How would Henry Hank do today?

They were two different people. Eddie the ref is not Eddie the fighter. The fighter reached the pinnacle of the sport as well. He challenged for the title twice, giving a very good, competitive showing against a legit all time great LHW champion in Harold Johnson and getting robbed against HOFer Jose Torres. He was a regularly rated as a top ten contender for a decade. He died in 1990. The ref is still alive.

 

Well, color me stupid as sh*t. I always assumed they were the same guy. Yeah, I guess if they were the same, the ref would have been 70-something for Lewis/Tyson. Man, 50's-60's lightheavies are not my forte. I need to bone up.

 

What he said.

 

Tiger-Hank is one of the greatest fights I've ever seen, absolute madness the amount of flush punches they hit each with and didn't even flinch. Hank hardly won any rounds for me but most of them were very closely contested. Henry of that fight would've beaten most middleweights who stood and traded with him, it was just that Tiger was utterly immovable in that type of toe to toe slugfest where his strength, workrate, great counter punching accuracy and all round bad-assery came to the fore.

Hank's main trouble was with boxers, good footwork/lateral movement etc. As well as often fighting very frequently on away soil and probably being on the end of a lot of home cooking, especially when he was way past it and merely a name.

Middleweight in Hanks' day - the early 60s - was incredibly deep and competitive compared to the wasteland that it's been since the mid-nineties. It's true that results matter and that losses can't be entirely explained away or wholly excused, but it's just as true perhaps moreso that results and careers can be manufactured and distorted way beyond truth, though the extent is obviously very subjective and up for debate. Fighting as frequently as Hank did in the era that he did and learning your trade as you go along having been thrown in at the deep end without months to study an opponents game for weaknesses is going to inflict losses on you more often than not, as is fighting way past your best.

I'm in my early thirties and grew up watching the modern game, getting into the game through modern fighters and being a massive fan of Jones, Barrera, Morales, Benn, DLH etc. I'm not biased towards previous eras, but the slow disappearance of great trainers, more affluent living standards, training to make weight more than hone skills, the elimination of 15 rounders, splintered titles, the dawn of telly accelerating the decline of the old clubs, lucrative careers in other sports etc have all contributed over a long time to a much shallower talent pool emerging. Its just how things have panned out.

 

Today's talent pool is much shallower - compared to when?

 

One of the best posts I've read on here in months. Spot on. Kudos.

 

So many questions. What makes you think there has been a slow disappearance of great trainers? How do you even know which trainers are great and which aren't? You really think that past fighters, who were fighting once or twice a month really spent more time than today's fighters training to hone skills? How did the elimination of 15 rounders contribute to a shallower talent pool? What was so special about "the old clubs"?

 

There has been a disappearance of great trainers... Freddie Roach being the last "descendant" of Eddie Futch is prestigious and a big deal for a reason. Look at the level of discussion and fame both Kevin Rooney and Teddy Atlas have achieved, none the less Tyson, all whom were amongst the last Cus ever trained and passed anything on to.

Fighters of yesteryear over fought several hundred more rounds over the course of their careers than many of the fighters you see nowadays, so I don't see how you can't see how that would translate to a honing of ones skills.

15 rounds is obviously a pivotal number that at times, back in the day, helped separate the men from the boys so to speak. If you were fighting fit in the 15 round era, it meant something, because that's what was expected of you over the course of a fight.

 

The fact that a lot of people say something doesn't make it true. How do you know who's a great trainer and who isn't? Do you really think it's a coincidence that the men you've singled out as modern "great trainers" all have their work with once-in-a-generation physical talents as their main claims to fame? You really think there aren't dozens of men who could've won championships with Mike Tyson in the 80s ala Rooney and Atlas? Guys who couldn't have helped an explosive two-division champion like Manny Pacquiao win more belts? This notion that the Great Boxing Trainer is some rare and dying breed seems like malarkey to me.

This is another bit of suspect reasoning that I see on here all the time, the notion that the best way to develop skills is by having more professional fights. In just about every aspect of life, the best way to develop skills is through what's known as deliberate practice. In boxing, as in most sports, it's most likely what they do in the gym, day in and day out, that matters most. It's the thousands of hours that they spend working on footwork, combinations, defense, etc. through sparring, working the bags, and (sometimes) the pads, under the careful eye of committed trainers. Today's top fighters are highly skilled, technically proficient, and well-schooled. The people who sentimentalize the past fail to appreciate this because they don't like the product (the fewer round fights, the safety-first strategies, the less intense action, etc.). They confuse their unmet stylistic preferences and the diminished entertainment value with there having been some kind of a drop off in skill and abilities.

I'm not sure how this is relevant to the talent pool discussion but do you really doubt that today's fighters could fight 15 rounds? If so, why? I'm all for 15 round fights but I don't see any reason to believe that well-trained athletes who spend hundreds of hours preparing to fight 12 3-minute intervals wouldn't be able to fight 3 more (putting aside the larger heavyweights, maybe)

 

I'm way too high for all these words.

