In most sports the current guys are better than previous eras, why would boxing be any different?

We’re not talking about guys of that stature fighting each other.

We’re talking about guys being able to beat guys of any era based on styles.

Last month, you said nobody from the past could beat today’s guys.

A few days ago, you made an exception and said that Tyson could have beaten Wilder.

So: There’s no logical reason why anybody couldn’t be capable of beating anybody on a given night, under the right circumstances.

 

Come on bro you know yourself that that punch by haye was way quicker. Not taking anything from ali he was really fast but that right hand is just faster. If you really dont give that to me then i wont respond anymore because you are really biased to a point were this isnt any fun.

 

I understand perfectly what he was saying. But he exaggerated his point of view and was ignorant.

 

Log off you fool.

If you seriously believe that Haye was quicker, do NOT GET BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A CAR OR OPERATE ANY DANGEROUS MACHINERY.

When the lockdown is over, go to your local optician for an eye examination.

Patterson, Ali and Tyson were all faster than Haye.

 

The ‘Fab Four’ were from the EIGHTIES!

I haven’t even referred to them.

Right.

So:

You’re telling that today’s MW’s and SMW’s are better than what they were in the 90’s?

Yes?

Do want me to embarrass you further by comparing them?

 

sorry bro, you need to find someone else to talk to. You are denying what your eyes objectively see. It was fun talking too you. Bye

 

Delete your account you clown.

You’re everything that’s wrong with this forum.

 

I think you've answered your own question. It seems there is a lot more focus in today's boxing training on the things which can be measured, to reflect the successes of this method in other sports and the rise in sports science which can only be justified through quantifiable results.

It's made boxing a more athletic discipline. As has the fact boxers are weighed in the day before the fight, presenting a window of opportunity to further focus on the physical aspect. Being big at the weight is so much more of a factor now than it was and devoting training regimes to maximise this has further highlighted the athletic side of the sport to the detriment of evolving skills.

It's interesting to note - after losing to Ruiz - Joshua changed that focus towards something more skill-based and he reaped the rewards looking way more competent with his footwork after only six months working on it.

There he was, previously the blueprint of the modern athlete/boxer, coming in lighter having to an extent forgone lifting weights in favour of sparring and entering the ring with physical proportions a little more akin to those of HWs from past eras.

Today's fighters are better athletes. But better boxers across the board? I'm not so sure...

 

I'll write as much as I feel inclined to, you're free to do likewise.

The OP mentioned "boxing". He didn't state that the conversation must be restricted to heavyweight boxing, and I see no reason why it should be. It might be a convenient way to dodge the fact that Meldrick Taylor existed thirty years ago, I guess.

How are you even quantifying those kinds of statements about the heavies? Have you taken multiple clips of every punch in these guys' repertoires, made sure the footage is perfectly speed-corrected and then done the side-by-side comparisons to the very tenth of a second?

First, did you ever consider the physical toll Haye's frequently less-than-textbook punching technique has enacted on his body? Or how predictable it would/did make him to the higher caliber guys? He made it work up to a point, but maybe not every guy wants to rely on loading up with those fast twitch muscle explosions over and over again. Maybe they prefer their delivery systems. Varying the speed and force of shots isn't a bad thing. It makes you much less easy to anticipate at the top level where the guys can read and adjust better. Ali varied the speed with which he threw. When he wanted to put punches together with speed, he was greased lightning, quite perceptibly faster than Haye.

Ali, Holy, Wlad, Haye, Fury, all these guys have fast hands. Let's just say, purely for argument's sake, that Haye has the fastest hands of the lot on every single comparable punch in their respective repertoires. Is that all there is to boxing? A man can become overly reliant on the attribute of speed, and we've seen that demonstrated often enough in the last 20 years of boxing. Did blazing handspeed get Amir Khan or Zab Judah where they longed to be, atop the P4P tree? No more than it got Meldrick to the very summit (though Taylor certainly went closer than Khan, by dint of being an overall better fighter than Amir in addition to his speed of hand).

