Are the Old Timers (X Date-1960s) less skilled than the Modern Boxers?

Anyone interested in the UFC's performance institute and how they train their combat athletes in strength and conditioning should check this out. It's unbelievable.
https://www.ufcpi.com/journal

 

No. Boxers today are not even actually skilled. They are athletic, which is different.

They are physically more prepared today. That is all they have though.

Skill in boxing is not about jabs, and whatever... it is about seeing things inside the ring and taking advantage of it... things you cannot see by looking at a footage... which is a knowledge you cannot have fighting 20 times in your whole life and barely even sparring

Picking up with the Timing inside of the ring is the most important thing in boxing

Getting to know the distance and distance judgment is something known by doing it.

 

But don't fighters today adjust their strategies and their techniques to the available footage they have of fighters? Thus helping them adapt their skillset to whichever fighter they have in front of them in a way not possible when footage was both scant and hard to come by for the vast majority of fighters? For a recent example, Lamont Roach Jr. appears to have studied Tank Davis extensively and used this knowledge of him to establish when he would engage and how. There's a good film study which breaks down how Roach judged what Davis was going to do next by his glove height, engaging him when he showed the high guard and staying put when Davis tried to bait him in with a lower guard or half-guard. Now, it's possible that Roach made that adaptation on the fly when he noticed a pattern but I suspect him and his team used film of Tank Davis to inform their approach in large part.

This content is protected

And some fighters just have a better sense of rhythm and have an easier time picking up on timing in all eras.

 

In the 1800s they were much less skilled because the fighters were older than the sport itself and hadn't grown up with it. The sport was transitioning from bare knuckle to gloved boxing, it was underground in places and everyone was sort of figuring things out on the fly. Once fighters grew up with the sport and were learning from people with experience the sport quickly improved. I reckon this transition started around 1905-1910 and was complete by the 1920s. Its very hard to gague not just because the lack of film but because the film is so much lower quality than todays.

Otherwise fighters were only less skilled smaller weight classes because the best small fighters could go up further in the food chain than today if they were P4P level while today they cannot. Even if they could tweener divisions provide a longer ladder for that sort of fighter to climb to reach a MW, LHW or HW. And this has all pushed the best fighters in the sport further south. Today P4P greats are fighting lower in the food chain because either the weight class they fought in is larger or they have to navgigate a more complex system of institutional barriers.

 

Yes, I gotta say, I think gameplans today are obviously much more "scientific". And okay, the coaches can make it up for the lack of "adaptation" the fighters today have.
I mean, you look at the way it is done in football today, and OMG it is a science ! Back then it was all done in a improv way.

I think the amateurs damaged the game though, because it was all about how quick you could hit and how many times you could hit inside 3 min, with the point gloves... and that is a way of fighting that will be 90% atheticism... put in the numbers of movements and you got the round. That is not skill.
Today you see guys that can put combinations, and have signature combinations... but if there was nobody in front of them, they would put the same combinations. You know what I mean ?

I remember I was trying to come up with Jofre´s signature combinations... and I couldn´t do it ! Because he didn´t have it, it was done in whatever happened to be the best thing in the moment... he was just fighting, in a pure way according to what the fight presented to him.

 

What do you find strange exactly?

You’ve listed one example that you think favours the more modern fighter.

Yet me, George and others could find many examples favouring the older guys.

If we’re talking the average guy, then maybe so.

But great fighters could fight in any era.

And there’s many fighters from yesteryear that had more skills, and would be favoured over many modern guys.

I’ve recently been studying Moore and Charles.

There’s just nobody today at MW-LHW who possess more overall skills.

We’ve also got to stop with this assumption that everything gets passed down.

No. It does not.

And the assumption that every modern fighter is fitter, and that they can study the guys if the past, because they have easy access to their fights.

This is simply not always the case.

 

It boggles my mind.

Because I’ve been studying the sport for over 35 years now, since I was around 9/10 years old.

Yet when I was 13, I KNEW for sure that:

1. Great fighters could fight and have success in ANY era.

2. The sport doesn’t keep evolving in a continuous cycle.

3. Styles make fights.

There’s nothing to debate really.

There’s modern guys who were superior to many of those older guys.

There were older guys who were superior to many of today’s guys.

That’s how it is.

 

You could build your own tournament.

You could have 5 fights.

You could have 10 fights.

You could literally put 100 fights together.

200 fighters.

100 modern day fighters from today and the last few decades, vs 100 fighters from various decades of the past.

I could promise you two things for sure:

1. The tournament would have yielded mixed results.

2. The modern guys would not have been able to have won all of their fights.

 

Great post.

It can be tricky with hypothetical fights, due to the weigh-ins.

But we can make allowances for that, and ponder what would happen if the more modern guys had moved up a division etc.

It’s all good fun.

 

The so called old school (1880-1930) was different in techniques and tactics, because the equipment was different (gloves, mouth guards, ring, shoes ...) and the rules were different (longer durations, fight to finish, clinch allowed, outdoor fights, fights that continue even with serious injuries ...). The skills were neither better nor worse on average, just adapted to their time. In some things they were better: everyone knew how to work the body, which few do today; everyone knew how to fight in the clinch. In others they were less good, such as in two-handed combinations, because they threw fewer punches. They used the high guard less, the low guard more. Athletically, there has been improvement, as in all sports, obviously. But it would be wrong to say that a boxer of the 21st century is a better athlete than Jeffries, because he has nutritionists, trainers, maybe even drugs, that the old champion did not have in his time. Let's give Jeffries (or others) the same opportunities and we will have a better athlete than he was. Fighters of the past paid a lot of attention to endurance and conditioning: today, no one prepares to fight for 40 rounds, with multiple wounds on the body.

 

Again, we can give examples from both sides, from any era.

I could ask “Find me a guy today who could do this from the 50’s or 60’s etc”

A knowledgeable fan would hopefully be able to engage you in an objective way, where the old guys aren’t mythologised.

I agree with what you’ve said.

No fighter is perfect.

Simply because there’s too many different styles to encounter.

Even Robinson and Floyd had issues with certain fighters.

I don’t agree with you though, where you’ve basically said that if those skills of old were still needed, we’d see them.

How many times have you seen a guy open to the body, where it’s not been capitalised on.

Or a guy holding on for dear life on the inside, instead of using uppercuts etc.

Just two very quick examples.

To me, some skills have been lost along the way.

Now I agree that the modern guys have access to better training facilities and video archive etc. 100%.

Theoretically, everything is at their disposal.

But again, these aren’t always put into practice.

Now it’s this simple:

From what you have said, it should make these modern fighters, more skilled and fitter.

And to the point where it’s clearly noticeable.

Yet that’s simply not the case.

Things simply aren’t happening in the way that you believe.

How can the current WW division be nowhere near as great as what it was 45 years ago?

How can the current MW division be nowhere near as great as what it was 30-40 years ago?

Why are they still many divisions today, that aren’t as great as what they were decades ago?

How is that even possible??

 

You nailed it Don.