Oleksandr Usyk vs Jack Johnson, with poll

But you did used to spar with a 300 lb. tank, bud. Most of us wouldn't dare.

 

100℅.
You train and fight according to the ruleset at the time. In a modern ring, this is a cakewalk for Usyk. The ruleset and conditions prevalent at the time are critical.

 

If we could pick some of the best pioneers at a young age, and time-machine them into a modern gym... yes, then they would obviously develop into modern boxers, just as good as the ones we have today. But is there any reason to believe that they, on average, might turn out to be better than their modern counterparts?

 

The reason I'd pick for them to become better than the modern counterparts is encapsulated within this quote:

Marvellous Marvin Hagler: "It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas”"

Those guys grew up in a harder time where they boxed more for less money than modern fighters. They were the children of the great depression and poverty has a way of instilling a certain ferocity within a person. Many, many of the great boxers and fighters even today grew up under such circumstances. It's that fire under the arse that drives a man to succeed.

 

Great read here. Great work!!!

 

Yep.. I spent so much time on the ground I conserved a ton of energy !!!

 

It goes without saying (I would think!), that there are very brave and courageous men today willing to fight, even against all odds, till the bitter end - and that there also are less courageous (I don't like to use the word "coward" about a pro boxer) fighters, not prepared to do that. Just like there must have been 100 years ago!

 

In my day we used to walk through knee deep snow in a howling blizzard to school barefoot, without any lunch, which we would have to catch on the way to school. Sometimes if we were lucky we caught a rat which we would have to eat raw. Otherwise we'd have to suck ice until the hunger pangs faded away due to the numbness spreading through our bodies. And that was in summer.

 

Ah, yes... one of my favourite Monty Python skits.

 

Oh right the four Welshmen

 

I think there were more of them back then, and tougher on average. They were living on sub-third-world tech.

 

And this carried over into the ring - where the average boxer back then was tougher, and fought with more heart, than today?

 

I think the deprivation may have made them grittier than the moderns. This is conjecture of course, not really provable one way or the other. But I will note that a ton of the very best guys today (with a few exceptions) come from dirt poor backgrounds or troubled childhoods.