Do you forcibly contend that Haye would've beaten Holy (his fellow ex-cruiser), faster hands or no? I won't knock it if you can present me with some kind of breakdown of the matchup, but if the argument revolves around a perceived edge in raw speed or (God forbid) 'modern diet', I'm going to feel ripped off.

I should point out that Haye began his pro career in 2002, 18 years after Holy. If we follow your logic, that same generation gap makes Haye an evolutionary relic compared to Daniel Dubois. The times they are a-changin', and no man who debuted in 2002 could have possessed comparable handspeed to DDD, right?

Or did the 15-18 years of evolution cease to be a thing as soon as we passed the magical realm of the new millennium?

You ever hear of Floyd Patterson?

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I forewarn you, it would be asinine to point out that Floyd was a distinctly undersized heavy by today's standards after having laid down this gauntlet, "guys today are simply faster ... Especially at hw, what everybody is talking here about", in the previous post. Sub-200lb Floyd possessed better than comparable handspeed to a cruiserweight Haye.

But Maurice Hooker gots faster hands than Sugar Ray Leonard.

He did live in a literal warzone at the time. Footage from his camp revealed very basic S&C. I can hazard a good guess that he hadn't been able to gain access to a professional nutritionist at that early juncture in his career, if he ever did.

Amir Khan, meanwhile, had his operation neatly compartmentalized (the inner workings of his camp were well documented by Sky at the time). Respected Cuban boxing coach, dedicated S&C guy (some chump who'd previously only worked with Rugby players, which goes to show that not all S&C guys are equal), dedicated nutritionist.

About as much as "better nutrition" was a whole argument to begin with.

Seems you'd likely be surprised at how many successful fighters' diets are not all that sophisticated. They all have particular methods that they swear by. Particular oddities, too.

If you believe the testimony of Chef Q, the kind of daily, in-camp nutritional intake that fuelled Floyd Mayweather's time at the top of the sport was more often flecked with idiosyncrasy than dietetic idealism might allow, but it was generally clean, kept him fuelled and any crap was burned up by his tremendous output in the gym.

Shawn Porter's in-camp diet, while clean, isn't particularly complex. Jello for energy? Whatever, guy goes 12 rounds at a pace.

Tyson Fury, meanwhile, has been winning fights while guzzling Diet Coke and cheating his diets throughout training camps for years. With that said, I will grant you that his most recent camp was likely his most nutritionally sound, if all testimony is to believed.

For a fighter making weight, several light meals a day, oats, some red meat, eggs, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts. It isn't rocket science.

And many guys have very well organized camps in terms of nutrition and S&C, come out looking shredded on the scale and in great aesthetic shape when rehydrated on fight night, but have problems with food and drink between fights. Kell Brook is a great example, I know all about his habits from a member of his family. Do you suppose those kinds of habits do fighters' longevity a service? Does it only matter to look after your body when you have a fight coming up? Not ever boxer is an Anthony Joshua in the self-care and discipline stakes, far from it. These days, fighters have much more time to sit around on their butts, getting restless and finding crutches to lean on.

The 'how bad are saturated fats for you really?' argument is moot here. A mid-twentieth century fighter couldn't afford to load up on butter and pork if they were looking to make weight, same as now.

Guys certainly ate oats in the 1940's and 1950's. I'd wager many ate fish, too, in addition to their steaks and their poultry. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. Would you be surprised to learn that some even ate berries, too? I wouldn't. The benefits of various herbs have been observed going back for time, that isn't 21st century revolutionary stuff.

As for heavyweights, what odds would you give me on 90% of modern heavyweight diets being much more slobbish than that of Jack Dempsey, who tended to enjoy two or three rashers of bacon with his lettuce and tomato on toast? Jack was dining on salads one-hundred years ago, while Andy Ruiz, who can't get through a camp without indulging in a copious number of cheat meals, would probably throw up at the sight of one.

