Where do you Draw the Line of what are reasonable arguments between eras?

Ali and Louis would have murdered everyone today, same with Foreman, Holmes, Tyson, Lewis, Holyfield.

Shoot, 1980 Mike Weaver might have given Fury problems imo.

 

Louis and Ali are too damn good to not be successful in another era, and the same is true of Usky.

 

As I see it, boxing is a sport that is heavily reliant on skill. And at that, the concept of the sport is quite simple. In other words: There is only so much coaches and "science" can do.
Of course if we go way back, as other people in this thread has mentioned, to the pre 1920s era, then perhaps there would be a gap too great in boxing knowledge and advancement.
While nutrition and athletic training has advanced a lot, it just doesn't do THAT much for boxers. David Haye might be a terrific athlete, and might defeat 70s heavies in athletic contests. But there is no way that Haye beats Foreman in a boxing match.
If we compare boxing to for example (American) football, a sport that has more complexity and is more reliant on athletism, there I am sure that the current NFL teams would blow away the teams from the 70s.

 

I would argue that champions and fighters from the past fought more often, not like today, it is almost like pulling teeth to get a champion to defend their titles, they would whine about the money, some champion's with the help of a crooked promoter would sidestep a deserving challenger, getting away with it by that boxing body. I am sure in years past this sidestepping did happen but there would have been consequences, a title would have been stripped. How much money is needed? One could say greed is the major sticking point in negotiations, but sure boxing is a living, agreed, but whatever happened to prestige at being a champion?. And lastly, when comparing past greats to the present, every generations are impressed with their favorites, it proves nothing because in reality, those compared champions are never going to fight each other anyway, the winner is strictly left up to the author of that post and their imagination.

 

I enjoy mythical head to head matchups as much as anybody. Without them we’d be limited on material here. But with that said, I am very careful about making bold assumptions on how well fighters from one era would do in another. The fact is, greatness exists in every time period and NOT because of the guarantee that participants would be great in another period but BECAUSE they were products of their OWN era. In other words, even if Rocky Marciano couldn’t win a single fight outside the 1950s he is STILL a great fighter. Could Muhammad Ali have been a champ in the 90s and beyond ? Maybe and maybe not. But regardless of that hypothetical outcome, he is still no less great

 

Yeah, that's a claim that is very hard to swallow... makes no sense at all!

 

As I have said many times, you can't just pluck a fighter out of his old era and put him in the ring with a modern fighter. The modern fighter can learn everything about the old fighter, but the old fighter knows nothing about the modern fighter. The playing field needs to be level for both fighters. When I consider a hypothetical match up across eras, in my mind, I reconstitute both fighters to their best, give them full knowledge of their careers, full knowledge of the other guy's career, bring them to 2022, let them train and adjust to the times (including, perhaps, a tune up fight or two or three), and only then do I send them mentally into the ring with each other, under modern conditions. Then I try to imagine what I think would happen.

 

I imagine we let the fighters in question meet midway between their respective careers - with no knowledge of what the other guy looks like, or how he fought! If we don't do it this way, the modern fighter will have a huge advantage, like you say.

If, for example, we want to make a dream match between Fitz and GGG, we could bring them forward/back to circa 1960 - with everything the latter has seen/knows about Fitz erased from his brain (with everything else being intact). And then throw them into the ring as their peak versions - with no time to adjust to the times, train, have tune ups, or whatever. Isn't that the only fair way to see, how they would do against each other as they were/are in real life? And isn't that what we really want to know - not how a fantasy Fitz would do with 2022 training?

 

There are variables such as style and skill sets but Usyk proved to me that the right small heavyweight can defeat the larger ... granted he is unique but I certainly don't think he was proven better than an Ali or a Holmes, naturally bigger men than him .. Holyfield the same ... that said, as a whole I don't it different for the maulers and sluggers like Dempsey, Marciano and Frazier to match up with the best of the bigger men, great as they were P4P ..

 

Whith fantasy bouts, I see it as if both fighters should treat each other totally normally, just another opponent. Both get to study their opponent on film.

Question: If fighters are so much more advanced today, how come the best old fighters look at least as good as the best nowadays, generally? Wouldn't these advancements in the ring be incredibly evident? I don't see it.

 

I don't get this idea, of studying your opponent before stepping into a fantasy bout!

If we want to discuss a fantasy match between a boxer from, say, 1900 and a boxer from today... how would the oldtimer be his original self, if he had the chance to first study (and learn from!) 2022 boxing?

 

Fghters from the past , especially from the 60's up intil the 90's would do fine in today's era. And the great ones would dominate.
World class boxing is a specialized, skill. The more one practices that specialized skill the better one becomes at it.
Yes fighters Like Fury , Joshua, etc would dwarf most fighters from the past, but could they beat them in a BOXING ring?
In my opinion the answers no. I saw an opnion from an earlier poster about fighters today because they are bigger weigh more , and weight train would hit harder than fighters from the past. This is probably true. Joshua probably would hit harder than Joe Louis....... Against a punching bag, or a fighter not skilled defensively.
But what about against a skilled moving target? Usyk and Ruiz gave some answers on this question. Joshua had a extremely hard time connecting consistently with power shots against the two fighters.
Ruiz and Usyk are very basic in terms of defense. They block, or jump away . Rarely do the slip and counter, or ride and counter the opponent. Their heads are in general in the same place the entirety of a fight. What made Louis special is he was capable of getting power to target regardless of how the opponent was moving defensively. His accuracy FLOWED with the movement of the opponent. In other words Louis would be much more effective in getting power to the target, thus Louis would actually hit harder than Joshua because he'd be able land effectively when Joshua wouldn't.
Louis would be much more effective to Joshua in getting power to target simply because he practices more. His reflexes would be much sharper, his anticipation of where the opponent chin WOULD be much , much more reliable. So in a boxing ring during actual combat Joshua probably wouldn't hit as hard as Louis. Or Ali TBH. simply because he wouldn't have their experience, timing, and anticipation.
Would Louis be able to bench press or squat as much as Joshua? No and hell no.
In a boxing ring though, I like Louis's chances, and would love Ali's. Thus the greats from the past would do fine against fighters today. Especially from Louis's time through the 90's.
Prime Ali would absolutely embarrass any heavyweight boxer of the last 10 yrs.

 

There are two points which complicate things.

1) The improvement and abundance of film is one of the main reasons Louis is seen as a changing of the guard. It is not solely evolution. The more we see of older fighters the more they tend to reveal. This is not coincidence.

2) How can a comparatively primitive era produce someone like SRR when many think the prime version (in absolute terms) defeats every other welterweight in history?

As the Thread Starter said you need to start with neutralised conditions. The question is always framed 'how would Dempsey fare today?' not 'How would Tyson Fury deal with 5 oz gloves and a liberal ref?'

What you'd do with the aforesaid heavies is match them up in the '60s or '70s.

 

A domestic cat is usually bigger than a feral cat, but that doesn't automatically make it the betting favorite!