This is a rather broad topic. However, something I heard former (American) footballer Chris Carter say yesterday rang with a lot of clarity. He was speaking of basketball in particular but it is applicable, at least for me, across sporting lines...."If you are a fan of a particular, you need to adjust your lenses every 10 years or so because what you are watching has become a different sport." Is boxing an outlier in relation to other sports in that it maintains a consistency across eras in regards to performance? Or does it, like many other sports, change once (or twice) a generation and become something new? If the former and not the latter, what are the reasons?
Heavyweight boxing has morphed into something different. The heavyweights are super heavyweights, the gloves are bigger and punch volume is much less. It is unlikely that the greats of the past could compete against the behemoths of today.
Boxing is boxing. Basketball is basketball. etc. Chris Carter needs to adjust his lenses or stay off the acid.
I agree with the general principle of what Carter's getting at here because rulesets and environments change and evolve over time in all sports. For boxing, things like glove size, fight distance, scoring systems, rule interpretation/enforcement all change over time. And that's independent of changes in the athletes themselves due to training, trends in fighting styles, supplements, and PED technology and trends. PED testing technology itself is another variable, as athletes shift what's taken to avoid detection- that's why we'll never see another era with widespread heavyweights that look like the late 80's-90's guys. Had they existed 80 years prior, you wouldn't necessarily want to be bulkier if you had to go 40 rounds, so even that hypothetical outcome looks different. Change the sandbox, and the way the kids play in it won't be exactly the same even if it's still the same basic activity of kids playing in sand. NFL football is a perfect example of this. Subtle changes are routinely made to distill the sport in such a way to emphasize the parts fans care more about. "Care more" meaning "will pay more to see". 60 years ago, the average NFL offensive lineman was over 75 lbs lighter. Why? Conditioning was a much more important point of focus (games were played at a much faster pace, players routinely played both ways). Now, each player only plays about 5 minutes of football snap-to-snap in a timespan of just over 3 hours (about 11 minutes of whistle-to-whistle football per game, players specialize on offense or defense). Size, strength, and short-area quickness are now king.That allows for bigger athletes who have the tech to bulk up better, so 300 pound players are the norm where it'd have been laughable to have one back then. Rule changes have shifted and evolved non-stop to the point it'd take a short book to cover them all, mostly geared towards passing and scoring more points. I was a decent pass-rusher 15 years ago, and the rules have shifted significantly just since then.
While the game, rules, and new challenges for it can evolve, an athlete is an athlete regardless of what rule set he has to play under. So I'd rather rate the athlete and not confine him to the conditions or opportunities for him to get better in his time. The exception would be in sports where size and weigh the matter, which is pretty much every sport.
Boxing's been around since Mesopotamia. Probably even earlier. Before King Tut, Before Caeser Augustus Before Alexander the Great Before Napolean. Football has been around for only 100 years. As a sport, it's still a startup. The rules of football are so abstract, that subtle rule changes can have dramatic effects. For instance, pass interference and roughing the passer. Rules like those completely change the game, and will skew the stat comparisons across generations. Boxing is a very simple activity. It is a civilized fight. There aren't 100 rules you have to remember. There aren't 300 plays you need to know. It's simply a fist fight. The purity of the sport is the reason for its longevity. And the purity of the sport is the reason why standout competitors exist across generations. So when talking about popular modern sports, boxing is indeed an outlier. Due to its simplicity, and its longevity.
