Do you think technique evolves?

These guys are absolute jokers.

 

This is true.

I think the first lead hand by a southpaw premiered for the first time in 2003.

It was never seen before then.

Also, the first southpaw was born in the 70’s.

And he was only a southpaw, as a recent car accident had injured his left foot and left hand.

But after studying this style, other southpaws then came into the sport.

It’s estimated that by 2048, there’ll be roughly 37 Lomachenko’s within the sport.

So that’s something for us all to look forward to.

 

Are you actually serious ?

1. I never said he was unhittable, I said he rarely got hit. As in, rarely got hit clean. Again, go watch Napoles vs Cokes 1, or Cokes 2, or the rematch between him and Backus. It's obvious you haven't even watched him fight.

2. I pointed out how Napoles had incredibly tender skin, arguably the most tender in history, the guy would get cut if the breeze was too strong. Him getting stopped on cuts is about as good of a representation of his defence as Pernell Whitaker having a few flash knockdowns. Name me one modern fighter that hasn't gotten hit, who is actually unhittable. Literally one. Just one. You criticise older fighters for getting hit as if the new ones don't. Just admit you haven't watched them and get it over with.

Like who ? Like Ali, who got several gift decisions after Manilla ? Like Holyfield, Charles, Griffith and Robinson, who lost to guys they would have decapitated in their primes ? Duran was several weight classes over his best weight and was getting old, he was far from the only one who didn't age too well. Modern fighters fight once a year and rarely have 40 fights, they don't have the wear and tear the older guys did and generally age more gracefully. Usyk, Loma and Inoue don't even have 30 professional fights under their belt and they've been professionals for 10 years. If Duran was such a flawed fighter, how come he beat Leonard and gave Hagler a good fight when moving up ? How come he beat a gigantic Middleweight in Barkley who would later fight at Heavyweight, despite being 37 years old and 30 lbs overweight ?

How the hell is that a strawman ? I mentioned a way that Robinson utilised his jab, an extremely smart one at that, and your reply was "uh duuuuh, LaMotta outjabbed him tho, funny how you didn't mention that" as supposed proof that his jab wasn't that good. I said LaMotta only outjabbed him in stretches, where Robinson was deliberately doing less in order to preserve his stamina. LaMotta himself had an excellent jab

This is a thread about older fighters, so I mentioned older fighters from several eras. And I never said they were perfect fighters. But they sure as hell are not as flawed as you make them out to be, and I even pointed out specific skills and tricks they had that modern fighters do not. So I'll ask you again, with no particular fighter in mind, what specific things do older fighters do wrong that modern fighters do not, making them better ?

 

Absolute BS.

I have been objective all throughout the thread, where I’ve given plenty of praise to today’s fighters.

It’s you who’s been completely disingenuous all throughout the thread.

Your last post highlights that perfectly.

A knowledgeable poster has given you a great, technical breakdown of Napoles, yet all you could muster as a reply, was a sarcastic comment regarding his losses, without applying any context whatsoever.

Basically, after reading his great comments, you jumped straight onto BoxRec to try and find any losses.

There is no dogma.

Just two unknowledgeable fans spouting ignorant nonsense and making assumptions.

You think that GGG is the most skilled MW of all time, and old Doreen thinks that Nick Ball was a more skilled FW than Alexis Arguello.

It’s comedy time here on the Classic.

Now I could forgive your lack of knowledge, but not your ignorance.

You don’t even want to debate in good faith.

Zero context applied, and a complete dismissal of anything you’re both not familiar with.

A pair of jokers.

 

My point is that we have 3 French fighters in the HoF (I know the Hall doesn´t have the best reputation but it is a guide) all from the past.
We have 2 italians from the past.
We have, I don´t even know, how many canadians, and how many these days that would belong ?
And so on.

We do not have a Marcel Cerdan, a Duilio Loi, or Benvenuti or a Antonio Cervantes today. So, the whole super international scene being so much bigger today sounds like a overstatment.

