Shakur calls SRR “buns”, says boxing’s evolved

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Any thoughts?

 

He may well be trying to get attention and stoke up controversy.

That said, I don't think we should discourage professional boxers from giving their honest opinions about their predecessors. If they think older fighters were bad, I would prefer to hear them say so. They shouldn't have to pretend with an eye toward the Holmes/Marciano mess.

 

I do find the low hands argument is pretty bizarre though considering how often Bud, the person he’s arguing wouldn’t do the type of mistakes Robinson would, keeps his hands low at his chest or abdomen and his chin sticking out. His method of defense, largely relying on his reflexes to get his hands back up in time or avoid the punch in time, is pretty much what Robinson did.

 

Someone should collect all these video interviews with old boxers about famous ones, btw.

 

If Shakur Stevenson watched a 75 year old video of SRR and thought SRR was better than today's boxers, it wouldn't say much for the sport. Why would anybody have an interest in a sport that has stagnated or regressed for 75 years?

I doubt that modern tennis, basketball players, or wrestlers watch video of 1950 tennis, basketball players or wrestlers to improve their game. Things that worked have been retained and taught over the years, things that didn't get discarded.

 

The tricky thing is that boxing professionalized very early. It was a massive sport by the Depression. I don't think tennis during, say, Bill Tilden's time was comparable.

 

He might not even end up with 41 fights, what this guy is good at is not being as good as SRR

 

To be honest it didn't sound fully serious either.

 

This is the same guy that said that Tyson Fury would beat Muhammad Ali. His opinion is buns.

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Latin died away as a language, it didn’t flourish over time. Dinosaurs too. Not everything is bettered by the passage of time. Just because it still exists is no reason to assume it’s better off. Things fade away and slowly die. Boxing style is one of those things.

 

He does make some good points though, a lot of Usyk’s success against Fury came from his body work and Ali was always notoriously inactive toward the body. Hard to see him winning just by boxing on the outside against Fury who did pretty well at range against Usyk first time around.

 

Yeah, it's not an insane opinion that suggests he's trolling people.

And if he's serious, then it's well to bear in mind that he's better qualified to comment than everybody here except maybe 2 or 3 posters.

 

Why wouldn’t a fighter recognise greatness?

Many great fighters of the modern era have studied hours of footage of the greats of the past.

Many of them have modelled themselves on previous greats.

Now Shakur may not have been serious.

But if he is, he’s just showing his ignorance.

Both he and Terence have fought absolutely nobody with the ability of a Ray Robinson.

Nobody.

Neither of them have fought a great fighter yet who’s been in their prime.

So Shakur can STFU, until he’s actually done something meaningful.

 

The sports you’re talking about, aside from wrestling, were invented in the late 19th century. Boxing’s had over a 150 year evolutionary head start compared to the others. I’m unsure about the evolution of wrestling however especially considering how many different types of wrestling are out there but these fellas looked skilled. IIRC Strangler Lewis was the best wrestler in the world at what I think is catch wrestling:

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What about boxing in particular do you think has evolved since SRR?

 

I mean, somewhat? A lot of the times even the most prestigious technicians have been hilariously wrong about their assessments on other fighters and in their predictions. An example would be Shakur calling Robinson out for keeping his hands low as if he doesn’t frequently bring his right hand up to parry and to block left hooks (like he and Bud do) and that he also avoids punches well despite his low guard as well. In the Fury video he still calls Ali the greatest even while picking Fury against him, and Ali is much less responsible than SRR is technically.