisor for an emergency conference:

President---"General. It looks like our nasty neighbor Y is preparing an invasion. How is our army?"

General---"Sir, our army could easily handle the Roman legions, the Mongol hordes, or the British redcoats. They relied on swords, bows and arrows, and muskets, while we have modern automatic weapons and explosives."

President---"But general, what about Y's army."

General---"Oh, they'll go through our army like a knife through butter and overrun our country in a few hours. But we could have stopped the Romans. Our army would have been invincible two thousand years ago."

 

Modern sports teams in the 2000's would beat past teams 40-50 years ago in football basketball, hockey, tennis, etc...

Funny you mention size and weight. I agree it matters which is why calling sub 200 pounders without world class power better than what is out there today is questionable.

I would pick the modern New England Patriots Super Bowl champions to destroy the best Green Bay ******s team of the 1960's

Which team was better in their time is a different story. About even, though I think the Patriots defeated better teams.

Like I said before the best teams or boxers should not have a lot of losses. Others simply call them great because the fought many times vs. each other. If this were modern times and fury and Wilder meet 4 times each, splitting the series 2-2, would that make them great? I say no.

The Lineman of the times could be bigger. I just see a huge difference in the speed and skills from the players under 230 pounds

 

In order to think that boxing had evolved along the lines of most other sports, it wouldn't be enough just to think that Vitally Klitschko would beat Sonny Liston.

you would basically have to think that Tyson Fury would beat Sonny Liston, and that Marco Huck would beat Joe Louis, and that Carlos Baldomir would have beaten sugar Ray Robinson.

 

Mendoza

"The linemen of the times could be bigger. I just see a huge difference in speed and skills from the players under 230 pounds."

The one area which I don't see a critical difference is the speed and skill of the under 230 pounders. In my opinion guys like Lance Alworth, Tommy McDonald, and Paul Warfield could play today and be about as good as they were. Interestingly, possibly the fastest of all NFL players, the Olympic 100 meter champion, Bob Hayes, played in the sixties.

"I would pick the modern New England Patriots Super Bowl champion to destroy the best Green Bay team of the 1960's."

Okay. I think they would win also.

"The best team or boxers should not have a lot of losses."

But New England 2014 has more losses as a percentage than at least three of the 1960's Lombardi Green Bay teams--

Total record including playoffs:

New England 2014-----15-4 (79%)

Green Bay 1962-----14-1 (93%)

Green Bay 1966-----14-2 (87.5%)

Green Bay 1961-----12-3 (80%)

And the 2014 Patriots did not play anyone with the winning percentage of the New York Giants of 1962, 12-3 (80%)

So not losing or winning percentage isn't really your standard here. You are simply taking the modern team as better because of size (which I agree with) and skill (which I only partially agree with).

*But your post still begs the history question. If you made a list of the best NFL teams, would the older teams be eliminated on the basis of size regardless of their accomplishments in their own eras?

And if so, why bother with history?

 

I don't believe that for one moment, because due to day before weigh ins, nutritionists and sh it, today's fighters weigh in at 140 but by fight time can be Light Middles or heavier. The guys from days gone by would have been lucky to weigh 147.

I do agree with your Super Heavy observations though.

 

This is becoming a football thread! Oddly enough I have something for you at the end of my reply that was emailed to me.

Okay, I played the game ( OLB, TE, S ) and had one year as an assistant high school coach in my college days. It's a great game under assault by the media, who if they wanted to be fair would say other sports have a very close level of injures / concussions.

I only wish Boxing had a schedule like the NFL does forcing the best to meet each other every two years or lose their titles.

Players these days as a group are much faster, bigger, stronger, and more athletic. No debate here. This is not to say the best of decades ago could not play today. I'm sure they could have. It is to say the game is 11 on 11, and back then half the other teams players would not be starting on the best teams today.

I see your point about the winning percentages. No doubt Green Bay was elite back in the 60's. From a legacy perceptive they were great. But I would not rate the Miami 1972 Dolphins among the greatest team, even though they were undefeated. The truth is Green Bay was at the best in a much smaller field, and played what was viewed as a lesser American Football League in super bowls. They also had a all time great coaching, and coaching in football perhaps matter more than any other sport.

Best NFL franchise since the AFL-NFL merger. IMO:

Steelers
Cowboys
49ers
Patriots
******s
Radiers

This article I thought was a good one. I agree with it in a macro sense.

[url]http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/25141830/all-time-nfl-power-rankings-for-all-32-franchises[/url]

 

I would pick the 1970 Brazilian football team to beat any other team.
Boxing is not like any other sport it is a full contact game.
How many modern middleweights beat SRR?
How many modern lightweights beat Gans, Leonard,Williams?
How many light heavies of today beat Conn&Moore?
Stupid comparing entirely different sports.

 

Mendoza

Thanks for the tape, but that was about the most successful franchises over a fifty year period, somewhat of a different issue.

