Do you fail to understand...

its funny you left out the 80s . . . Bird & Magic, Joe Montana & Jerry rice, what about hockey Gretzky and Lemeuix or even earlier Mr Hockey. Its funny how if you go back 30 years ago (with worse training/nutrition . . etc) these athletes are MUCH better than the ones today . . . kinda makes you think skill . . . not just size matters!

 

you're losing it now. keep on talking ****.

 

Wouldnt you think the old timers would be different fighters today? If they were head and shoulders above everyone else with modern sciences, technics and nutrition dont you think they would be greater? Or do these match ups made under the notion that if you could time travel what would happen?

 

I agree that Williard didn't have the skills of Klitschko, but he had 100X the heart, and that's indisputible.

Klitschko would have folded like a lawn chair at the first sign of danger, and unlike Haye who fought like a *****, Dempsey would go for the kill and **** Wlad up.

And you obviously got your face shoved so far up Klitschko ass, that you've never seen Demspey fight which means more than likely you're a raging homosexual to defend a man just because you like how he looks with his shirt off because all you talk about is size.

Tunney who is faster and more compact than Klitschko and less apt to get flustered by Dempsey's rolling attack, especially given the size difference, had a lot of trouble landing his jab...

yet Klitschko who has to duck down far below where it's comfortable will easily be able to tag him with his jab?

Do I need to post videos of Klitschko getting knocked out by ****ing Ross Purrity again?

IT DID HAPPEN.

Deal with it.

 

1) i'm not a wladimir klitschko fan. he's a very good fighter i'll give him that. but he's far too boring for my liking. he gets fighters who are well past their prime or not any good to begin with, then plays the super cautious game against them. he's effective, but boring.

2) never seen dempsey fight? even though i said i was a dempsey man earlier on in the thread? yeah, sure.

3) what if i were a homosexual? are you homophobic?

4) wlad's jab is much better than tunney's.

5) every time dempsey gets close and bends below the waist, wlad would just lean on him. this would shut down dempsey's rolling attacks. this would frustrate dempsey who would then start coming at wlad in straight lines. he's far too small. throw in the fact that wlad has a huge reach advantage... sorry, but he doesn't beat him.

6) if you want to get the purrity fight out then be my guest. seen it many times myself. watch it, it's not a bad fight. :good

 

John Garfield, I'd love to see your perspective on how competitive Pacquaio would be as a FW, LW or WW.

 

If you truly believe that may I suggest that you need to read more about him... Monte Cox is a good place to start.

A top 10 ATG HW list without Dempsey on it say a lot more about the maker of the list than it does about Jack

 

What old timers and nostalgia freaks fail to understand is that every single sport has evolved, every single record has been broken and the level of science and understanding around how a body performs best has exponentially increased over the last 25 years, they forget that fighters are taller than they've ever been, punching stronger than they ever have at a weight unlike what they're used to.

They're better athletes, they're better prepared mentally and physically owing to the amount of analysis they can do on their opponents, the breaks between fights and the science that goes into their preparation.

The only thing boxing misses at the moment is the storyline of a Mohammad Ali/Foreman/Frazier trilogy - but realistically, all of those guys in this era would get butchered against the top talent.

Look at the video tapes, this "old timer technique" that they talk about looks good largely because a few fighters like Sugar Ray Robinson had a lot more talent than fighters of the day who were extremely limited, thats what made him look magical.

 

This is a composite of many of the arguments I've seen - major credit to Janitor - if I left others out I apologize, I have added my own thoughts throughout and especially to the end.

We can all verify that track times have gotten lower over the years. In fact, Jesse Owen's Olympic-winning 100 yard time is matched by high-school students every year. Would Jesse Owens, therefore, be only a High School varsity-level sprinter in 2011?

You tell me. Jesse Owens ran in leather shoes with metal spikes on the soles. He ran on a cinder track, and he had to dig his own starting divot when he took his mark. He was timed with a hand-held stopwatch.

Given these fairly significant changes in track conditions, is it really fair to compare track records from the 1930s to those of today? Clearly Owens was saddled with inferior shoes compared to today's ultralight models. His track surface certainly wasn't as uniform or resilient as modern composite tracks. Having a firmly-fixed tailor made starting block rather than a self-dug divot should be worth several fractions of a second as well. Human error may have played a significant factor as waiting for a runner to cross the line BEFORE you make your move to stop the watch costs time.

