Just spent 2 hours watching Ray Robinson and...

How do you spend two hours studying something and become more ignorant?

 

:rofl

 

Are you a stand-up comedian by any chance? You surely sound like one, a bad one though.

 

You really think so?

Compare the fastest 100 yard dash record 60 years ago to that of today.

 

Exactly, and this is the problem in general with saying that humans are not continually getting better. BUT lets be honest there are still champion boxers today who somehow get to their level being malnourished, unorthodox, and untrained (Hamed, early Pac, and pretty much every Mexican fighter is not a product of "advanced" sport science, they have those guys picking up boulders in the mountains and drinking urine. And I'm pretty sure I'm about five times faster than DeLeon, who is about my size, and I honestly don't think he has more skill winging his wrecking ball hand with all that telegraph, but he would still knock me into next year in less than one round (even though his skills are NOT EVEN amatuerish)).

Athleticism in general has been on the increase, but has "toughness"? I have to agree to disagree and say in the 80s I see average fighters with far fewer technical flaws than these older fighters, because as people watched tapes general guidelines developed: "Look, when he does that he gets hit every time, okay, yeah, its a mistake to move that way against a Southpaw" that got assimilated into general boxing knowledge.

I will agree Robinson is the greatest of his time and was ahead of his time, and I know I am only an amatuer boxer, but those guys from the 50s are constantly doing things that would be corrected against in a modern gym environment, and things that we criticize when a hurt fighter does them. The difference was that competitive climate really had everybody fighting everybody and tough guys rose to the top, so I see the elite then as being a bunch of guys more like Glenn Johnson than say Roy and Floyd, who would eventually been in with somebody who wouldn't be discouraged by their superior technique.

Floyd is not stronger or tougher than Robinson, and he is a smaller man, but seriously just as Marquez' skill seems on another level from most of his competition, Floyd's is even higher than his, and that skill would make easy work of anybody who is SLOW FOOTED, and honestly this is what I see in a lot of old clips. Not Robinson, but his competition, looks slow footed, because it wasn't emphasized as much. No matter what I say, no one will agree with me, I'm not knocking Robinson, but the footwork back then looks subpar and allows guys like Pep to look absolutely sensation and miraculous and unbeatable, because his footwork was great.

 

Actually, athleticism hasn´t increased on average. Fatness has. Evolution!

 

I guess its a bigger bell curve now: more people up at the top, more people at the bottom

Its like a rising sun on the graph of athletic potential coming over the horizon, just a whole lot more of every type of person on the planet.

 

Compare what shoes Bolt is running in today to what Owens was running in back at the Munich Olympics. Compare the surface he's running on today to what Owens was running on back then.

The 100m's is a science. It has a constant measurable, the objective is simply to run as fast as possible and technology has allowed man to concentrate on perfecting it.

Boxing is not measurable. It is not a science, it is an art. And whether you think boxing as an art has been perfected today compared to 60-odd years ago is merely a matter of opinion, yet one you'll find for the most part people would disagree with.

 

I think both Floyd and Sugar as well as a few select others would still be competitive in either era because they are that good

 

i would hope an atg middle weight could beat 2 atg welter weights

 

There are so many things wrong with that statement I don't even know where to start.

 

i agree
the fighters today hands are faster
feet are faster
and have more inteligence
most of the old guys are like margarito use they chin to block punches

 

Nothing to do with evolution though. With nutrition, yes. With training, yes - keep in mind the average people train only since a few decades, before there was neither the time nor the interest in that. That top athletes are better in most sports is mostly due to technology though. When Berlin got its new track for the track and field championship in 2009 they said it maybe as much as 0.3 seconds faster than the old one. But yeah, evolution happens in 60 years. I guess people think W. Klitachko is better than Larry Holmes or Muhammad Ali too because of evolution.

Boxing is not a sport relying only at athleticism. That´s only a part and not even the biggest by a longshot. Many fighters and trainers today seem to think so though and that´s one reason for the decline of boxing. Instead of training skill and experience by sparring or do some bagwork the amount of weight and similar training increases. So, yes the fighters are more athletic but they are also less skilled, their techniques are more basic and they lack experience.
With every job, every art, everything you do in life, you get better with experience. Just not in boxing. Athleticism is more important. Of course. Robinson had more than 200 fights, he had experience in abundance. No matter what would happen in there, it wouldn´t be anything new to him. Look what Hopkins does today, and it´s all based on experience.
Today´s boxing is style over substance. Of course there are some exceptions and the best fighters would be competative in any era. But saying Pac and Mayweather would beat Robinson because of "evolution" is just laughable.

 

Exactly. Like Willie Pep. :deal