Why do old time fighters such as greb armstrong pep etc get massive credit for having

While I agree with you to a certain extent, prepare yourself for a shitstorm of people who believe Gentleman James J. Corbett would beat both Klitschkos on the same night.

 

because nostalgia.

 

Right, i'll answer this very clearly.

1) Fighters back then fought much much more than they do now. That would mean a fighter with a record of 18-0 in 5 years of beig a pro would have something like 50 fights in the same time period back then. Fighters would therefore lose more as they they are fighting more. Tiredness, injury, etc, fighters of the past used to box with these things, whereas know they dont.

2) As a champion, you would be expected to fight worthy challangers. But this is impossible to do with every fight. Even now, guys have warm up fights for the bigger challanges. Is this not the same thing?

3) Back then, fighters sparred a lot less than they do today. Instead of sparring, they had schedualed bouts.

4) While the major fights were covered back then, loads wasnt. If you look at guys like Jimmy Wilde, you'll see he defended his title against someone with a 3-2 record. This almost certainly wasnt the guy's real record as In britain at the time, the lower weights were not covered. This meant that loads of fighters took part in fights which were not covered by the newspapers and therefore went unnoticed. Your example of Pep fighting a 8-8 fighter may be deceiving, as the guy MAY have had a better record.

So, to some up. Fighters of the past fought more rather than sparred, some fighters went under the radar, warmups would occur, and fighters just in general fought more

 

i dont agree with this..if fighters fought weak opposition they could indeed fight more often..for example arreolla can fight 5 times a year for the rest of his carrer against the level hes fighting and would rack up a resume like these guys with an ocasional step up in opposition...i gerneraly think back then they didnt train as hard as they do now.it was more about fighting now people go into fights with game plans and take months preparing for a certain type of fighter studying the fighter ect ect...

 

To answer that question, people who say 'Greb has 200 wins which makes him great' are plain wrong. Greb has significant wins over every ATG he ever fought. That is what makes him great. IMO of course

 

I'm not sure I get your point. I agree, they didnt train as hard. Instead of training, they had fights.

 

Lets not forget 15, 20, 25 and 45 round title fights (guys like DeLaHoya could hardly go 12) fewer weight categories (much less of a chance of winning a "world " championship) and more actual contenders with world class skills than there are today. Men back then still fought to escape horrible poverty. The fighters were hard as nails back then , and certainly didn't engage in ****y Mayweather type avoidence games (like making up rumors about other fighters to avoid fighting them).
But there are douches that feel the need the degrade the old timers , to elevate their posing , cherry picking heros of today.

 

i think it's more of who they beat and not how many they beat. that's just my guess though, I'm admittedly very ignorant about fighters from that era.

 

You can rate guys like SRR and Greb for beating ATG's, not for beating 100+ fighters. I'm sure JJoe Calzaghe could have fought 20 times a year with guys who have 0-1-0 record and racked up 200+ wins.

Guys like Teddy Atlas argue that fighters of today could never make top 20, because fighters of the past had 100+ wins....right...

 

The more fights you have, the more chances you have :

1 : to get injured here and there and lose some fights.
2 : to meet your Buster Douglas.
3 : to simply have a bad night for different reasons and lose a fight you shouldn't lose.

 

everyone in this thread supporting the original poster needs to seriously consider the wisdom of spending their time on a boxing forum. harry greb is not the greatest boxer of all time because he beat a hundreds of journeymen, he is the greatest because he beat multiple hall of famers in multiple weight classes. he also did most of that while he was blind in one eye. you can remove every one of the fighters he beat whom you deem unworthy and he will still have a record that is far, far superior to your heroes calzaghe, roy jones jr and PBF combined

also you should be ashamed of yourself for bringing calzaghe and roy jones jr into this debacle of a thread