Has boxing evolved at all?

I respect your opinions but you seem to hold some biases against the more recent fighters. How on earth is Canelo a club fighter? I assume that you would favor all of the top-10 ranked contenders from the 70s to wipe out the guys you listed?

 

absolute nonsense, I had a pretty good insight to both that past era and TODAY's fighters.

my son belonged to the Hatton camp for a year and a half, at that time Ricky had 5 young lads to turn pro, it was during the Hatton 'Crisis' shall we call it. 3 times my son's debut was interrupted as well as the other boys, only one of them later ended up getting a few fights.

anyway the point is 3 of these boys, all lower weights, would have made British Level Contention, all 3 of them, and they weren't special at all.

Mills' day demanded much more, much much more, and though Freddie was as crude and tough as they come, he was still tough and durable enough to compete & win at The TOP, in arguably the single greatest period in the sports history...

these 5 boys I mentioned and countless dozens up and down the country are British Level Contention and very few among them compare to Mills, never mind compete or beat with the likes of a Lesnivich, Wood****, Baksi, Ralph, Maxim and a Marshal, and all the other greats those boys swam with.

there's a 2 tier difference between that British Level Contention, too that of Mills and other TOP Brits over the years.

I AGREE though that today Mills would be a S-MW cum L-HW.

the Era(s) was far better, too many factors proving that, and people still alive that were there who CAN make the comparisons.

lastly there is loads of great footage like the recent Marciano footage, well apart from looking 'normal' and great', many of these fighters did it every other week to every month or two.



so I'm sorry but there is a difference to other greater EraS.

 

Well, I didn't suggest it "dropped off", but it began to gradually decline. I was getting to this point earlier; there are ATG's in every era, at the #1 in their division. But look at the guys who were beaten and weren't at the top; the next best guys, the next tier from that era, and ask how good they were. We'll take 1 weight, welterweight.

Leonard and Hearns both beat Benitez. Benitez is an ATG in himself! Who did Donald Curry beat in the 80's? Marlon Starling. Who did Chavez beat in the 90's? A prime Meldrick Taylor. Who did De La Hoya and Trinidad beat? Fernando Vargas. (See how it starts to decline at this point)?

Now when not fighting older fighters, who did Manny and Floyd beat at welter? Pac beat Bradley and Cotto, Floyd beat Ortiz and Hatton. Very good pairs of fighters, but historically solid welterweights? could they compete with welters of the past? Maybe Cotto, depending on the style. That's it.

Now, what you say about the talent pool is also wrong. In the US, as boxing declines in popularity, athletes find easier ways out. Football and basketball scholarships, principally, especially for Heavyweights. Look at the most recent Olympic team the US sent to the games. From top to bottom they didn't win a single medal. For the first time since they've ever participated. Now you could try and argue that just means other countries are getting better, but other countries have even worse consumer demand for boxing. Maybe ex-Soviet countries and the UK have a better market. And Puerto Rico and Mexico. That's it. This is very significant.

It takes more than watching film to pass on knowledge. Imitation and execution are two different things. That's why you have Broner and Berto, world class fighters, and prospects like Amir Imam, failing miserably at their use of the shoulder roll.

A loss of knowledge. PPV shrank the market, boxing became less popular, and thus less profitable. With that, gyms close down, trainers retire. Less knowledgeable fighters turn into quality trainers. If you look around, almost every gym is a hybrid gym now. Boxing gyms are giving fitness training and zumba classes, and/or include MMA in their program too. They need to in order to stay alive. Is that where young athletes are supposed to be taught the ways of golden age fighters?

 

I'm curious... how do you see Mills doing in this era? Say against the best SMWs/LHWs from the past 10 years... like Calzaghe, Hopkins, Ward, Kovalev, Stevenson etc.?

 

Another way to look at it is this. Fighters rarely got to get as old as they are now without getting beaten. Pac, Floyd, Hopkins, Marquez, and Wlad remained on the P4P list for a long time, and while the names on the bottom half of the list would constantly shift, they stayed the same. Younger fighters having their careers rise and fall to ruin before theirs did. Off nights and fading reflexes should have meant they were there for the taking for a young up and coming fighter to take the torch. But it didn't happen. Bradley only narrowly beat JMM and he's a veteran. No young gun could beat Pac. No young gun could beat Floyd. There was no welterweight superior to that of Maidana. Think about that. They were able to get away with it. The next generation failed basically.

