so, as athletes got better - why not boxers?

Physical they got better for sure, but when it comes to skills, the old guys fought every month not 2 times a year, its logical you are going to be better when you do something often.
Also nostalgia prevents people from accepting people from the current scene could be better than the old atg's.

 

Because of this.

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Boxing has evolved to be a sport that is easier on the combatants, less fights a year, less rounds in a fight, heavier gloves, much stricter doctoring and refereeing.

You do not define 'better' with Boxing as you do with other sports such as sprinting. At the end of the day how you fare in the ring will depend on your boxing IQ, skill, and your ability to adjust, if you could do this in 1960, you can do it now.

There are exceptions, don't take a fighter from the 1900s and compare them to the elite fighters of today.

However, anyone with decent boxing knowledge can watch Sugar Ray, and see his timing, footwork, speed, accuracy, ring IQ....you don't need to know what century he is fighting in to recognise the skills he has and if you don't then you dksab.

As everyone always points out, George Foreman fighting in two different eras and being a force in both is a prime example of what I'm talking about.

 

Because boxing isnt about who can run/jump/throw the furthest.

Boxing is an art & not a science.

 

Indeed. Funny thing is SKILLS improve in other sports too.

Soccer players of today can do things with the ball that players of the 50s could only dream of. Same goes for many sports.

I for one,dont even like comparing fighters across eras that are far apart.

Its obvious to everyone with eyes, that Jack Dempsey would be little more than a toughman competitor if he were to jump in a time machine to the present.

That doesnt mean I dont consider him an ATG,because you have to take in what he acheived IN HIS ERA.

 

The ball has become lighter, the boots have become lighter, the pitches have become better etc etc

Footballers today have the benefit of modern technology to mean that they are able to maximise their skills

However in boxing, the fighters fight less, they fight for shorter amount of times, they use more protective gloves....none of these things are conducive to making fighters better.

However, as I said theri are extremes.

 

Not the best example imo, the balls & boots are very different these days & the game has changed a lot.

 

probabley doesn't mean much, but even today you get plenty of hillbillies that duke it out for 100's of fights

 

I dont see how the slight changes in protection of the gloves makes much difference.

Time was,fighters used NO gloves and those fights are AWFUL to watch as no one throws punches.

As for fighting less, that may be slightly true, but what about quality?

SRR fought in title fights every six months pretty much like todays fights,and in between might fight a bum or two.

Sometime it might be a year in between title bouts and he'd fight 5 or 6 bums in what were basically exhibition bouts.

I dont think these fighst are what would make him better.

Modern fighters have more intensive training camps and when you are champ,you're expected to fight a top class fighter every time.

In SRR time it was ok to fight for the title, then fight a few guys with records like 27-23-5.

The records of the older fighters arent as amazing as you'd tyhink

 

Boxing is the *ONLY* sport where athletes from the 1920s would kick the living **** out of their modern day top peers. At least according to the nerds in the ESB classic forums.

 

Sure has.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLCZZAheNSU[/ame]

 

I agree with you completely! :good

 

There are HUGE factors most other athletes don't have to cope with.

1) The ability to take a punch.
2) The ability to hand out a punch.

If you have a low treshold for pain, a bad chin or whatever you will still lose to the oldies in the sport who didn't have those disadvantages, even if you're 40 to 50 lbs heavier and 6 inches bigger.

There are factors in boxing that are difficult to almost impossible to train, and so better nutrition, trainingmethods etc. just don't help with that.... You either have it, or you don't!
You can train accuracy, technique etc. better nowadays, but there always are the "naturals" who have it anyway before they even set one step into the ring. These "natural talents" are from all time.
There are guys who train their butts of year in year out and still are completely worthless in the ring. And when they have to face one of these natural talents they buckle within minutes.

And there is the other factor of material.
Todays sprinters run on superlight shoes, on special tracks... Swimmers have/had special suits that make them swim a lot faster as before, footballers (the real kind) have shoes that are lighter and give them more control on the ball etc. etc.
The athletes of old didn't have that.
Boxing material hasn't become that much better and is from much less influence on the sport too.

 

This is why the below is very important

As I said there are extremes and I can't/wont speak on fighters I haven't seen, though most people can trace the lineality of one division ruler to the last to see how people would fare