At what point did modern boxers surpass old ones?

The full time athletes of today are better than the part time factory workers of yesteryear. Deal with it.

 

I always struggle with comparisons, I don't like them.

For example let's imagine we are comparing SRR Vs RJJ, asking who wins in this mythical match up.

I am never sure if I'm just suppose to look at SRR as he was on old film or imagine him with modern day sports science, new training techniques and factor in he was fighting every couple of weeks, what would have been like with a 3 months lay off and a slow run up to a fight with a 3 month camp.

On the reverse would RJJ been as great if he had the training methods of SRR or if he was being asked to fight every couple of weeks.

I find it easier to look at fighters and judge them on their era, did they dominate their era, who was around them, what point of their career rivals were at.

 

Are you trying to tell me that Keith Thurman doesn't overcome hilarious skill differentials to defeat both Kid Gavilan and Billy Graham on the same night? Stop living in the past, bro, modern is where it's at.

 

They never surpassed them.

 

Hey brother, I’m not living in the past I’m a fan of the past the present and the future it’s just we’re in an inevitable era where a there have been giant strides outside of the traditional format of training and over the last 10’years S&C & nutrition has become essential to every fighter in a way it wasn’t in the past.

Guys are spending more time than they did in the past (wisely) on S&C and hence less time than previous eras in their training sessions on the pads, bags etc being coached in the Sweet science aspect, so hence possibly some fighters being less technically schooled overall but fitter and stronger.

Of course their are technically stand outs who put every aspect of training together and push the sport onto its next stage of evolution.

I was talking generally in terms of a technical decline. The pendulum swings kinda thing....

 

For all the talk of S&C, we must remember that fighters back then were accustomed to 15 rounds at a comparable pace to modern 12 round bouts. Who knows where an elite fighter like Canelo would be in that era with the same exact skill-set and resources.

He was being sarcastic I believe

 

Today's better athletes does not translate to better boxers. Watching some of today's 'Cream of the Crop', there's so much amateurish technique at the high level. And by that, I do NOT mean full amateur style fighting.

 

When they change black and white to colour TV

 

Humans don't evolve that quickly in a century. Only ******s think that today's humans are better than humans of yesteryear. If ATG of the past trained with same modern "supplements", techniques and equipment, ATG would still be ATG. Modern fighters can't even fight at their natural weights and they have advantage of weighing the day before the fight and only 12 rounds! Try fighting 15 or more rounds or fighting more than 2 fights a year. Modern fighters can pad their records easily. None of that BS in the old days.

ATG are ATG wehter now or in the past. They're head and shoulders above their peers in their generation. That's all we can measure.

 

Robinson KO's Floyd in a 15 round fight with Robinson's choice of gloves&size

 

My belief is that top level pro boxers have generally improved as time progresses although with varying ebbs and flows. I am talking strictly on quality/effectiveness, I keep an open mind on the claim that fighters of the past were "more skilled" which I suspect is simply better versatility (jack-of-all-trades?) whereas modern boxers are perhaps more specialised with a more streamlined, refined, however narrower skill-set (master-of-one?) which could result in superior fighters but depending on personal taste inferior fights.

Of course there are plenty other factors than the way fighters are trained and prepared in different eras which contribute to the different states of boxing such as PEDs, rule changes, nutritional knowledge, etc etc.

 

It's an ongoing process. You look at most tangible sport records, and almost all of them have been set within the last 30 years. So a good rule of thumb I think is styles etc can be compared for boxers within about 30 years of each other in determining if one champ could beat another. Longer than that, and the more modern boxer would almost certainly win. At least for HW. The lower divisions are harder to be certain about because of unanimity of such a huge quality as size, and the lack of comparable data in other sports.

The reason why isn't human evolution, it's primary a combination of two factors A talent pool and B increased time to perfect strategies and training.

Fighters from before the 90s competed largely against americans, with a scattering of Western Europeans. Now it's much more of a world sport. In addition, the human population has doubled in the last 30 years. You don't put small schools against large schools in sports for the same reason.

It's clear looking at the history of the HW division, virtually all of the dominant HW champs have either been A. Taller and larger than their average peers or B heavier hitting than their average peers. The size of the HW champ has grown fairly consistently throughout history. It's not a coincidence, it's a reflection of qualities needed to thrive at the highest levels.

 

But the talent pool in traditionally boxing-heavy countries has been shrinking due to the ease with which athletes can advance in other sports. Likewise I think there has been a loss of certain training knowledge. So I think for that reason boxing goes against the grain with regards to expectations of athletic evolution coinciding with population increase.

 

Not humans per se. But the sport evolves thus cherrypicking athletes with the best attributes for the evolving sport.

 

Very well said, if Ali with his prime skillset moved in time to fight Wlad or Vitali, he would have lost 9/10