what is the difference between the past greats and the modern greats

Saying that the sport has changed dramatically over the years is really a complete myth. In fact, the sport has changed very little if at all over the last 50 years. The only difference is nutrition (fighters are bigger), but what does that have to do with skill level? The argument of training methods being advanced is also untrue, it hasn't advanced at all and if you look at it modern trainers actually use past regimens.

What I suggest you do is research (Wikipedia, google, etc). Learn about the best fighters of each era and their level of comp. Almost every great fighter post-world war II fights are on youtube, this can give you a gauge of how much skill level and tactics have changed.

Trust me, I felt the same when I first started following the sport. But, the more you learn and watch, the greater your opinion will change.

 

People also forget the willingness of past fighters to fight guys who significantly outweighed them.

Biggger isnt always better...even a little bit of research into the sport will show you this time and time again.

 

Good point but not neccesarily true:

1) This is only true for the US...and US is NOT boxing. You could argue that the surface of proffesional boxing in Russia counteracts that alone. I also believe that plenty of fighters from around the world are able to make it to America to compete today...whereas I think it would have been a lot more limited in the past.

 

Thanks. It's just clear that some just haven't seen the best of each era and even tried to dissect their style and compare to that of others or are just biased. The truth is the best of past eras were quite clear because the best had to fight to get to the top. Today with a lot of these ABC titles, promoters, etc we hardly see the best fight one another and makes it harder to gauge whether or not a fighter is truly great.

 

Athletic conditioning. You have to understand that while on an absolute scale, sure athletes have gotten bigger and stronger and faster. But this really has little to do with boxing. First boxing is about knocking someone out, not lifting a guy (collegiate/folkstyle or freestyle wrestling), or outrunning a guy as in football or track. That's why these conditioning aspects play a smaller part in boxing than you would estimate at first glance. Walther Payton is a good example of this. This man never lifted any weights, and relied on very large amounts of muscle endurance excersizes (low weight , high reps). Can you really say that this RB was any less of an athlete than a present day RB? If so, that margin is razor thin. Also there are weight class things and such in boxing, so bigger doesn't mean much. I'm not going to even go into the steroids aspect of football.
The real changes in boxing that occurred over time is the disappearing quality trainers who know the techniques. Trainers like Eddie Futch and George Benton are slowly disappearing. If anything the quality of boxers is going down because there aren't the trainers to teach these guys how to use their muscle.
That's why American boxing is the finest, they have all the trainers. Britain has no trainers and it certainly shows. Tyson Fury uppercuTT!!!~ :nut

 

If the argument is based on the H2H aspect then who are these posters who always pick past greats to win and what are the match-ups? This may just be the case of you debating with people who just don't know enough or (nothing personal) vice versa.

 

There's also posters who pick the present fighters to beat the past fighters because boxing's better now than it used to be which I happen to think is un-true there's also the x-factor of most people don't make un-biased picks.

 

In terms of ability there isn't much difference with maybe the modern fighters edging it. Past greats, generally, took a less cynical approach to their careers though, hence why they're revered.