Why are we so biased/obsessed with old fighters/era's

Better fighters. Although argument could be made both ways i guess. I think as time went on sport science and tactics improved...like in most sports. But as a spectacle its probably made boxing and some sports worse for it.

Back then it was more about offence and actual boxing ability. Then they learned sport science/size/strength/tactics can beat it and concentrated on these things more. As a result you,ve got less skilled fighters...and more boring/negative fights.

Hard to make a case in which generation would actually win if they,d somehow fight...suspect the current generation...but as a spectacle it was better to watch back then and a more skilled sport.

You dont even really see hagler v hearns type fights anymore at the top level. Or underdogs going in on the frontfoot much. Nowadays they usually just fight negatively happy to fight to a loss hoping the few dangerous punches they throw hits the jackpot.

As a result these guys that we,re better to watch are idolized more. Just my take on it. For the top guys in a division only one or two or three guys would go in and have a proper go nowadays. Back then you,d have to properly beat them up. Guys in the top ten would have a real go.

 

174-19 is a very impressive record. We all will die without watching anything even remotely close to that.
107-6
or even 229-11

Those are old timers atg records, for real. You wont see that again. NEVER EVER.

NEVER EVER

Not to talk about the 15 rounds, which makes the sport WAY harder than it is now. And way better, imho (even if I understand that it's 12 rounds now).

 

People generally are almost always biased when they rate something, unlike me.

I for example think hw boxing was absolut **** before the 90s. Holmes was the one to really give birth to modern day heavyweight fighting. Boxing back then was more of an USA tournemant then a real championship. When ever I say that people think I dont now boxing because I am not in that age group that will likely have problem with the cov.

with music however I fell like music from the 60s-90s is way better then most of the bull**** today. When I say that a lot of people call me an old head, despite the fact that I said that already when I was 14.

People are full of crap and cant rate true quality to safe their lifes and if they were honest they would say that thats not what they care about but some other stupid thing.

 

Disagree. Buck Smith was 182-20-2.

He was a journeyman. He showed up on ESPN shows when someone fell out. I watched him for years.

I'm not dead.

So ... disagree. It's not that difficult to run up a couple hundred wins fighting in the Midwest circuit, for example, boxing four, five or six times a week. You just don't spar. You just fight.

If we added up all the sparring modern fighters do for months on end for just two fights a year, they'd all have the equivalent of 30 or 40 fights a year, too.

The old timers who fought three or four times a week weren't big on sparring. That's the primary difference, in truth.

 

Why obsessed by the past?

As to HWs:

Klitschko's era was full of bums. The only high level fighters were two brothers who never faced and Povetkin imo.
Today era Is a bit better with 4 Hws of high level: Fury, Joshua, Ruiz, Wilder?(Im not sure at all on him lacking him some fundamentals) and other 4 of 5 fighters of middle - middle/high level (not bums though) and you all know who they are.

Other eras had much more high level Hws:

70s: Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Lyle, Shavers, Holmes, Norton, Young...

90s: Lewis, Bowe, Tyson, Holyfield, Mercer, Morrison, Old Foreman, McCall, Moorer, Sanders, Tua, ..

 

This statement eff'ed me up. What exactly is a modern day HW and what makes them better than the fighters pre 1990? You called the HW eras before 1990 absolute crap. I can't wrap my head around that. So many great fighters and more importantly, so many great fights.

 

How much success do you think Ali would have had if he fought like Joe Louis or even Wlad. Both were fundamentally sound?

 

The fights were great and the old fighters were real man back then that would fight each other as soon as they could instead of running away and facing trash like today but boxers back then were so far away from a META game that we see most hw utilize today.

if you look at the top hw from holmes to now we get pretty much this line:
Holmes-tyson-lewis-klitschkos-fury

beside tyson their boxing style is so similar.
Long range, impose weight and size, set up for singular safe shots with the right hand like uppercuts or straight right hands. If their is to much of a danger you go for jab and grab.
Thats just the META and the only Parameter that has changed is that the hw get bigger and stronger.

 

people hate to admit the game and the players have evolved.
you can still pay homage to those that come before you without short changing the new generation.

no one can question, that old eras were probably TOUGHER, but that doesnt mean the fighters were better.

I love when people say, it's two guys throwing punches, that's the same now as it was 70 years ago.

bull crap. fighters were much more flat footed in the bygone eras, like Ray Robinsons era for example. that's the kind of competition he was dominating. if those styles were so superior, they would still be fighting like that today...

as it turns out, fighters have evolved, and improved upon what previous eras were doing.

to not recognize this shows pure bias and ignorance. it's sad really

 

Simply because they were better.

 

What's this "We" ****. A few posters here have had the priviledge of seeing a lot of fights over several different eras. Doubt some 22yo wil have the sufficient knowledge that one who watched boxing before these 20yo's were born, will possess. We are literally watching the worst era of HW boxing in many decades.

 

And so what? 22 year olds can look up all the old fights on youtube. A lot of guys on here are a bunch of old people that try to make their boxing experience as something special.
there is a very high chance that boxers in 30 years will be much better then todays fighters on average, there are very little records in the olympics that still remain from the 80s.

 

Absolutely they can look up on youtube. YT doesn't tell you any of the details about what was going on at the time though. It's the details that I see many guys who really have no clue going on about.

Well, having more knowledge and experience is special compared to noobs.

 

Oh my your arrogance is really the only special thing here.
Guys back then could literally watch the fight and thats it. Hell the whole 24/7 and behind the scenes thing comes from the 80s 90s anyway.
What kind of special details do I as a 24 year old miss, when there is literally 10x more information on all fights from the year 1977 or whatever then all the information you could have gathered in the same year.

 

Its a nostalgia thing lol its with all the old heads my coaches told me they think that Canelo and GGG wouldn't make it past 1 round with Hagler and Duran. (I think their clearly wrong you can maybe argue they'd beat Canelo and GGG but saying it wouldn't be competitive is insane) My favorite fighter of all time is tough I have a lot of fighters I like as a person Muhammad Ali and as a fighter, he accomplished so much in and out of the ring is really high up there for me my grandfather who was a pro in the 70s sparred with Ali and he told me about how Ali would talk trash while sparring and how it felt like he was in there with someone on a completely different plane of ability. I love watching Earnie Shavers, Floyd Mayweather Jr, George Foreman ( I also loved his story of coming back and winning the title as a 45 year old) and GGG, more for how interesting their style is then who they are as people. My favorite fighters currently competing are Errol Spence jr, Tyson Fury, GGG (though in my opinion he's out of his prime now and is entering the twilight of his career), Ryan Garcia and Naoya Inoue.