Heheheh I greatly enjoyed the typo "punches from every ankle" (teehee) I could actual see Ray with gloves on his ankles upside down punching all the fighters today to defeat standing on his hands
Hes going to fight at mostly welter and hes going to be confused when he cant fight Spence, Porter, Pac and the Charlo brothers in a couple month span. Id imagine he would think the contenders today are good but soft for not just fighting all the time. Also hes now going to be getting the benefit of modern training, PEDs, nutrition and fight tape to help him prepare. He would be a monster, a confused one, but a monster.
Honestly if Ray Robinson from his time somehow got time warped to now.... Utter destruction from Welter to super middle, and possibly Lt.heavy. The same could be said for Leonard, Hearns,Napoles, Duran, Arguello, Gavilan, Armstrong, Olivares, Sanchez ,Chavez,Brown, Pryor, B.Leanard Hagler, Walket,Greb, Saddler, in or around their best weights. Hell, some of the contenders from those era's would dominate today.
The big evolution in boxing skills and styles was in the 1930s and 1940s. I think it’s been largely peaks and valleys since then. Not some steady improvement. I do think some of the HWs might be too small to deal with the mix of larger, athletic, skillful HWs. For instance, Rocky Marciano would be a beast at cruiserweight IMO but too small for a lot of the more modern HWs (especially given his style). But the rest of the divisions, I don’t see this evolution and improvement like I do in other sports.
His legs would strain under the enormous weight of so many belts, real and all those imaginary WBC fairy diamond sprinkle belts. When he did finally lose he would contact the law firm of “Wilder & Co Excuses on the go”and would naturally blame his loss on the weight of the belts.
So you want to take some of the best boxers over a 60-year period (from Leonard to Leonard) and compare them to the best boxers TODAY? Sure, why not? But how about if we take some of the best boxers from the last 30 years - like Tyson, Holyfield, Whitaker, Lewis, Jones jr, DLH, Mayweather, Pac, Gonzalez, GGG, Ward, Inoue, Usyk, Mosley - and compare them to the best from, say, the year 1955? How do you think that would work out? And you think that Robinson's "utter destruction" of everybody in his path, could possibly go as high as up to LHW? Really?
I, too, would like to know which skills have improved. The early 50s brought about the last regulation tweak that would alter standard technique: mandatory 8-10 oz gloves. The alteration being the implementation of the high guard, if that didn’t go without saying. Bigger gloves, bigger surface area, more padding, better blocking protection, etc. Nowadays you have a healthy mix of high, mid, and low guards same as the fighters of the 60s. Maybe a tad more high guard oriented now because it’s the first thing modern generation boxers are taught. Still, that’s not really a technical improvement per se’. Just an adjustment. The basic fundamentals go back a century.