I believe that boxing has become diluted, both in terms of fighters and the men that train them. Maybe it's just me? I legitimately believe that because you can go back to a time in boxing when the game was several degrees more difficult to succeed in, with less fractioning of a once well defined set of rules and titles.

For example, it certainly takes more effort and skill to measure yourself across an additional three championship rounds in the ring. I don't know if modern fighters could do it, we don't get to see fighters push themselves like we used to. Like I said, dilution.

I watch fights, saw from the 50-70's, and marvel at some of the things they're doing even on the B-Fighter level. Constant high action exchanges where both fighters are also being defensively tight and responsible yet throwing effective, creative combinations, guys relentlessly matched tough fight after fight after fight... fighting at a higher pace and quite frequently seemingly even absorbing punches better in some cases. I've heard boxing trainers of yesteryear describe activity as something that should welcomed by a boxer. It's human nature to be better at something you do once a week, or once a month then something you do twice a year. That's simply how it works in reality.

I think we just might need to agree to disagree here.

 

One of the posters on this topic picked out Hank's loss to John McCormack, in 1962. McCormack was a good boxer, who won a bronze in the 1956 Olympics, before losing to Jose Torres. As a pro' McCormack had a win over George Benton and was European champ when he fought Hank.
Hank had lost to Tiger in March before agreeing to a ten rounder in McCormack's home city, Glasgow. The fight was reduced to 8 rounds to accommodate the home boxer. Hank scored 3 knockdowns in the first round. McCormack survived to win a controversial points win. An "L" in a record book, doesn't take into account a story like this.
10 weeks later the 5'8" Hank outpointed future heavyweight champ, 6'1" Jimmy Ellis in Louisville, the latter's hometown.
Henry Hank was a top notcher, who took them all on at middle and lightheavy. His fighting style and ability would enhance any era.

 

I wonder, why you think boxing was in a better place back in the 50s, compared to today? Is it because the US is no longer the force it once was, and nearly all the experts/historians therefore are telling us how watered down this era is?

Look at The Ring's heavyweight rankings from 1955: The world champ plus 9 of the top 10 (Cuba's Nino Valdes being the exception) contenders were all from the US! In other words, 10 of the best 11 heavyweights were Americans that year. During the whole decade there were 21 heavyweight title fights... each and every one taking place in the US, and all but 3 all-American affairs. In The Ring's 2017 heavyweight rankings 6 different nations are represented.

In the 50s there was a total of 19 fights for the middleweight title. 18 took place in the US (the exception of course being Robinson-Turpin in London). This decade, so far, GGG has won and defended his middleweight crown in a total of 19 title bouts, against boxers from 9 different nations - taking place in 7 different countries!

So the obvious difference between now and the 50s, is that boxing no longer is an almost exclusive American affair - but has spread to all corners of the globe. In 1955, 63 countries around the world hosted pro boxing - a number that had increased to 115 in 2016.

As said, we hear about the sad state of today's boxing all the time. Some believe, that the slump in interest can (at least partly) be attributed to more popular sports - such as baseball and football - taking away the attention from boxing. What they forget, is that there's a world outside the US. A world where 95% of this planet's inhabitants live. You know, those 95% that aren't interested in baseball, and have no clue who Tom Brady is! In that part of the world, boxing is not just doing ok; it has been growing rapidly over the past several decades.

In 2016 Norway saw professional boxing return after a 35 year ban. The politicians finally had to give in to the demand, that Norwegians should be able to see Cecilia Braekhus defend her world title on home soil. Of course Americans wouldn't know who Braekhus is, but every man, woman and child in Norway do.

Last year Mikkel Kessler announced, after 4 years in retirement, that he was planning a comeback! Huge breaking news in Denmark, where the Kessler family has their own TV show.

Also last year, an eagerly awaited fight took place in Australia: A clash between two bitter rivals, Anthony Mundine and Danny Green. Two over-the-hill boxers in their 40s, but still the most talked about fight "down under" in years. It's called "local interest", which is what is fuelling boxing around the world.

Remember, 99.9% of boxing fans aren't nerds like us, who talk about the terrible state boxing is in right now. Or the lost art of feinting (LOL) and body-punching... or the dying out of all the great trainers! Nor do they wonder about whether or not GGG may actually be slipping - or if Wilder will be exposed when/if he meets a real quality opponent. No, they talk about the things that interest THEM - which is what is going on in their own backyard. And there are a LOT of backyards these days!

 

Boxing is still big, sure. Not incidentally interesting things are also still happening in the boxing world..... But legendary fighters are not something that we've witnessed being churned out in boxing, on a regular level in the past 30+ years. You can really diffuse the greatest accomplishments of the past few generations down to a few modern greats and their contributions to the sport.