You reckon Dillian Whyte is a product of supreme nutrional discipline?

It wouldn't be the first time I've heard a nutritionist talk at length about what they do for fighters, and I can think of two guys I personally know who graduated in the field of sports nutrition off the top of my head (one being a ten-bout, undefeated former pro who stopped boxed 4 years ago). The concept of sports nutrition isn't news to me. What I'm saying is that I think you may be misled as to the extent that these magical nutrient combinations can impact performance in the heat of battle when the adrenaline is high and the emphasis is squarely on the acquired skill and the intangibles you possess. A clean, fuelling diet is a clean, fuelling diet. beyond that, there's a very finite limit to what that anti-inflammatory juice can do for you when you're getting your head punched in by a hungrier or better fighter. No amount of herb combinations is giving you nuts, or guts or a boxing IQ. A nutritionist is a box fighters tick so that they feel like they're turning over every stone in a camp.

I'd like to believe in the magical berries our moldy oldies were missing. I'd like to find the mystical forest they're picked in. Feel free to tell me more, in your own words.

 

^ Continued from above;

We can lament guys whose careers were cut short by injury or never saw any kind of fruition, but I thought we'd be talking about the guys who fought hundreds of bouts over careers that typically spanned two decades.

Allow me to make the case for the miracle of sport specific medicine;

Your guy David Haye was a crock by 32. A mere ten years in the pro game and he couldn't even make it to the ring to face Tyson Fury. 21st century doctors couldn't quite put him back together again. His fabled Hayemaker right looked dreadful when he came back 2-3 years later, bulked up in a bid to protect against reinjury, clearly inhibited by the legacy of the shoulder damage and surgery. He was hesitant to even let the right hand go. When he did, he pushed it awkardly, with none of his old accuracy. How can this be?

Can you tell me why doctors were apparently unable to save Ryan Burnett's young career? Did modern sport specific medicine fail to work its wonders on two of Adam Booth's charges? What are the odds?

Why were we robbed of Dmitry Pirog's potential at age 32 when his defining nights should have been ahead of him? Why didn't the docs save the Grandmaster?

Kevin Lear was a good little fighter, too. It's a shame the magic doctors couldn't save his career from a premature termination in his mid-twenties after just fourteen bouts.

I can give the docs credit for Andre Ward, at least, although about 80% of this forum wishes that surgeon had never been successful.

 

sorry you didnt get what i was saying. I dont mean that there were fighters whos career was cut short alla pirog. I can assure you that a lot of guys like dempsey ,lewis and so on had serious injuries and continued fighting with those injuries and just had a handicap their whole career. Hopkins and said that most boxers are injured all the time coming into fights.

The second half of your post is just logically flawed.

its like me saying cancer healing rates have drastically increased since the 60s and you saying: why couldnt they save steve jobs or my grandmother then?

 

You're comparing stylistic apples with oranges. He's never going to find a clip of Ali looking like that because, in his physical prime, Ali was a dancer who got up on his toes, moved left and right, stuck and moved around the compass of the ring, not a sniper who lingered and lurked for opportunities to invest his all into big, fast twitch, reflexive counterpunches.

These arguments are sophomoric.

 

What's funny is, after stating the above, you then make my next point for me;

Defeating your own post is more tantamount to logical flaw.

No, I don't accept that. If you're to espouse the virtues of sports specific medicine so vigorously and categorically, you'd better be able to explain the numerous anamolies.

Why didn't modern sports specific medicine give Paul Malignaggi back his ability to punch hard out of his right hand? He lost that ability early in his career. The endless wonders of modern sports specific medicine couldn't do anything about his hand breaking over and over again?

 

Mike Tyson, Floyd Patterson and Muhammad Ali were all faster than David Haye ever was.

Go and find another sport to follow.

 

so you are saying that ali could have been as fast but he choose not to because it wasnt his style?