Do past fighters get overrated because of nostalgia.

I feel like so many fighters from the past get treated like god’s when there really not that great. I also feel like whenever you compare a modern fighter to a past fighter people say “How dare you put so and so in the same sentence as so and so.” Is it just me or do you guys agree?

 

To a certain degree I think so. But we usually go off of who beat who to judge fighters, and it is true that there was a much bigger number of good fighters back then. So we tend to rate the best boxers pre 2000's higher than boxers from the past 20 years. It's actually borderline comical how most of the biggest names in the past 10 years have such a thin resume.
Boxing went from super mainstream to niche, resulting in less number of talented fighters. Seems like just Eastern Europe, UK, Mexico and the Philppines still have mainstream juice for boxing. Talent pool from East Asia and the US has definitely died down quite a bit. I live in Korea and I've legit never seen boxing covered on TV here except for the manny vs pac fight and like a 10 second segment on the sports news on GGG because his grandmother is Korean.

Edit - to add on to this post, same could be said for current fighters if they have similar skill level / resume. They call it 'living in the moment'. Happens in all sports, just LOL @ people thinking Lebron is better than Jordan. There were also people on this site saying AJ could take Ali and hang with Lewis when AJ was undefeated.

 

no fighters theses days could not cope with 15 rounds
look at conlan etc etc
froch was the nearest thing we seen to this

 

This!

 

All depends on which individual "modern" fighters your comparing with individual "past" fighters.

I think the eras themselves spark more debate and divide.

Considering modern day nutrition and training methods are far,far superior today, plus the fact that top modern fighters, fight any and everyone, no ducking, and they fight more regularly to boot. FACT.


I'm gonna finish drinking my Devils Advocate Tea and say definitely yes......or maybe no.

 

Yes, we all get starry eyed for a certain period in our own lives when everything was better.

 

Yes

Greater rounds does not mean greater stamina.

 

Yes but recency biased is just as bad

People claiming Floyd, Manny, Loma and even Fury as GOAT is laughable

The first 2 are in the conversation at least

 

No, it's not just you... modern fighters get berated all the time.

Over on Classic, you can find the crasiest stuff... such as Tommy Burns would beat Deontay Wilder, Corbett would beat Tua, Billy Conn would ko Usyk, etc. etc. Just a couple of days ago, we were told that modern boxers are inherently inferior to the old-timers, and therefore can't be compared to the masters of yesteryear. There's no end to the nonsensical things people will come up with, in their quest to put down today's boxing/boxers!

 

Yes but I don't always think it is as straight forward as it sounds
Many people get taken in by fight hype and promotion, and you only get to feel that if you lived the era of that particular hype.
A fight can be built up and billed as a massive event but the public's opinion of the said fighters can be very different in say 5 years later and hence the fight in later hindsight is not considered as significant but if you were around during the hype it can be thought of as massive and when older posters rate a fighter due to their first hand memories, a younger poster who wasn't around can tend to be more dismissive if that makes sense

 

Fighters from before the 1990s had a really thin talent pool since it was basically only Americans. You still had genuinely great fighters of course, just like if you only had Americans now, but the truth is that guys considered "good names" on their resume weren't only the 10th best in the world, but also the 10th best in the USA, and look at the tenth best HW in the USA today.

*10th best in the USA back then obviously had better athleticism due to boxing attracting more athletes in the USA, but you know what I mean. International competition does a lot.

 

They certainly can do, but it's no more rampant than fans who claim the sport has evolved so much that they'd be left in the dust - or even those who don't think it's advanced, and the current top guys are truly the best ever.

 

I,m afraid so......( i,m a 80,s guy )

 

No moreso than people who think the current boxer dominates every boxer from 40+ years ago.

Two extremes that fuel each other, I suppose.

As time goes on, the bar gets higher. Both rightfully and wrongly.