Is that people don't make adjustments for how they would be physically different. If Fighter X was 6'3 and born in the 40s that would probably be the equivalent of someone being 6'5-6'6 born 30 to 40 years later. Would that fighter A) still be at the weight class/es that he fought at and B) would today's fighters still have the same physical advantages people assume that they have.
Golden ageists will use this logic to suggest that with modern nutrition the past champs would be physically even stronger today and thus we should overrate them even more when adapting to modern times. Prepare for a shitty, boring thread to follow.
That's not even exactly what I'm doing. If you take someone who was in the 95th percentile for height that was born in 1940 and assume that he would have been in the same percentile but born in the 70s, that means that he would be two to three inches taller.
Well duh of course. You also forgot to point out due to commercialisation in sport, fighters will fight less but earn more money and therefore aren't willing to take as much risk. New training techniques help the fighters fight at lower weights than those in the past, whilst keeping speed and strength
Na some greats would win some would fall to modern fighters. Every dog has his day. Yes we have weight divisions for a reason, but there were exceptions, magnificent fighters that were too tough, too good. But to say size and weight and modern nutrition is always an advantage is false. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Worked for Marquez, Pacman, etc didn't work for Vargas, Mosley, etc in some fights. Vitali lost to a blown up supermiddleweight and Wlad's been ko'd by much smaller men. And those 2 are the healthiest heavyweights around, posterboys for healthy heavyweights and what a hw champ by todays standards should look like. But greatness is measured by the size of a fighters heart, not just his skills, or modern nutrition advancement mumbo jumbo. To me there is no problem comparing fighters at all. You beat a great fighter in his prime. That makes you great. Its that simple. You dethrone the king.
The real difference when comparing to me is the weigh times. Obviously in the past they had same day weigh ins so fighters couldn't rehydrate like they could now so if a lot of the older fighters fought nowadays then they might have been able to make it down a weight class since they would be able to drain and then rehydrate. So it would be fairer in terms of weight and natural size to compare a modern fighter to an older fighter who is one weight higher as they would naturally be about the same size.
Problem is that most of the fighters from the past were just better than the fighters of today...and you know it.
