Why was the technique so ugly in the past compared to today?

i see a very big difference, that's why i started this thread.

 

Before the 20's we had Joe Gans. There's not been many as good since. He was athletic, skilled, fast and had a great solid but also great probing/range finding jab. Nice faints. Outstanding counter puncher and great ring general with great spacial awareness, balance and footwork. I'm not sure if he was as great inside as he was the mid to outside range's because he was knocked out late by fighting machine Battling Nelson twice, Gans won their first fight a couple of years earlier by DQ. Gans fought most of his best op at the end of his career, holding his own with even the beastly Sam Langford after fighting some other dude just the day before. There's a great clip of Gans left shoulder rolling a big right hand and countering with a short right uppercut for a KO win on one highlight reel. It was like something you would see from James Toney. Boxing has never evolved to be much better than Gans. Even the old shitty footage show his flashes of brilliance. What a clever left hand. Pity there wasn't more footage.

As for the difference between the old timer like Fitz to modern greats. The gloves were smaller so parrying and probing was done far more often. They had to be far more clever and cautious about every move they made. A high compact guard is not very effective with much smaller gloves. Energy was also reserved for the longer rounds and grappling was much more common and masterful in those days because boxers had to play it much safer because of the thinner more dangerous gloves. The brawlers/swarmers back then who threw a lot of leather were very adept at getting inside and generally had to have Iron beards as the risk of getting ko'd was greater because they didn't have the face protection of pillow gloves. They had to adapt to different techniques, some very unique as well. The shoulder roll was more than likely invented during the times when fighters fought with smaller gloves and couldn't protect their face very well with them. Parrying was done at range and jabs were often landed then pushed on the opponents face to blind them to get the range for a big punch that the opponent wont see coming. Even a few decades later boxers still fought more parrying styles. The aggressive fighters were often put on their arse more than a few times in their careers because blocking punches with gloves was a harder skill because gloves were much smaller. The best combo puncher/finisher in boxing history -Joe Louis- was put on his arse quite a bit in his career because he was aggressive, he was calculated but he still got sloppy too. If he had been around During Tyson's era he would probably have adopted a higher guard and spent less time on his arse but he would not be the same fighter. He wouldn't be able to probe like he did so masterfully with a higher tighter guard.

Once the gloves got bigger and changes were made boxers adapted new styles to make use of those changes but the art of the older era boxers was not totally lost. Once the gloves got bigger that's when you seen more fighters with real high guards like ODLH and we started seeing the more robotic and technical styles and more confident combination punchers. The bigger gloves make it safer to throw leather as you have less chance of getting ko'd with counters and have better face protection. The best fighters since say the days of Jose Napoles are actually hybrids and have incorporated/ adapted styles from older era's with the new. Even now you see it with Hopkins, He does some pre 1920's **** in that ring at times.
Floyd nowaday's at times fights like an old timer, like a powder puff punching version of Fitzsimmons- with his low work rate, grappling, probing and pot shooting. Voids good at defending on the inside and is a thinker like Fitz and some other pre 20's old guy's. The young Floyd is a poor mans Gans without the balls and power making him a **** poor mans Gans. Floyd fights like a pre 20's old timer