 

Not for nothing, Bukkake, but the ability of BoxRec to get obscure club fights today is much bigger then it is if we go way back in time..

I believe there is less serious guys out there fighting today, because there is no stigma these days in fighting. Back then, you were viewed as a bum if you went this road, so you only went if you were serious about it or really good.

 

Your great in-depth knowledge is a pleasure to read.

However, it’s sadly wasted on two guys who’ll debate you based off of BoxRec type data.

All today’s great fighters are a pleasure to watch.

All of them.

I love Crawford.

I love Usyk.

The sport’s in a good place.

But let’s be realistic here.

Give Crawford 100 plus fights.

Let him fight once per month.

Let him fight into his 40’s, or even 50’s.

Let him fight PRIME ATG fighters, way above his prime weight class.

What would his record look like at the end?

Of course, it’s open to speculation.

But we could absolutely guarantee one thing:

He wouldn’t be sat happily retired in his rocking chair, with an undefeated record.

James Toney once fought Reggie Johnson, Mike McCallum and Michael Nunn, all in the space of 9 months.

But who has Crawford etc, been fighting?

Dismissing Duran’s greatness by only focusing upon his losses and the negative points in his career is nothing short of disgraceful.

Every post these guys make just makes me lose more respect for them.

You’re just completely out of their league my good man.

 

This has got nothing to do, with this discussion: Which is how many active fighters we have today, compared to earlier (in this case the 1980s.)

So if I understand you correctly, you reject the notion, that BoxRec's number of active boxers has increased steadily over the past several decades - until it's today now about double of what it was 40 years ago. So you simply believe, those numbers are wrong?

 

You are supposed to have a narrow and bladed stance. The left side of the body turns sideways and only the front side of it is exposed to the opponent. The weight is on the backfoot and that moves your head away further from the opponent's fists, and also makes a rear hand visible from a mile away. The weight is supposed to shift left and right from each foot to put the entire weight behind each punch. That's exactly how Robinson did it, which is why he could chain 7 or 8 punch combinations together. The ones who say that a wide base is better are the ones that have it wrong. As far as telegraphing his shots goes, that is how Robinson and many punchers of his caliber put more power and snap into their blows. Sam Langford said that the key to having power is to never put your hand in front of your hips. Ray moved his legs first and his hands followed when punching, instead of the other way around, that is the basis of the stretch shortening cycle, meaning the hands end up going faster as the punch reaches the target. His hands were moving far too fast for the opponent to notice any telegraphic motion due to that, not to mention his punch selection made it even harder.

Again, that is how it is supposed to be done. Don't give me that stuff about footwork, footwork is literally every movement in Boxing, not just skipping around the ring or taking flashy angles. It's the small pivots when punching or when slipping, ducking and weaving. It's the large pivots to take new positions inside or outside the lead leg, it's the half steps to draw out an attack to counter, it's subtly changing into southpaw to go in a different direction and it's the coordination between feet and hands. Look at this footage of Robinson and tell me that he only had good footwork for his era. He literally sent Dykes to the ropes moving counter clockwise

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Never said he was unhittable, I said he was very hard to hit clean, which is correct. Napoles had sucess against Monzon in the first 4 rounds, why are you making it sound like it was a one side massacre ? There's no shame in losing to freaking Monzon either, one of the top 3 or so MWs ever, considering the sheer length and weight difference between the two. And Napoles is literally one of the best and most consistent feinters ever, what are you talking about ? He was a literal walking feint, constantly shifting his weight in each leg to deliberately make his opponent time him so he could counter them, it was the most easily timeable back and forth movement ever and his oponents felt tempted to go for it time and time again. His KO over Ernie Lopez in the 2nd fight was set up exactly like this, Lopez thought he could time the forward shift and then got splattered by an uppercut from Napoles. And if Napoles was so unbalanced all the time, how come he chained like 40 punches against Cokes in the 9th round of their first fight ?

