Gene Tunney Circa 1926 Versus George Foreman Circa 1994

Elaborating a little bit on my comment about food: In 1926 they had lots of small family farms. The suburbs hadn't sprawled yet. Farms were close enough to cities that produce could be trucked in. Foods were less processed. They weren't genetically modified. There were no McDonald's restaurants or Taco Bells. People ate real food. Try looking at YouTube street scenes from the 1930s. You won't see many overweight people like you see today. That's primarily because of the food quality, but also because people grew up working at physical jobs.

 

I AGREE with all that!
I have seen some of that footage.
We have gotten DRAMATICALLY fatter than even since say the 1960's.
In America the average man is almost precisely 200 lbs.
I calculate not less than 30% body fat.
Woman-proportionate to their lean body mass & frame-are even fatter-almost exactly 171 lbs.-I compute 40% body fat!

None of this means they had the advantages that would make them as good athletes head to head-with rare exceptions, at least when you CONTROL for size like weight divisions so Greb, SRR, Langford whoever fought guys their size...

We have a whole mega-food-industrial complex dedicated to giving false stimulation of hunger & denyting satiety signals to fatten us up like cattle-well or who do not care if we are in terrible health, not to slaughter us for food-but to fatten their own wallets.

How old are you man?

 

One more point and then I'm done. They didn't have the social safety nets we have today. People had to work to survive tough times. And the different ethic groups -- the Irish, blacks, Italians, Polish and Jews -- fought in the streets because they had to. How many stories have we read about boxers learning to fight that way? Kids didn't have smart phones or video games. They played outside. It was a different world.

 

I don't mind announcing it. I'm 75.

 

True, we can measure advances in sports. Athletes are bigger, run faster, jump higher, throw harder than they did 100 years ago. I think this is more applicable to track and field, swimming, baseball, basketball and (maybe) football than to boxing. The sport of boxing is nowhere near as attractive an option for today's athletes. There's too much money being offered in other sports. Kids today, if they're good athletes, join leagues. The best of them, if they're lucky, get coaching and training. But boxing mainly gets the poorest kids. We don't have so many real boxing gyms today. The old boxing trainers who themselves were trained in the school of hard knocks, they're all dead. The small boxing clubs began to vanish with the advent of TV. In other words the world that spawned the Harry Grebs and Henry Armstrongs is no more. That's why boxing isn't as good as it was in America. I can't say the same about Mexico, Thailand or the Philippines. I don't know enough to say that.

 

All true!
It is just that modern science & unfortunately PEDs & statistical analyses etc...Also help maximize potential in boxing.
Although the very best of past eras might well be competitive with or beat the best today.
At least if roughly the same size...

 

George really has a huge fan following and I wish he was going to win this.