"I only wish boxing had a schedule like the NFL"

Well, in the NFL the top teams of course play each other. What a lot of us legacy guys have been saying is that in the old days after the color line fell boxing in fact had a system much like the NFL with the top 30 to 50 boxers mainly matched with each other.

As in the NFL, in which the best teams last year could only go 12-4 (75% winning percentage), you often lose a lot under this sort of system, and if you can sweep or come close to sweeping the opposition, you are definitely an historically imposing figure.

The current boxing scene is more like long-ago college football in which the best teams scheduled pushovers so that several teams a year would go undefeated, and who was best was left to guesswork.

It would be as if in 2014 New England, Seattle, and Green Bay didn't take part in a playoff but instead scheduled games against weak college teams and ran up the score with their supporters then debating who was best.

The Sporting News put out an NFL best teams list back about 15 years ago (so it is sort of a best of the 20th century). This is their top 15--

1-----Miami Dolphins 1972
2-----Green Bay 1962
3-----Pittsburgh Steelers 1978
4-----Chicago Bears 1985
5-----San Francisco 49ers 1989
6-----Cleveland Browns 1950
7-----Green Bay 1966
8-----San Francisco 49ers 1984
9-----Dallas Cowboys 1977
10----Oakland Raiders 1976
11----Chicago Bears 1941
12----Baltimore Colts 1958
13----Dallas Cowboys 1992
14----Pittsburgh Steelers 1975
15----San Francisco 49ers 1994

The Sporting News picked the Dolphins of 1972, heavily because they swept their opposition.

Fair enough and I can also see picking another team, but the Dolphins were not just a one year team as they went 15-2 the next year (more or less giving away their last regular season game to a losing team) and dominating all three playoff games. I don't think any team can match their 32-2 (94%) two year totals during which they beat every good team in the NFL at the time. Perhaps not the best ever team but one I think is a very strong candidate for the top five, when considering by legacy.

And I enjoyed the book because it was based on historical legacy and so teams from the 1940's and 1950's made the top fifteen, and teams from even earlier were further down the list.

*I admit that when I look at the history of any sport I am most interested in legacy. I know sports evolve and modern athletes are bigger. It is an obvious point and not very interesting. How teams (or boxers) did in their own eras interests me more.

**just a point on football teams, though. Rosters have expanded hugely. In the fifties I think it was 33 players. Now I think a team roster is more than 50. That allows for all kinds of specialists which the older teams couldn't have carried as the reserves had to be able to fill in in case of injury. For example, punting and placekicking was almost always done by a regular position player. Size aside, this change makes it almost impossible to make any kind of straight comparison.

 

Jason Statham>>> Bruce Lee.

Modern athletes bra.

 

Omg now we are bring actors into the equation... :rofl

 

Originally Posted by dinovelvet View Post
Jason Statham>>> Bruce Lee.

We'll it was a Dino comment.

 

Modern sports teams in the 2000's would beat past teams 40-50 years ago in football basketball, hockey, tennis, etc...

Funny you mention size and weight. I agree it matters which is why calling sub 200 pounders without world class power better than what is out there today is questionable.

I would pick the modern New England Patriots Super Bowl champions to destroy the best Green Bay ******s team of the 1960's

Which team was better in their time is a different story. About even, though I think the Patriots defeated better teams.

Like I said before the best teams or boxers should not have a lot of losses. Others simply call them great because the fought many times vs. each other. If this were modern times and fury and Wilder meet 4 times each, splitting the series 2-2, would that make them great? I say no.

The Lineman of the times could be bigger. I just see a huge difference in the speed and skills from the players under 230 pounds

Ed and I were talking about American Football. A sport where large men ( 85% heavies ) block, tackle, and hit each other.

My point was mostly confided to boxing heavyweights as most ranked none champion types 40+ years ago would not be very good at heavyweight today.

I did say boxing is unique because it's a sport where there are size limits for weigh classes, meaning you can compare it to others.

PS: Here in the USA soccer is not an appreciated sport. You can't use your hands, the off sides rule is used as a defense, and there's nothing worse than watching a grown man cry / fake an injury to try to get a penalty. These 1-0, 0-0, or tie with shootouts fail to capture many here. It's just not in our culture.

The sport is very popular with young children, because its' easy to under stand and easy for a young child to play in comparison to baseball, football, hockey, basketball, etc...

The world could be thankful as our best male athletes steer clear of futbol/soccer, otherwise the USA would be better at it. You can see this in the women's game. In soccer the best player in the world Messi, at 5 feet, 7 inches. Same height as Tommy Burns! This would never happen most sports.

 

Its as ret.arded as comparing boxing to basketball , track running and other unrelated sports.
Because the modern athlete is better today in said sports , then the modern athlete must mean better boxers too.
The argument dummies like you use on a regular basis.

Statham was a martial artist which lead him to action movies.

Same with Bruce Lee.

What does Bruce Lee know about boxing? He's just a relic from yester year who wouldn't be able to compete with modern day pole vaulters.