Is there another sport where a consensus of experts thinks the players 50 years ago..

They wouldn't have even beaten the pile of shite England had when Revie was in charge.

As for the thread question, it's interesting whenever this is asked that the majority of answers to it refer only to heavyweights. There must be a reason for this :huh

 

Because the NBA and NFL in the 70's and 80's did not exist. And because the only good heavyweights come from the States where these leagues exist.

Pray tell, how good an American footballer would slow of foot Ali, slow of foot and relatively weak Frazier or love-handled Holmes have been? How good a basketballer could have Tyson become?

And regarding Haye, either you are very deadpan funny or a raving idiot. Does that shrinking violet ever plan on defending his trinket? Or have they not invented the opponent deficient enough that he has the balls to face?

 

a lot of sports have changed and gone backwards. take tenis, the racquets they use the strings are too hard making them hit the ball too fast. Im no expert but i imagine that the subtle voley side of the game went down the toilet when they started fireing balls like bulets from a gun. same with real football (soccer) the balls too light, it gets kicked too high, rules have changed etc and its harder to make comparisons with skills no longer required. track and feild ..they are all on drugs. you cant measure a punch a win is still a win. competition makes

 

probably because its the traditional marquee division of boxing and the one thats suffered the most from the dominance of NBA and NFL . In the lower weights i cants see any reason why a tough little man from general santos city now should be any worse than a tough little man from panama city . not that think that manny is better than duran just that their operating on a level playing field in terms of upbringing and number of fighters in competoition with each other .

 

:huh

 

In boxing between fighters of different era's how i judge it is would i pay to watch it on ppv . I dont who for sure who's better RJJ or SRR but would i pay to watch it yes a lot

 

Agree. Only the HW division truly has suffered as far as the Big Men going into other sports. NFL and the NBA are where the big athletes are.

However, culture change in general in the USA, the sport, has suffered after the end of World War II. Although there were great fighters still fighting and still to come (from the States), you had many now taking advantage of the boosted American economy which provided more jobs and opportunity...along with Soldiers coming back from war that were able to receive money through the G.I. bill to go to college. Where at one time boxing seemed to be the only hope to earn a buck, a living of a middle-class wage even without going to college became more alluring than taking a huge chance in boxing where you can get your brain knocked around and if lucky, can get as much as you can with what was left from being ripped off from your manager/promoter.

The attitude amongst the people, the youth, started to change. That toughness can start to go away.

Take for example the many Italians, Irish, and Jewish fighters there were prior to WWII than after. More of them left the sport when other opportunity came about.

More boxing gyms were said to be open prior to the War than after. And as the years past, more and more closed down. There was a shift in the USA.

 

Where does this silly line of argumentation come from? Bert Sugar?

Turn this argument on its head and you get the proposition that heavyweight boxing- in its halcyon era- stole talent from the NFL and NBA.

But when examined, you realize that Ali, the supposed greatest of all time, possessed the footspeed of a decent high school girl trackster. Frazier demonstrated the weight lifting strength of a precocious 13 year old. Larry Holmes had pretty much failed at all the other sports he tried. Mike Tyson was so uncoordinated on the basketball court that he was the laughing stock of the US Olympic Development squad. Should there not be equivalents of the 1970's and 80's Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Ray Lewis... or at least a glimmer of these talents in these elite, no, ALL TIME GREAT, heavyweights? Or does the argument that the athletic skillsets of any one of these disciplines does not translate into any one of the others really get proven here?

 

Interesting thoughts from Herb Goldman.

http://cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/w42x-kd.htm

scroll down to "[SIZE=-1]WHY ROY JONES, JR?"[/SIZE]

 

Frazier's strength was not trained up for the specifics of weight-lifting. Had he been, he would have showed more strength in lifting weights. But he was strong. It's just a different type of developed strength that is made for boxing.

Ali was a boxer, not a trained track-star. Nor did he train or care about other sports.
Tyson didn't consider himself an "athlete" like that of basketball players. He considered himself a boxer, a fighter. He never trained for other sports. His life was devoted to boxing. Had he trained for another sport, I would have put him in Football and placed him at Running-Back. Take Tyson at 12, and you have yourself a different athlete.

You have to find your sport and train for it. The younger the better.

 

True but look at the ammount of hispanic fighters that have broken through in the same time period , pinoys , the iron curtain has come down . Even in the uk there are apparently more boxers and gyms now per head of population now than there were 50 years ago (i'lll look out the statistic when i'm sober ) hence the fact that that their are still plenty of glass jawed brits to be sneered at .

 

So we are talking World-Wide now?
I was just talking in the States.

hahaha atsch

It's a poor man's sport.

 

true but even in the states you could argue that the jews and irish have been replaced by mexicans and puerto ricans. 50 years ago people would talking about oscar o'delahoya

 

Amateur system sucks today. That's not me saying that. That just about every single trainer and fighter, former and active, that has been around longer than this past decade to see the change.
Both in talent and the system they are running today is not the same.

Go back to when SRR for example were fighting in the amateurs. The talent that they were around as well as how they were fighting which was basically a 3 round Pro style fight and not this pitty-pat crap point system with head-gear crap they have today.

More Gyms. More trainers. More talent. Better System. Back in the Day.

The positive today is that you can get the benefit of modern sports science to help the boxer out to make him a better athlete.

Pre-WWII, it was a large population of people that decided to take up boxing. Gyms basically on every street-corner in some cities. It was so popular in N.Y. for example, that people followed the amateur fights and the amateur fighters were well known.

 

The amatuer system is a problem I dont like the computerised scoring system . I think it was introduced to try and stop the ammount of blatant horrible robberies in the olympics but it doesnt seem to have helped . All it seems to have done is reward guys for throwing single punches and they ignore body shots. As I'm sure we'd all agree most of the problems boxing has and i think this has always been true are with the sports structures and promoters rather than the actual abilities of the fighters