Great trainers and their alleged disappearance from the sport

I never thought much of Teddy Atlas to much of a spotlight preacher but guys like Freddie Roach, Abel Sanchez, Nacho Berenstain etc.... and it seems others are good trainers but I will say living in Colorado Springs I have had some interesting conversations with USA boxing and the Army's World Class Athlete Program that IMO seems to be an issue in the pros as well about why we struggle with competing at the world level......the athletes that are coming into these programs stay in contact with their boyhood coaches and friends who try to coach from afar and many of the amateur athletes try to fight like professionals in amateur competition which does not do well in the scoring system.....it seems with exposure perhaps some fighters think they no more than their trainers???

But the Duvas, Georgie Bentons, Emanuel Stewards, Victor Valles etc....were certainly stables of great trainers of the recent past....but I feel there are great trainers out there but they have not found the talent to begin their legacy

 

Never rated Lou Duva or Valee as a trainer.Duva was a liability in a corner and Valle didn't give Cooney anything imo..

Arcel,Hurley,Futch, Foster ,were trainers, McCoy,Georgino too,, Roach,Beristain,are very good.McKraken is good.

 

Talent and knowledge they possess that's been handed down to them is immensely important in their teachings, I'd imagine.

 

Some of the current fighters considered amongst the best fighters in the world today like Oleksandr Usyk, Saul Alvarez, Keith Thurman, Terrace Crawford, Vasyl Lomachenko, Mikey Garcia, Jorge Linares, Errol Spence, Naoya Inoue, etc. How many people can, without looking it up, remember or know what the names of their trainers are?

 

We certainly have some talented boxing gurus coming out of the former eastern blocks....the only one I can think is Lomanchenko's father appears to be onto something but he hasn't taken in very many fighters at least not enough to show his ability to make good fighters great as it seems Vasyl and Usyk are both talented fighters he groomed from early on in his system....only time will tell as he continues to train fighters....We haven't seen FM senior turn out regular champions either. An issue we see more and more in modern boxing is that when fighters lose then change trainers like underwear.

 

My thinking is that trainers today are much more one-dimensional than trainers from the past. The old school guys were much more well-rounded and, in my opinion, could teach different styles much more effectively. The modern guys (the ones who are good anyway) generally train one particular style well - perhaps because they're working with a much reduced pool of fighters than in previous generations.

Then, because no one is going to give up a real, rare prospect, you get unhappy marriages where the trainer trains fighters according to his own strengths rather than the fighter's.

Second main reason is the 'character' of the fighters these days. Default reaction to a loss? Sack the trainer. How can you learn from a mistake if you aren't even man enough to admit you made one? Wasn't like that back in the day.

 

One of those guys does basically none of the day to day gym work. One of them is not considered a great trainer, but very good at getting guys in shape. You might be surprised to learn how often a "great" trainer is "great" because of sparring; he has good fighters in his gym to learn from one another, not from him.

Boxing is basically a name game and who you know. Once you 'get a name' you get better fighters; better fighters created by somebody that doesn't know anybody. On the other hand, the number of potentially talented boxers ruined by buffoons with punch mitts is huge. I figure it has always been that way.

My partner has to be in the hunt for the best in the game, certainly the best I have seen. He has worked with two world champions, trained a third from the start of his career. He trained an Olympian and a PanAm games winner from day one and a handful of amateurs he started went on to win world titles as pros with other people. He is well known in boxing- he persuaded Kallen to take a chance on Nonito Donaire- but I doubt any of you have heard of him.

 

Neither do I!

The idea of knowledge being "lost" over time, and that some superior techniques/methods have died out along with great trainers, is of course pure nonsense. It's just something old-timers (and young fans as well, who somehow find pleasure in believing, that everything was better back in the "good old days") like to say, in an attempt to put down the present.

 

It probably has to do with the massive change in the culture of boxing.

More boxercise gyms, a far greater amateur system, less real classic style boxing gyms, commercialization of boxing, etc.

 

Capitalism is what ruined boxing.