Look at 28:31 and tell me how Napoles is unbalanced while throwing so many textbook shots.

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You can claim he did whatever, but it clearly did not hinder his balance. He's also clearly better defensively than Usyk when it comes to simply avoiding blows, that isn't up for debate. Usyk is obviously very good at it, but he's not on Napoles' level. Go watch the entirety of the first Cokes fight and tell me if you think Usyk can do the same things without his hands up like Nap did. Napoles was so uncanny sometimes that he would make a shot miss by moving half an inch backwards. To compare his footwork to the stiff and robotic Canelo is ridiculous. Also lol at Robinson of all people being stiff.

Floyd is literally the most old school fighter of his era, which is why he fought the way he did and was so sucessful. People try to imitate him but screw up because they don't know the intricate details of his style. It's not just about the shoulder roll or the pull counter, it's much more subtle stuff, but people tend to look elsewhere. That's the same thing you've been doing, you look at deliberate things fighters do to their advantage and think they're mistakes. I suggest you start old footage with the intent of analysing what they're doing, instead of just trying to tick boxes into your head. As far as infighting is concerned, if Fury is considered one of the elite infighters today, then infighting might as well be dead, because he is not profficient at it. Infighting used to be a major part of Boxing, disregarding it is just a way of making the science of Boxing poorer. And yeah, you're right, Duran didn't invent the things he did, but they weren't revolutionary before Duran either. Read Edwin L Haislet's book that came out in 1940, there's not a single thing done today that isn't also in the book, and he most certainly didn't invent that stuff. But trainers and fighters have different priorities when it comes to Boxing, and certain skills are neglected because of that. Many people have Duran as their favourite fighter ever, how many of them have a ring IQ as high as his ?

 

I am suspicious that Boxrec would have listed all small shows that happened way back in the day.

This discussions has to do with Boxing getting better outside of USA in recent times, you think it did. We got into the number of shows and fighters, and you may be correct on that, there is raw number right now higher perhaps (not by that much btw huh !! quite even if you ask me all things considered, with everything being documented because of the internet, money, gimmick boxing, mma-boxing cards combined etc)
I don´t see how is that true (that Boxing outside of USA is better now) on behalf of all the things I already said. The rest of the world doesn´t mean former Soviet Union places and that is it.... and Japanese Boxing produced dozens of world class fighters much before Inoue.

The best mexican fighter is Canelo, there is not one single person in this forum that ranks him as the best mexican of all time. The best french fighter, nobody knows.... the best argentinian right now ?? Where can I see a better nigerian than Dick Tiger ?

 

Like I said earlier, the actual numbers aren’t important.

It’s clear that the talent pool is smaller than what it’s been. And certainly since I’ve been watching from the late 80’s onwards.

 

At no time have I been arguing, that boxing outside of USA is better today than back in the 1980s. I'm saying, that there, worldwide, are more active boxers today than 40 years ago. That's all I'm saying!

 

I'm always mystified when people think the current era is better.

Heavyweight = Ali, Holmes, Norton, Tyson, Thomas, Witherspoon, Frazier, Foreman, Holyfield.

Light Heavyweight = M.Spinks, Conteh, Foster, M.Muhammad, Qawi, Johnson, E.Muhammad.

Middleweight = Hagler, Monzon, Nunn, Kalambay, McCallum, Barkley, Griffith, Valdes, Briscoe.

Welterweight = Leonard, Hearns, Duran, Napoles, Benitez, Starling, Curry.

Lightweight = Arguello, De Jesus, Buchanan, Whitaker, Chavez, Ramirez, Rosario, Camacho.

Featherweight = Sanchez, Lopez, Nelson, Pedroza, Fenech, Lockridge, McGuigan.

Those are some prominent fighters from the 70s/80s tell me how the fighters now look superior to the fighters above in regards to the eye test or have evolved ?