1920-1940 was the golden age of boxing

Yeah but we've probably got way too many "world titles" these days.

 

You're right... way too many world titles/champions today! Counting only "The Big 4", there have (so far) been 114 world title fights this year.

For the 30-year period we're talking about, there were 510 (if I have counted correctly) title bouts worldwide.

So the more than 500 title fights back then were spread out over 11 countries - while today's 114 title fights have taken place in 19 different countries.

 

I would agree it was the golden age of boxing so far as skill is concerned.

 

That's absolutely not true.

Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Sharkey, Carnera, Baer, Braddock and Louis are the men who were champions during this time period.

From that list he's significantly taller than Tunney and Sharkey. But he's similar height wise to Dempsey, Schmeling, Baer, Braddock and Louis. He's significantly smaller than Carnera.

Weight wise he's significantly heavier than Dempsey, Tunney and Braddock but all of them weighed close to 200 on big victories. The rest of the same are the same or heavier.

So saying Usyk is a huge and big guy compared to these men is categorically not true.

 

Just no. Fat flabby unconditioned size doesn't make up for lighter lethal skill.

 

Don’t you think there’s a reason why athletic records are broken and we hear “I don’t see anyone breaking this record” and guess what? It gets broken again years down the line. At the elite level we’re talking fractions and percentages being the difference between success and failure.

As far as this thread I’m talking about the elite level, not the general talent pool. In those days you think they knew the optimal rest and recovery needed for their fighters? Even simply being able to monitor their energy expenditure and what they can do to squeeze that last few percent out. Did they have hundreds of hours of footage to analyse every last detail of their opponent?
Did they know how the human body reacts to and utilises different macronutrients? How energy is released in the body and how that can affect a fighter on fight night?

Put all these 2-3% advancements over the course of 70-80 years and that’s huge difference. If you think it’s mostly fads and bs fair enough, I just think there’s a lot of substance to it.

 

Usyk is 6'3", taller than all those you named. Tunney never weighed near 200lbs

 

None of those sports have been professional for very long, a lot of them were held back massively by enforced amaturism. There are also a lot of technical improvements (e.g. block starts) giving newer athletes an artificial improvement.

I think modern fighters/trainer don't know now either. It depends on so many varibles you can only estimate.

Who actually does this though? A lot of the methods used for conditioning are done in ways you can'r really measure, other than percieved effort and time.


A group of athletes I love are the Kenyan runners, their brilliance is easy to see, yet look how primitive a lot of their training and fallicities are. They certainly aren't measuring energy expendature, and you'd think if that actually was a worthwhile strategy for anything, it would be for marathon running/

I wouldn't consider preparing for a particular opponent more actually makes them better
You can equally claim older ones were better, as they couldn't just rely on preparing for a particular opponent, and had to adapt and think in the ring. (Which is what the best modern ring generals do anyway, Mayweather Ward etc.)

Is any this applied? I'm not convinced there's any application to this that couldn't be figured out in a couple years through trial and error.

Well thanks for a respectful responce. I still disagree.

 

Usyk is reported as 6'3.

Usyk is not as tall as Carnera.

Tunney weighed in at 192 pounds against Heeney in his final defence, that's a 4% decrease in weight from 200 pounds, I class that as close to.

 

He is 2 inches taller than Dempsey ,an inch and a half taller than Louis,half inch taller than Baer, an inch taller than Braddock.Schmeling and Sharkey were both an even six foot ,that's a three inch differentail . .Eight pounds differential is not close to. Tunney was nearly always under 190lbs apart from the second Dempsey fight and the Heeney one. You're wrong on all those counts.

 

Dempsey didn't fight for a 3 year period, that is not golden.

 

I don't think you're actually reading my posts before you're replying.

I think my first post (the initial one you quoted) would suffice as an answer here so I'm just gonna repost that for you and see if you have anything you actually want to debate.

Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Sharkey, Carnera, Baer, Braddock and Louis are the men who were champions during this time period.

From that list he's significantly taller than Tunney and Sharkey. But he's similar height wise to Dempsey, Schmeling, Baer, Braddock and Louis. He's significantly smaller than Carnera.

Weight wise he's significantly heavier than Dempsey, Tunney and Braddock but all of them weighed close to 200 on big victories. The rest of the same are the same or heavier.

So saying Usyk is a huge and big guy compared to these men is categorically not true.

 

I see this period as being particularly strong from flyweight to light heavyweight.

You have an enormous boxing population globally, but perhaps not that many big men.

 

The only division that you can really question in the 1920s, is the heavyweight division!

Everything from flyweight to light heavyweight, is just ridiculously stacked!

You could perhaps make a case for heavyweight, if Dempsey Wills had turned into a trilogy!

 

The 20s through the 50s were the high point of boxing....that said the 70s heavyweights may have had most depth