What's Your Personal "Golden Era '' of Boxing?

I had two golden eras,Fergy -

1970s for heavyweights: Ali,Frazier,Foreman,Norton etc. with Holmes on the horizon by the end of the decade.

1980s for Welter - Middle: Duran,Hagler,Hearns,Leonard,Benitez,Whitaker etc.

 

70's and 80's

 

Between the world wars

 

78-84

 

The 90s.

 

80’s, for sure. It may or may not have been the best era ever, but it’s what I grew up on, so of course I still feel more passionate about boxing from that time.

 

From about 1979 to about 1995 for me.
Boxing was on regular tv almost every weekend.
Most fighters during that era actually wanted
to fight the best available competition.

 

The 20s.

I think that this is when the global talent pool peaked, across the various weight classes.

 

It's almost always whichever won you grew up on unless you're a huge history buff.

 

Boxing in the U.S. began hit a peak in the mid-1970s with the convergence of the 1976 Olympic team (collecting gold in primetime when there were only three networks) and the release of “Rocky,” who further popularized the sport with the masses, plus the end of the Ali era serving as a launching pad for the Four Kings era.

A lot of people were inspired to box in those mid-1970s, and we saw the fruit of that through the 1980s (and somewhat beyond) as boxing dominated the weekend airwaves, networks carried fights in primetime and then HBO burst onto the scene and began building a franchise around it (with Showtime later joining in).

I think the last round of fireworks was carried by the rise of Mike Tyson and then Evander Holyfield, with their spotlight also shining on some guys in the lighter weights.

Once that deterred out by the mid 1990s or so, the end of a golden era was at hand.

 

As far as fully living and breathing it in real time, the 80s definitely.

But looking back on the 70s retrospectively with all that we have available at our fingertips via YouTube and the like, the 70s was pretty damn cool.

It’s kinda like the tennis, personalities, charisma weaved in with legitimate sporting prowess.

With guys like McEnroe, Connors, Borg, Roscoe Tanner etc., tennis had its own golden age also, imo.

The tennis players now, aside from their obvious abilities, are comparatively boring - just imo and maybe I’m just biased.

Some of those post match IVs are painful - like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone - but the spectators still laugh at some completely unfunny stuff - almost like, forced canned laughter, lol.

 

The early 1990s definitely, as my dad bought sky tv, which meant and I could watch all the big US fights live- and they were typically at the weekend, rather than a Monday or Tuesday, like a few years before. The UK middleweight scene was buzzing- and we had a heavyweight who wasn't quite as horizontal as some of those in the past. I was buying every boxing magazine- KO, Ring, BI and the UK ones, which had a great mix of the current scene and history (e.g. "Battle of the Legends*', "The Ali Chronicles", "Jimmy Cannon articles", "24 ct Goldman" etc.

Better than the 1980s (in the UK anyway) due to watching these fights live, which wasn't a thing a few years before- although i seem to recall Hearns vs Roldan being on live, so by the late 80s this was happening more often.


* Although Battle of the Legends was quite predictable. Even before i opened an issue, i'd know that typically the guy from the older era would win by 2-1 in votes (apart from when La Motta beat Hagler 3-0!!!)

 

Aye, overly media trained and scared to say the wrong thing. Although Kyrgios is good value. A bit of a bellend at times, but definitely preferable to the robotic personalities most of them have.