Is anyone else getting tired of the revisionist?

yea the footage looks sped up because theres missing frames.

The old fight films do not show the subtle hand movements, the feints, the footwork, hell you can barely make out the jabs in the really old films.

People underestimate the ability to see the depth in a boxers muscles with modern day footage. These days you can see for yourself where a boxer is placing his weight, and how he is balanced, whereas you cannot with older footage.


If Tyson went back in time to beginning of the 1900's and fought someone, the film wouldn;t show him being super fast, super agile, bouncing from side to side. No it would show a much different, vulnerable looking Tyson. He would actually look SLOW, in comparison to the other fighters when you see how much of the ring they cover when theyre moving around.


When Jack Johnson jumps from the edge of the ring, to near the center of the ring, in one hop, it almost looks like he's a puppet. But with modern cameras he would look glamorous gliding around the ring.


If I become rich when im older, I'm going to buy an expensive camera from the 1920's and film modern boxing matches just to prove to ya!

 

You so blithely disregard the legacy of Shinji Takehara!

Seriously, though, the Eastern Europeans have made a huge impact on the middleweight up...

 

Like the treatment of the Ali vs Liston fight nowadays. Liston past it, washed up, an alcoholic, 3 rounds in 4 years, etc. I've seen you use the world quite often, actually for that very example I mentioned.

 

For as long as the world of sports continues to march on, there will always be some who are partial to the current stars, while others who prefer to support their predecessors... Its the way of things and its human nature.. No need to make any more of it than that...

 

The real question is when did NFL players begin to earn more than HW boxers. I think the answer is in the mid-80s.

I remember reading about todays great athletic HWs just before I saw the Ruiz-Toney fight. Something didn't add up.

I think the big, fast HWs that should be out there are instead playing LB, DE and TE in the NFL.

 

The presumes that only good heavyweights come from the US. And also that Ali, Holmes, Tyson, Bowe and Holyfield would have gone into the NFL were they around today, despite none of them had demonstrated any necessary talent for the sport. Though I guess a prime Ray Lewis would beat any of them anyway.

 

Historicaly, boxing talent has tended to come from a small number of countries with boxing traditions. That tended to mean Britain and Ireland in the 19th century and America in the 20th.

You will of course always get the odd off the wall example such as Joe Walcott coming from Barbados but it usualy depnded upon them accesing or passing through a major boxing centre.

 

That was probably some German guy like Bodhi's top10 Anyway its not like there arent greats who didnt have stylistic nightmares with movers, ie Dick Tiger. Abraham looked pretty bad ass in his prior 35fights or whatever it was

 

Yeah, I would definitely say that's a revision of the general opinion of the fight going in.
I use the word in that way, but I see people talking about all sorts of things on this thread.

The point is there are lots of different valid opinions, and they will differ.
It's definitely worth finding out various contemporary opinions of historical events, not just the general consensus. And as long as we're all being honest, there's no problem.

I predict there's going to be some serious adjustments of opinion from some members of this board in the next 5 - 10 years concerning Wladimir Klitschko. Some of the members who I suspect rate Lennox Lewis so highly are currently still knocking Klitschko. Some of them will stick to that, no doubt, but others will have to concede that Lewis and Klitschko are in the same bracket.
Personally, I dont think I'll ever rate Lewis or Klitschko highly, but I'm probably the least consistent ranker of fighters ever.

 

So basically you're agreeing old timers look poor on film, I agree with you. But your wrong its not because of the quality of the film, its because they werent as good.

The film doesnt look like its sped up, its actully sped up, to compensate for the missing frames. Put a Tyson DVD in and play it at 1.5 or times
speed and tell me how fast he looks. Then in turn slow the old timers footage down by the same margin

The reason you cant see a jab in the film, isnt because the films bad, itsbecause they didnt jab. The reason the balance isnt as good is because of generally poor footwork

The bad film doesnt take away from the details but it shows they indulged in boxing no nos like moving back in a straght line, carrying the hands low, no lateral movement, no jab, etc etc

 

That's true, and we should be thankful for that.
The latest surge has been from Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and all that region.
I suspect that Mexican boxing has peaked but I dont know.
I'm confident boxing isn't dying, worldwide, but I dont doubt that it has shrunk in terms of small grassroots level that spawns large numbers of hungry fighters. I mean, even the Russians, Ukrainians and Poles seem to flock to Germany to get fights.
The monopoly of big promoters and the expectation of getting TV money seems to be common to almost everywhere, meaning less fights.

In a way this is PROGRESS though. Having 300 hundred fights for low pay and ending up with permanent injury may have meant more good hungry well-seasond skilfull fighters and more fights for the fans, but it reflected the social problems and hardships of the times.
Unemployment is high in Eastern Europe, Mexico and Phillipines are largely "third world" in the urban centres.

 

"There wasn't any known video footage of welterweight Robinson"

Robinson defending his welterweight title against Charley Fusari is on film and the film is currently available on youtube.

By the way, this film was available over the years and I have seen excerpts from it many times going back perhaps fifty years.

*Just as an aside, saying we can't evaluate Robinson as a welter when we have skads of film of him fighting LaMotta and others in 1951 seems just picky and not at all convincing.

 

I don't think Holmes, Ali or Tyson would have been football players... But interestingly enough, both Ken Norton and George Foreman played football when they were younger. Norton was a player in college for a little while, and actually had a son Ken Norton Junior who was very successful in the NFL.. I don't know what Foreman's background in football was, but he might have played as a child and has often listed Jim Brown as one of his heroes..

 

Does anyone think there might have been someone potentially better in the NFL or NBA at the times of Ali, Holmes and Tyson?

 

Witherspoon and Dokes also had some sucess on the gridiron, I think.