How does Ruben Olivares & Carlos Zarate fare against today's Bantamweights?

Ruben Olivares was my 4th favorite fighter of all-time when I participated in Rummy's favorite 35 fighters poll he did in 2021. Unfortunately, I don't think he would beat Inoue. I do however, think Zarate would come up with a win over Monster.

The difference between Olivares and Zarate is defense. It's also the difference between Inoue and Olivares. To be fair, it's been four decades since I watched Olivares and Zarate so my opinions of them are from memory. Olivares was more of a brawler and the man could punch I just think he would have a harder time hitting Inoue than Inoue would hitting him.

After watching the great Olivares I was really surprised that I found a bantamweight I thought was better less than a decade later. Zarate was no joke. He had a lifetime 66-4 record with 63 kayos. He was 52-2 when he retired for seven years. His comeback went well until the 36 year old Zarate met prime Jeff Fenech. Zarate retired one fight later.

Zarate's very good defense, all-time great offense and vast experience will find a way to beat the highly talented Inoue.

 

It's pretty hard to hold his loss vs Gomez at 122 against him, given that Gomez is easily the 122 GOAT and maybe the most dominant GOAT at any division.

 

I don't watch every fight anymore for the simple reason that most of today's fighters are not as good as earlier. I'm of the opinion fighters stopped getting better towards the mid 80's.
I suggest you watch some Zarate and Olivares. You'll be very pleasantly suprised

 

I rate Zarate very highly. I think Olivares is extremely overrated due to his popularity in Mexico, I have never thought he was in contention for bantam GOAT. He had better guys preceding and following him close to when he fought.

 

Prime Olivares could do it all. I rate him very highly.

 

Not everything goes straight up and to the right. Since the beginning of Olivares career they added two divisions within 5lbs of each other.

People didn't become space aliens, it's just that knowledge of what actually worked for athletic training spread a little more widely, some tools became more accessible.

Plus, major team sports got investment that boxing did not. I work out at a gym that has a current female world champ (I think?) and hosted a male world champ until recently. The only thing in there you couldn't have found in a 1920s gym is a digital timer and Bluetooth speakers.

How many teenage amateurs are getting training like these baseball players: https://www.imgacademy.com/boarding-school/athletics/baseball

There is a visible infrastructure that explains the changes in baseball. Boxing is way behind that, only a very select few are getting those kind of resources.

 

Are you kidding me? Boxers almost never even lifted weights in the 1960s, never mind the huge advances in sports science and PEDs. Look at Inoue:

This content is protected

This content is protected

He looks like a different species than Olivares. Out of context photos aside, can you really see them and actually think they are getting equal training?

Besides, I initially didn't want to make this about era vs era. I just pointed out that Inoue is way more dominant and way more proven in his era than Olivares was in his.

 

Muscles and how good your body look don't win fights. Olivares wasn't a body beautiful but he could go 15 rds. So many of these ripped guys today can barely go 10.

 

You make some good points and in a "the older fighter is greater than the current boxer, despite having inferior numbers, because his era was better" type argument, I'd normally try to construct an argument similar to yours. 3 points for consideration though:

1. When Olivares became champ, started getting big purses and fighting less often, his discipline dropped and he started to struggle at the weight. The Olivares that lost Castillo and Herrera wasnt the same Olivares that destroyed top 10 BW ATG Lionel Rose in 4 rounds.
2. Olivares title opponents were better than Inoue's. Rose, Castillo and Herrera all have arguments for top 15 BWs. Rudkin and Pimmental, whilst not as good as a prime Donnaire, would rival the past prime versions of Donnaire that Innoue fought, as his best opponent.
3. Olivares was 61-0-1 before he first lost, almost all at BW. Innoue is currently 8-0 at BW. Yes, wins over ranked opponents count most, but that sort of consistency and dominance should count for something too

 

I can totally understand supporting the 'advanced boxer' theory, it certainly makes sense from lots of different points of view. The percentages of increased performance level you presented is pretty staggering, I must say.

Question: How come, when we see old footage that is in great shape, the fast fighters still look just as fast as fast fighters today?

 

That's a reasonable point, but my take is that ultimately he choked when it mattered most. He might have been better and greater before, but when it came time to show, he often slipped and fell. I can't really know how great he was before he became champ, fighting vs unknown outsiders. Obviously the Rose performance is eternal, but a lot of guys are really great on one or two nights. Take a look at Brewster, who was pretty great a few times but a journeyman for 80% of his career.

This is a stronger version of "his era was better", obviously it's more reasonable, but it's also unfair in two ways to Inoue (and reasonable H2H speculation in general). I'll address a logical issue and then I'll address two ways I feel the point is unfair.

1. Allow me to conjecture and then explain why I feel "top 15 all time" for ranking a fighter on a person's resume is logically flawed. Conjecture: If two people in any given era dominate and become very highly regarded, there's a good chance they'll be ranked in the top 10 by a lot of people in the modern day. Let's say the era was the 1960s, so boxing history was much shorter. This means that these guys were sometimes rated around top 5, maybe even top 3, by a decent number of fans in that time. Now, imagine a guy you rank as the 6th most achieved and 2nd best H2H bantamweight gets knocked out. So now, the new guy is obviously going to be rated very highly by fans. After all, he KOd a "top 3 all-time H2H bantamweight". This leads to situations where less dominant fighters are actually rewarded more highly than dominant fighters. The examples will mirror the reality of the era we're discussing but change some numbers for dramatic effect. Example 1:

Fighter A achieves great acclaim. He is regarded as top 5 in achievements and top 3 H2H by many fans. He is then KOd by a fighter who was seen as a very good contender, and this fighter now skyrockets in the "all time ranks". <---- Reasonable
Fighter B is then KOd by fighter C, fighter C is now regarded as a top BW and beat an "ATG slayer"
Fighter B then wins a rematch vs fighter C. Fighter B is now regarded as an ATG as he beat a top champion in his day and previously slayed an ATG. <----- This is the issue. "ATG"s only exist relative to their era in reality. If a guy who just destroyed a "H2H top fighter all time" was just beaten by another fighter, that implies to me that fighter A either wasn't quite as indestructible as people thought, or fighter B just had his number and isn't so great. Which is actually more likely: Three of the best BWs to ever live all happened to fight within a few years of each other, or the first guy was great and the second guy had his number?
Fighter B loses to fighter D
Fighter B loses to fighter D again
Fighter D is now an all time great or close to making the ATG list <----- The claim becomes even more exceptional. Now four of the all time top 15 fighters fought in their primes at roughly the same time as each other in a sport that has been going for 140 years. It seems much more reasonable to suggest that fighter B simply had fighter A's number or even that fighter A's competition wasn't quite as great as people thought. The 4/15 claim, while not absurd, is extremely exceptional and would be hard for a reasonable man to believe when the chances of such a thing occurring were laid out in front of him.

Example 2:

Fighter D retires as champ
Fighter E wins a vacant belt and beats contenders F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z. Of that list, only fighter H is regarded highly in a historical sense, but all fighters are contenders.
Fighter E retires undefeated
Fighter E has beaten no ATGs, and will now be regarded as inferior to B for not beating two ATGs, despite the fact that one of them is mostly regarded as an ATG for beating him, and was beaten multiple times.

I'll post the rest later, I have to catch a bus fast!
*I missed my bus but I don't feel like writing much more as I am a little upset I missed my bus.

 

The division he fought in was much, much, much better than this one.

Chucho and Herrera are both better than Inoue, as well.