With all of the myriad advances we've had in terms of equipment for sprinting, the most basic of all sports, the actual gains have been surprisingly small - the following official times are for the 100 meter race:

First under 10.5: 10.4 Charles Paddock USA 1921
(For comparison, Owens ran a 10.2 in 1936)
First under 10.00: 9.95 Jim Hines 1968
First under 9.95: 9.93 Calvin Smith USA 1983
First under 9.90: 9.86 Carl Lewis 1991
First under 9.80: 9.79 Maurice Greene USA 1999

With all of the numerous technological advances in running shoes, superior track surfaces, and a pharmacopia of performance-enhancing compounds (the spectre of which hangs over nearly every elite sprinter of the past 25 years) we're looking at about a 6% gain in speed since 1921. Far easier, in my mind, to attribute these small increases in speed to superior equipment, more accurate timers and the miracles of pharmacology than to any natural evolutionary pressure towards faster humans.

Even so, all this is completely irrelevant to boxing however because it is not a sport where results depend purely on athletic ability. I mean how many world class track runners have there been with a waistline like James Toney? The fact that a man who was a former middleweight can eat himself into a world class contender at Heavyweight in the modern age tells you all you need to know about what improvements in sports science have done for boxing. Absolutely nothing.
So we are left with skill that is the major determining factor. I and any unbiased observer can see clearly enough that boxing skill is not on the rise in general and hasn’t been since the 1960’s. (with only a small handful of individual exceptions)
Quite the opposite in fact. Many divisions in boxing today must acknowledge they are in a weak era in the sport. Boxing is losing ground to MMA in fan base and will die out as a major sport unless changes are made. I propose a return to the original EIGHT +1 weight classes with Cruiser inserted between 175 and 200. A return to ONE governing body with ONE world champ in each weight class. An across the board testing program for drugs and steroids and a LIFETIME ban for the FIRST offense. A mandatory title defense against the number one challenger with a fixed 60/40 split every six months.
A “Same Hour” weigh-in so Welters don't enter the ring north of 160 for crying out loud.

 

The Toney example is quite fitting when discussing this - he learnt to fight from watching old tapes.

Jesus Chirst look at that disgrace of a World Heavyweight Title fight we had recently. Wlad and Haye both looked terrible. A little head movement vs Wlad's "ATG jab" and Haye looked like Willie Pep.

 

Um... put these old legends in a time warp and immediately in the ring against todays best fighters, and they MIGHT struggle, because the modern pro boxing era is so different from theirs.

But these were outstanding talents in eras when there were more pro boxers around than there are today, and when the sport was generally tougher. And they dominated. If SRR or Marciano would have access to that technological advanced gym and workout equipment that you mentioned, they would also most certainly dominate todays boxing scene, because they were just that talented/tough/whatever

 

The Toney example is NOT fitting when discussing this for a simple factor- had Toney ever fought a live heavyweight like a Klitschko or even someone like Tua or Arreola, he would have been spanked- he carefully chose the people he would fight and manufactured his career at HW.

You're talking about increases in Shot put, javelin, sprinting, long jump, high jump - every single quantifiable point of athleticism has shown improvements and you believe this won't relate to boxing?

Do you also forget that Toney used steroids as part of his move to heavyweight? That performance enhancing drugs and new age training methods, even if he was too stupid to use them came into play with him? That Toney was never more than a fighter who lost to every elite fighter he faced?

The idea that fighters from that division could come to this division, train with the new age stuff and make themselves as good as these opposition completely defeats the point of the exercise, it's not "If you took Cassius Clay from birth and gave him the technology available today, what sort of fighter would he be?" because whos to say he would even be a fighter in todays age.

It's about taking what was, vs what is - and in every account, the best fighters of yesteryear would lose to average fighters of this day and age.

 

Hey, whatever floats your boat.

 

The old timers could fight 15 hard rounds at a fast pace; a lot of today's fighters can barely make 12 at a decent pace. look at the Heavyweights of yesterday vs. today's Heavyweights. Some fighters in these times have been on or suspected of being on performance enhancers, the old timers never needed any of that stuff. The old timers would fight elite opposition in back to back to back fights; today's fighters don't always fight elite competition in back to back years.