If heavyweight ATGs learned to box today, how much worse would they be?

They wouldn't necessarily be worse, they'd be adapted to a different (though not entirely alien) environment. It's kind of like asking how Bach would be worse if he were born eighty years later and wrote symphonies for full orchestras like Beethoven. Or how Rembrandt would be worse if he painted late nineteenth century impressionist pictures.

 

Joe Louis would suffer the most IMO. His style is almost completely predicated on his trainer Jack Blackburn.

There are plenty of great trainers today, but they wouldn't be able to teach Louis like Chappie.

Corbett would benefit the most. He is extremely unimpressive for me. He would learn how to streamline his feet and jab, and make those freakish reflexes even more potent against his opponents.

 

I might be wrong, but I imagine Corbett being the type who'd be a nightmare to train.

 

Pretty sure Marciano would have been the Tua of his time without his trainers..perfect example of great corners that can make or break fighters. Can’t see Dempsey changing that much. Frazier May morning have been the great fighter he was or Foreman. Although a foreman that fights like say Wlad would have been pretty deadly.

 

I think he would be a bit more of a 'cookie cutter' boxer puncher, and more square on than classical. I don't think his style would be as unique. He could also be more defensive minded depending on the trainer (as he was as an amateur) but I doubt it due to his power. Its all speculation though.

 

I'm agnostic on that. I don't see how that's externally evaluable one way or the other by any of us (and that includes those few of us who are actually trainers, though to a lesser extent). I try to stick to what I can observe and, much more cautiously, what can be inferred through well constructed logic.

If you could show some mechanism that would clearly suggest that the talent pool for trainers is much smaller, or that that some kind of institutional corruption is likely to prevent the best trainers from rising to the top on the basis of merit, that would be a good start but it would still be very indirect.

If it's indeed the case (I don't know whether or to what extent it is) that there are far fewer gyms than there once were, or that there are "training deserts" analogous to economic "food deserts," that would certainly modify the likelihood of the proposition, even if it would still be well short of conclusive.

 

Hard to say, since the conditions of their times also played a part in motivating a lot of the fighters in achieving what they did.

Also, there are still a ton of excellent trainers around today, but unlike in the past trainers nowadays are a lot more compromising on letting fighters slide with doing things incorrectly, which unfortunately eventually catches up with the fighters. Trainers that are too demanding nowdays are quick find themselves unemployed and fighters are very quick to fire a trainer after taking a loss, so I understand why a lot of trainers just go through the motions when training their fighter.

Most fighters simply don’t want to invest the time and energy in the gym mastering the basics and time in the ring getting the necessary amount of rounds under their belt, so that they’re comfortable against all types of opponents. Plenty of fighters nowdays get by on athletic ability and raw strength inspite of their lack of ring experience.

 

It's not the boxer or the trainer. What matters is the raw ability (the boxer), the right teaching (the trainer), and possibly most importantly: compatibility. It's not as simple as "boxers and trainers were/are better in (whatever) era."

 

Besides certain outlier situations, I don't believe that certain eras were superior to others, generally speaking.
The notion that modern boxing has devolved, to me, holds as much weight as saying that it has evolved.
Deontay Wilder is not going to be somehow out of his depth in Dempseys era, and vice versa.
Spence wouldn't be out of his depth in Robinsons era, and vice versa.