Would you consider these as professional heavyweights today?

When Baer missed those half looping overhand rights I was reminded of Wilder. Who says Deontay doesn't study film of the sweet science?

Love the trainer of the fat guy with a lit cigarette.

 

I remember a clip with Nigel Benn on iFL or one of those channels. It was from a couple of years back. He's not normally known for being sage-like, but he was asked some question about historic-era fighters and how they would cope today. He said that sports evolve and bodies evolve. Fitness, technique and nutrition mean quite clearly that the very best of the 1930's-50's would be lucky to get in the top 30 of the current era. By current, take that to mean the best lot that fall within the last 15 years in every weight division respectively.

I've watched the video. Both men get battered. I mean BATTERED. by national level title holders. That's sort of what old Nige said too.

 

Agreed. You ever noticed though that fat mid 40’s George looked in better shape than Dillian Whyte

 

Baer looked competent in there despite the constant dropping of the hands. Some of those haymakers he swings though... Just wild stuff.
Galento is slow, wide open, telegraphs everything terribly and his hands are permanently at his waist. From the beginning it's obvious the dude is a nasty KO waiting to happen.

 

This is definitely not true.

I would recommend everyone to have a look through the world records for athletics and there's many which still stand from 10, 20, 30+ years ago.

Regarding sports which can only be evaluated subjectively, I'd also disagree.

 

you post so much dumb **** I would never be able to reply to it all .

 

I honestly think you are being kind. Put that in colour and put it in a leisure centre. Throw in a crowd no bigger than 20 ppl. THat's where it belongs by modern standards. I've boxed myself so I appreciate it's easy to be a critic, and I'm exaggerating to make the point, but still....

 

Baer was a good fighter. You guys knocking him don't know what you are looking at. He wasn't much of a technician but he was one of the hardest punchers the sport has ever seen. Those of you knocking his conditioning, it was far better than most modern heavyweights. You can't see any detail at that distance with those cameras and lighting but I've seen good photographs of that guy training and he was shredded like Deontay Wilder or Wlad and not fat like Tyson Fury.

Galento, I don't know who to compare him to now. Maybe, Arreola or Kownacki. Tough low skilled fat guys.

I can see Galento being a contender and Baer capturing a belt. But don't forget that they fought in Joe Louis' reign and Louis was a better technician than any heavyweight today. If Joe Louis came back he'd have his way with Fury and possibly Joshua.

 

don’t then ya oddball lol

 

I'm a boxer too, all I can say is that Galento is just about doing everything he could possibly do wrong in there.

 

Nigel might say that. He pumped iron while sniffing gear.

I'm not that guy who will say that Nigel couldn't fight or that he possessed no skillset or savvy, but he was never known as the most technical of his era. There are 90's fighters more reliant on technical skill and savvy than Nigel who disagree with him on golden era fighters, like Bernard Hopkins.

That'll be the fighting fewer rounds in championship fights.

That'll be the gradual, relative scarcity of skill-based know-how when it comes to useful stuff like being able to jab with/outjab a taller, longer man.

That'll be the special dietetic lunches Amir Khan was on while working through his specially compartmentalized S&C drills in preparation to be sparked out by the gristle-chewing, rope-jumping, tyre-hammering Breidis Prescott. (It's hard to get a good chef when you live in a warzone, after all.)

Ray Robinson wouldn't be a P4P guy now? Pep? LaMotta? Burley? Oh dear.


Putting aside the very best of the 1930's to 1950's, and taking just some of the less than absolute cream 1930's/50's guys in a divisional context;

Anyone telling me that guys like Percy Bassett, Antonio Pilliteri and Billy Graham might not make the Top 30's of the 126, 135, 140 or 147 divisions now can only be having a good old laugh.

Bassett would be lucky to scrape the current Featherweight Top 30 and would be battered by Josh Warrington and Gary Russell Jr (who barely ever fights)?

Pilliteri couldn't hang with the Maurice Hookers and Easter Jrs of the world?

Graham couldn't cope with a Sergey Lipinets, a Yordenis Ugas or a Shawn Porter?

Bassett gives current feathers hell. Let alone Pep. Pep dominates featherweight 2020. Who would stop him doing exactly what he pleases with 126? Josh Warrington? Gary Russell? Shakur Stevenson? Get me a Tardis, I'll give you a rude awakening.

Pilliteri schools your Teos and your Rougarous (their chances primarily hinging on his vulnerability to a flush shot from a big puncher) and gives Lomachenko a bunch to think about.

Graham would quite possibly run welterweight right now. Prime Gavilan, who could do about everything, certainly would, while taking Spence and Crawford to school.

Whole skeins of expertise are dying off. If anything, the sport has been largely regressing as the 21st century has taken shape.

That's harsher than I'd put it, but...

 

A bit long so I didn't read it all. But I genuinely do think half the people you've mentioned would be BATTERED by the current generation(ish) of fighters, for the reasons mentioned. Clearly there are some honourable exceptions.