 

he'd win and lose some...

NONE of them are too scary for him, he ate plenty of Wood**** & Baski leather, far bigger and stronger men than the above.

He would beat JC more often than not, he could beat Hopkins unless the spoiler pulls off another nullifying hugging affair.

Kovalev the puncher could stop him, but so too could Mills wildly batter his way to victory.

Ward could & should outpoint him, though Mills might not let him.

Stevenson, I haven't seen enough of though I'm thinking physically he'd be stronger & bigger, another Baksi type defeat for Mills.

in short none are a great scare for Mills he'd win more than he'd lose and he'd happily take a terrible pounding win or lose to a couple of them.

 

Here is BoxRec's latest decade update (as of Jan. 2nd this year):

bouts
decade total
1850 2
1860 16
1870 340
1880 4617
1890 16694
1900 43732
1910 102794
1920 288615
1930 318491
1940 206433
1950 158230
1960 105756
1970 105928
1980 131411
1990 141987
2000 186060
2010 136751

So 6 years into this decade BoxRec has already registered 136,751 fights... which works out to an average of more than 22,000 per year so far for the decade. More than twice as many as during the '60s and '70s. If the trend continues, the final tally for this decade should land around 220,000!

So how is it possible to look at these numbers and conclude, that a major worldwide slump has been going on over the last several decades?

 

u think a Wikipedia bastar.d child born in 2005 is some accurate reflection of history?

 

hatton himself is underrated and would have been a great in any era.
I maintain that today's fighters amateur, and pro are better than when I boxed 40 years ago.
BTW did your son box as an amateur in Manchester, if so, who h one ??

 

But records are never that complete of older fighters. Pugs fought every week on tiny by neighborhood cards. Only the ones that fought famous fighters are remembered and often their records are incomplete.

Carnival fighters fought every day. Boxing Booths were big attractions and registered boxers toured with them during the summer season.

Small time fighters had hundreds of fights on small weekly cards. Fighters we never heard of had hundreds of fights. Even if there was a smaller number of them (and I don't think there was) that means the experience level and capabilities of lesser regarded fighters was much higher.

As one example the actress Patsy kensit had a father who boxed in the small hall London circuit. Boxrec lists him as having 20 fights in two of four of the year's he is listed as active. With just one fight each in the first two years. Why when there were so many fights to be had for two years was there just a fight each on the first two?

In the 1920s Bert Marsh the London Italian gangster had 60 fights within the same kind of small scale level. But that was a nobody back then. The guys he fought are listed with not much of a record, either they fought hundreds of unknown guys or just the few that were recorded.

 

NO he won the Midlands Novice title at feather and a year later was tried & chosen by the Hatton's...

he's now in NZ and after a 6 year absence he is due to fight his first amateur fight there... foolish I think at 30 yrs of age, getting banged up for No Gain.

think Hatton vs Eric Boon, the same Eric Boon who in damn near his last fight wins FOTY (1947) against Robert Villemain, the same Villemain that beat LaMotta twice... Hatton isn't doing that sorry.

 

You are right, there are tens of thousands of fights missing from those years and hundreds of thousands missing, if you think of the entire Boxing world.

 

The same boy Boon who was in that Carry on film with Freddie Mills ??
There are 30 year old ish lads who come to our boxing club with white collar fights in mind and some who're considering the amateur game for the first time ???? Its up to them but making their debuts at 30 wouldnt be for me.
Did your lad get any byes to win that novice title or did he have to fight through the rounds.
PS I'd pick Hatton

 

But I didn't mention Canelo, but I will say this about him, the jury's still out on him, and what Ive seen of him, to me, he's not special. And yes I do have some bias to old fighters, because they were in general more skilled then most of what seen the last 20yrs or so. But I do have the capacity when I see a great talent to acknowledge it. I do give Floyd his due, on his talent, his skill level and his longevity. But I do give big minuses on the competition level. I do the same with Mariciano. :good

 

From 50 years ago ? Science wise yes but skill wise no, it's actually gotten a bit less skilled although debatable. From 80-100 years ago ? Most Definitely. Its just a fact. In general world class boxers are far more technically sound than they were in the early 1900s. Better shot selection, better science, varied stances, better coordination, better nutrition, and better training.


Put Canelo alverez in a time machine and make him box Harry Greb and the likely hood is he would destroy him.