OLD Film Footage done Right, the fighters look perfectly NORMAL...

First off, terrific post ! The issue about old timers vs today starts with there is no definitive line that crosses over .. there is no doubt that the sport evolved and modified to a degree as a whole .. there was a gigantic jump from a Sullivan who was a true gladiator but a M of Q fighter only in the sense of the rules .. no jab, little body work, few combinations, training without ever sparing, etc to say the age of Corbett .. while Corbett began a transformation likely also taking place on a parallel path with many of the Australian fighters the next ten to fifteen years saw a broad based morphing staggered where you have great fighters showing new skills while others did not .. I stress began because when you watch Corbett while it is easy to see his speed and movement and conditioning it's had not to cringe watching his stiff armed punching and head turning while swinging .. from 1900 to bout 1920 you saw a huge shift with fighters like Gans, Leonard, Blackburn, Johnson and others .. You also had guys like Jeffries and Ketchel, beasts but still painful to watch at times .. There are a few ways to look at this ... the first is about "presentism" .. gaging fighters greatness based on today's rules vs thinking who had the aptitude to morph in an all things being equal matchups .. anyway , again, nice post.

 

There were advances in training with weights, etc but I feel a trade off is the volume of fights, experience etc ...

 

Joe Louis looks great on film. I think many of the old timers may shock people if they got dug up and "Freakinstine" and then we put boxing gloves on em and say go win a few belts.

 

Louis looks modern on film. Grab him in his prime with a time machine, drop him down in the modern cruiser division, sit back and watch the destruction.

 

I think it would be more real if they got brought back like Frankistine then somehow making a time machine lol.

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The film is sped up a lot (watch the ref) but the fighters look like they're in normal speed. That means they were slow.

 

nice observation. Something looked wrong with the video, but as you mentioned the fighters don't look "fast." But I looked again and the referee looks "fast" like he is sprinting around the ring. When people "tinker" with the old videos there is often an agenda behind the "tinkering" and it looks like you found the agenda with this one.

The referee's feet move like an NFL defensive back. The fighters don't even look fast, as you mentioned they must have been SLOW.

 

Either that or the ref was coked out of his mind.

 

LOL, watch the ref's feet at about 14-15 seconds, if that was real speed, he could play point guard in the NBA or DB in the NFL.

 

The ref is not normal speed, but you’re welcome to pursue whatever delusion you’d like, as long as nobody gets hurt.

 

I don’t think pre 30s it was the same but I do find the coincidence that many consider the 60s/70s as the golden era. Maybe color tv had something to do with it

 

It seems that the film runs a bit too fast, but if you slow down it to 0.75, then it becomes unnaturally slow. It means that the film doesn't run at 100% correct speed, but it's not sped up "a lot".