I think it's tempting for some boxing aficionados to just reel off the names of fighters from the black-and-white era and harp on about their qualities. I suppose it makes them feel knowledgable, and every sport attracts the same sort of bores. I say it again - put many of these fights in colour and really look at them and I'm afraid what you see is quite clear. Super tough specimens, many of whom have horrible technique that would be drilled out of youngsters now. And very little depth of competition. Again, honourable exceptions exist.

 

With many (if not most) of the filmed fights throughout history now being available on YouTube, and with almost a doubling of active boxers over the past 20 years… isn't it strange, that it's exactly during these last couple of decades, where we more than ever before have been able to really study the old-timers, that expertise has been dying off and boxing has gone downhill?

 

First up, it's not wise to offer reductive comment on an involved topic if you're averse to reading at any significant length.

Aversion to a longer read suggests you're not even that interested in the topic. If you're not that interested in the topic, how would you really know anything about it?

Here's another one for you. Read it or don't read it.

What are you basing it on, though? Generalisations about 'modern nutrition' and advances in sports science?

I don't think you've even watched half the guys I mentioned. Maybe you saw a highlight of Pep and you felt qualified after that.

Hitting the ⇪ key while you type the word battered doesn't transform a risible statement into a credible one.

How, though? Citing a handful of "honourable exceptions" while utterly writing off the contemporaries who shared highly competitive contests with these (suspiciously unnamed) few makes no sense.

If we're talking about bores, there's nothing more tedious and soporific than the garden variety modernista with his reductive 'olden days fighters are inferior because shinier gyms and hyperbaric chambers and protein shakes' non-logic.

Your paragraph reads more like a projection of one's own insecurity than anything. Sounds like you've noticed people with a more exhaustive interest in the sport than you have the energy, inclination or passion to match, and have characterized them as beard-stroking hipsters in order to absolve yourself of whatever inadequacy you're feeling and spare yourself the effort of having to consider approaching the subject with any verve and genuine critical interest. I don't expect all boxing fans to be equally invested in the sport, that's fine, but you could always pass over the stuff you don't have the knowledge to comment on with any degree of insight.

I realise that the world is full of guys who have to have an opinion on everything, however. You could at least give people the benefit of the doubt that they might be watching fights on account of an interest in watching fights, rather than some trendy predisposition to favor all things yesteryear. A small thing to ask.

Remove your posts from their authoritative facade and really look at them and I'm afraid what you see is quite clear. Camaris doesn't really watch fights past the Tyson era and may lack the chops to analyse them even if he did.

After all, (and I'm only returning the cheap shot, so don't get upset), you're one of those guys who thought Wladimir Klitschko was going to annihilate Tyson Fury.

A further sampling of your wisdom when it came to Fury;

Great work, bud. Now I'm utterly convinced you know what you're looking at when it comes to technique and talent.


If the oldies are so bad, how did Freddie Brown's experience and technical knowledge apply itself to refining the abilities of Roberto Duran in the early-mid 1970's as it had to training a heavyweight contender of the 30's like Bob Pastor (an excellent boxer who went the distance with Louis in a ten-rounder and took him into the 11th of a championship rematch in the days when title bouts could still be fought over 20 rounds)?
Brown was born 113 years ago, by the way, which means he built his 68-4 amateur record in the 1920's. Odd, then, that he could instill know-how that was still benefiting Roberto Duran seventeen years and four divisions after he'd first met Brown. Or do you think Duran is a useless oldie, too?

If the oldies are so bad, how was George Benton (a guy who turned pro in the late 40's) able to train a raft of fighters like Mike McCallum, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and Meldrick Taylor into stars of the modern era? Or do you think McCallum is a useless oldie, too.

Here's Benton boxing, for all it may register on your eyes;

This content is protected

Remind you of any more recent guys in particular? Probably not.

Actually, Duran and McCallum probably are useless oldies in your book. You did specify that you were comparing the 1930's/50's to the last 15 years of boxing.

I don't know about the salads you ate while you were going through your boxfit fad a few years ago. What I can attest to is Pilliteri having sounder lateral movement than I see from most guys today, I don't even need 1080p to see that. And he's not even considered among the absolute cream of 40's guys (though more on account of his fragility than anything).

I can attest to Jake LaMotta having a sounder understanding of how to outjab a rangier guy than the vast majority of guys who might be characterized as pressure fighters today. Certainly had a better understanding of it than Nigel Benn, who would've stood a great chance of being systematically beaten to a pulp and stopped by Jake and his extraordinary left hand.

You cited Benn, among the least technical top fighters of his era, who was known to pump iron after an evening of sniffing gear and boozing, to support your point about modern techniques and nutrition.

Just out of curiosity, where did you get your numbers from ("doubling of active boxers over the past 20 years") and can you clarify what you think they mean?

Are you suggesting that any regression in the overall standard of the sport 2006-2020 owes to trainers and fighters learning from rips of old tape on YouTube?

Cus D'Amato had access to an exhaustive tape library that a young Mike Tyson availed himself of. Fighters and trainers have been able to study tape for decades and decades.

For what it's worth, most fights throughout the first half of the 20th century weren't filmed. Of the ones that were, many films were either lost forever or are still being hoarded in private collections.