Could Jim Corbett win a professional title today.

That happens all the time in sports. Baseball hitting changed immensely in the 1920s in response to Babe Ruth; few noted how much pitching changed in response to this except to note that pitching had gotten worse and accuse the ball of being livelier.

Grabbing a ball in basketball as it is falling out of bounds and keeping it in is a common play; it didn't use to be.

I'm sure if I spent some real time on it we could find dozen of examples of sports writers ignoring obvious changes in the sports they are watching. Every sport we watch is in constant flux, dealing with evolution and counters to this evolution. It's only in hindsight that this is obvious.

 

Excellent point. Advances like regular jabbing, combination punching, and more well thought out footwork did away with the need for exaggerated feinting and other crude tactics.

 

I can accept that some sports writers and trainers might have overlooked these changes, but I have a serious problem with the idea that all of them overlooked them.

That seems to fly in the face of reason.

 

You describe feinting as a crude tactic, while implying that regular jabbing was a serious advance in the sport!!

Throwing a jab is a crude tactic, and throwing a jab multiple times is still a crude tactic, and both would be familiar to most bareknuckle boxers.

You would only teach somebody to feint after they had masters the jab, combination punching , and footwork, then or now.

 

I would say that he was a little unorthodox for his time, but that he didn’t really bring anything new to the game.

 

I completely disagree.

1) Some jabs are crude, others are not. It depends how the jab is delivered and how the boxer incorporates it into his repertoire. There is nothing crude about being able to pump multiple stiff jabs, on the move, at a moving target, while maintaining one's form and balance.

2) Everything you've said about feints strikes me as incorrect. Kids know how to feint. Unpolished brawlers know how to feint. Feinting is an intuitive way to try to create opportunities during a fight. Feints are especially important for the less skilled fighters who don't have other effective means of closing distance, concealing their punches, creating angles, walking their opponents into punches, etc. And the kind of feints you guys revere are highly risky and not all that effective against opponents who throw sharp jabs and straight punches. Why throw an exaggerated feint that leaves yourself open for preemptive counters when you have the talent and skills to step in behind a fast double jab with good head movement or even bobbing & weaving?