Old school knowledge(magazines) vs New School (internet)

I agree. I'm probably biased too as I grew up on boxing magazines and I read them from cover to cover but that's because they were worth reading. There is still quality writing on the internet but you have to look harder to find it.

In the pre-internet days it was the writing about boxing that fired my imagination. But even now, when we have so much more access to old fight films via YouTube, I like to read about what happened in fight even when I can watch it too. This is particularly true of the fights in the early 20th century because the quality of the film gives you part of the picture but it may only stimulate one of your senses. You can't always hear the roar of the crowd or get a sense of the atmosphere and the context in which the fight took place. That's where good writing comes in.

I remember someone saying about music, that they'd rather read good writing about bad music than bad writing about good music and for me, boxing is the same. Sometimes the writing is better than the fighting.

 

I guess it depends whether you like to form your opinions with your own eyes or whether you're comfortable relying upon the perceptions and recollections of others. Having thousands and thousands of fights at our disposal is priceless. It's revolutionized what it means to be a classic boxing fan, and enables people to form their own opinions of particular fights and fighters, and to discuss them with greater accuracy and nuance. Being able to search for and find articles and interviews on many fighters within seconds is also highly valuable.

 

I do the same what I am talking about is any bonehead can manipulate information such as you said editing on youtube for example a fan today does not have to do his homework so to speak....you and I both know that the reports contain eyewitness accounts of things a more casual video watcher may not have the attention or patience to study on film....also sometimes the fight itself does not contain the whole story of a fight like the Jeffires-Johnson fight in which Jeffries was reported to be having practically a nervous breakdown before the fight.....without the source material to draw from a casual fan would have no idea to see if its true or not

 

Of course it is, but it's not an either/or situation. And fight film is still filmed - it provides a perspective. So even a film is not completely immune from bias, even though we see it as an accurate historical document. People scoring a fight at ringside will often score a fight differently than if they were viewing the same fight later on TV or online, for example.

I had a debate recently on the Hagler-Leonard fight and the scoring. The person I was debating argued strongly that things about that fight had become accepted wisdom because of the commentary influencing the way people watched it, which was interesting to me because I came to the same conclusion as the commentary team while I had the sound off. Or perhaps I'd read about it in a magazine a long time ago and brought some of those preconceptions to the fight.

It didn't change my view of the outcome at all but it's useful to be aware of the bias that you might bring to watching fight footage. And what you read can also give you an appreciation of a different perspective, particularly if what is written is well constructed. But it's not a substitute for your own opinion either.

 

The IBF wasn't created until 1983 as an offshoot of the USBA - originally called USBAI.

That said, having three governing bodies is a dream compared to today. How many are there now?
And having a regular champ and a super champ in each weight division. LOLLLLLLLLLLL.

 

Modern boxing fans have the ability to be so much more informed than fans and experts of the past. Theres no doubt about it. The amount of media and coverage on the internet is just miles ahead of anything they had back in the day. I only have two real problems with the internet. 1. Its so easy that it makes people lazy both in terms of critical thinking and in terms of really trying to get complete picture and the context of the subject you are searching. I find that to be a strange symptom of he internet. Youd think it would be the reverse but I find most people search for exactly what they are looking for, view it in a vacuum, and then take it completely out of the context of its time. 2. The other problem I have is that the internet has made everyone with an opinion an expert. Some so called experts not only dont know their ass from a hole in the ground but they dont even have the basic skills necessary for parsing out a story or editorial. Im not talking about technical grammatical skills, Im talking about basic journalistic norms and research principles about 30% of so called experts on the net today are stealing from everyone else. Another 50% have no clue what they are doing, they just vomit boxing stories out with too much hyperbole and little thought, and the other 20% are pretty good. Of those 20% there is a significant portion who have been given wings by the internet that otherwise would never have broken into the old boys club of print media and I applaud them for it.

 

Food for thought here.
I often wonder what constitutes a boxing historian/expert? I don't know,I only know the writers whose opinion I respect, I'll read the others, but perhaps not take much if anything from their reports.
As I mentioned my only problem with footage is if its edited highlights ,which of course are better than nothing but hardly conducive to forming a definitive opinion on a fight.

 

Both excellent points. Just interested to know on point 2 (so-called experts) are you talking about writers producing short and long form articles online or just people proferring opinions on forums like this - or both?

 

Me too. I guess people who put the time in and really do the research, background reading, study the fights and their history and break new ground in their research, revealing something that was previously unknown or original?

 

Both for sure.

 

I think thats kind of my point. I dont think you can just have an intereïst in history and magically start calling yourself a historian. Thats what leads to your other issue, taking one single possibly skewed, incomplete, or faulty source and hanging your hat/argument on it without doing the legwork to get a better picture where possible. Now if thats all you have, clearly something is better than nothing, but you have to understand that "something" isnt EVERYTHING. I also think there is a big difference between someone with an opinion, a journalist, and a historian. Those three things are often combined in the minds of people (in regards to boxing) and the internet only helps to blur those lines. Ive heard Larry Merchant called a historian. Larry Merchant was NOT a historian. He was old, so he had lived through some of the instances he discussed. That didnt make him a historian. He was a journalist and commentator.

 

That's the crux of it.

 

Wilt Chamberlain = The GOAT heavyweight

 

Agreed completely this time.

 

I agree and as such Im curious about your perspective on something: As someone who also grew up on magazines and used to love grabbimg a new one off the stand to read it cover to cover. What do you think about mags like Ring and Boxing today. I find myself still getting excited when I see one but let down when I start reading. I just dont think the quality or content is anywhere near what it was in the old days for either magazine. Boxing is still decent but Ring sucks IMO. In the old days Ring had b.s. in it too (couldnt stand Dan Daniel) but they were an incredibly valuable tool in the pre-internet age if for nothing else than their volumnous worldwide results sections in each mag. I had so much respect for those correspondence that Id likely still have a subscription for those results alone, even 2 months late, if they still had them. Nevermind some of the good journalistic pieces that died with a magazine like Boxing Illustrated. Those guys understood that great articles are crafted from many parts, not just the 5 minute gym interview you got as low hanging fruit that you see today.