Carlos Monzon with his pack a day smoking habit during training, lots of roadwork and party life big time. But it worked, undefeated in his last 82 bouts of his career which began on Feb 6 1963. Carlos had that incredible 82 bout winning streak since his last loss on Oct 9 1964 Became World Middleweight Champion on Nov 7 1970, 14 successful title defenses, retired as champion.
What about Vassili jirov? According to Lampley, dude was trained to outrun tigers- that's some pretty good motivation lol. And he was also dropped off in water to swim at who knows where- another boost of motivation. Let's see, tigers chasing him, and survive barely drowning, that made him one tough hombre, brought the heat up with him at heavyweight. Was a beast at cruiserweight.
He didn’t have to outrun the Tiger. He just had to outrun his sparring partner. Who was it who drank his own urine? Yeah, breakfast of champions and all that. For all we think we know about training and nutrition, Ray Robinson used to run in Army boots and his prefight meal was a steak with the extra blood from the cow drained into a glass for him to drink. He turned out OK, but just think if he had trained properly, lol. There’s a copy of John L Sullivan’s training routine out there on the internet. He would walk like 10-20 miles a day among other things. And the first part of camp was basically sweating/drying out from his heavy drinking — read the whole thing and it’s almost inhuman.
Some of these stories were probably deliberately tall tales to sell tickets, or to play mind games on opponents. Archie Moore toyed with reporters by peddling training voodoo, for example. Ali's underwater training shots were supposedly a last minute invention to create cool looking photos for the press. Etc.
Pretty much. It’d be hard to sell stuff to the preflight guys back then for obvious reasons, telling tall tales fills the pages and brings attention and is totally harmless. It must work because we still talk about Marciano’s various stories today for an example.
Eddie Futch took Ken Norton to a Hypnotist prior to his first bout against Muhammad Ali on March 31 1973.
Dieting and hydration were not well understood. This content is protected you might find this of interest. Starts at 1:34.
I'd go so far as to say most of the apocryphal stuff we hear was hype ... the stories about Marciano come to mind; there simply aren't enough hours in the day to cover everything he supposedly did, and the source for most of those claims were from either his brother or his trainer. He's putting in more mileage than a marathoner, and pounding a 500lb heavy bag while sparring a dozen rounds and tossing boulders. Human body's only got so much gas to go around. The most objective, unbiased reports tell us he trained really, really hard - but about the same as many other fighters. He was just more consistent, and maybe had a tenacity that most other fighters didn't have. The example you mentioned was a great example: Ali couldn't even swim, but they put him in a pool throwing punches because it got attention. I've thought about starting a rumor he sparred blindfolded to help his reflexes - in a few years, it'll be part of the legend. I'll have to create an interview where Ali says he got it from watching Ray Charles be-bop ...
There isn't anything ridiculous about doing that training though. Repetitive motions doing lifting and throwing can build up amazing strength. Lifting bails of hay can make your grip, forearms, and shoulders very strong. Chopping wood can build up your back muscles. All of these can be helpful for a boxer.
Thing is, those perfectly mimic the motions fighters employ; trunk rotation against resistance, kind of explosive movements repeated over and over from a standing position; compare this to the videos we see of boxers bench pressing, with virtually no carryover to punching power. Sometimes the old-timers really were on to something -