1930 ring magazine heavyweight ratings

A different type of fan.
Before TV, people might not have had the chance to see full fights beamed live featuring the best in the world, but they had opportunity to attend more local fights for affordable price, and watch and learn the finer points of the game.
Nowadays it's BIG FIGHTS and big hype and biased commentary.

 

But, surely, you have been around long enough, and seen enough, to tell what is hype and biased commentary.

I will still take the opportunity to watch these big, hyped up fights - over being unable to watch anything!

 

Damn Im rusty

 

Yes, I can tell what is hype and biased commentary.
But I'm saying boxing fans did exist in the old days, and they attended fights, often weekly, for years, and watching fights up close in a small hall is a different kind of experience and education, picking up some of the finer points that don't necessarily translate so well to television.

Both eras have their pros and cons.

 

Good time to be a boxing fan but outside of boxing its the worst ever to be a man.

 

Sure, boxing fans existed in the old days - and if you were lucky enough to be living in the vicinity of New York (and a few other big cities) then you would have been able to attend big shows, featuring some of the best fighters in the world. And also smaller shows, up to several times a week, if that was what you wanted.

But I'm not talking about those fans. I'm talking about the world outside the US (and, to some degree, the UK), where most of the fans didn't have the opportunity to watch the best fighters.

My father (born in 1923) became interested in boxing as a young kid, when he read about Max Baer's win over Carnera. He was so fascinated by Baer, that he started a small scrapbook - with an article from a Danish paper, describing the multi-knockdown beating of the Italian, being the first entry.

He kept his interest in boxing until his much too early death in 1969 - but went to his grave without ever having seen footage of Baer, his first hero. And the greats that followed, like Louis, Robinson, Marciano, etc... he never saw even a short glimpse of those fighters either. So for him, as a boxing fan, the "good old days" weren't really that good!

As I've already said, I'm thankful for being around now, and able to watch all the great fights we DO get today!

 

can you imagine a young Ali competing at this time?

He would absolutely clean house!

 

I guess you would still have had plenty of hot women to choose from!

 

Young Ali cleaned house in his own time. He cleans house in any era. What is the point of posts like this other than being a turd for no reason.

 

That was John Charles “Corn” Griffin (ending with ‘in’) who got stopped by James Braddock. Heavyweight from Fort Benning, Georgia.

Tuffy Griffiths (ending in ‘iths’) was a Nebraska-born heavy who migrated to Iowa.

(Not to be confused with a bantamweight from the same era from Nebraska who absconded, sort of, with his name and fought as Tuffy Griffith (no ‘s’) and compiled an 0-4 record with all losses by knockout, to besmirch the name of the fellow cornhusker.)

 

I’ll give @Unforgiven his due and say there’s a lot to be said from both sides.

Most people today who are boxing fans have probably never even seen a live fight. It’s so much different live — the impact of even a good jab is so much more striking and able to be appreciated live than even on the most high-def of TV sets. The true interaction of being in a seat at a fight with people around you to mix and compare views and make it a truly social event as well as a sporting endeavor are, sadly, mostly lost.

Today it’s all about ‘big’ fights — I’ve been to my share of those, but there’s nothing that compares to a good club fight card in my experience. It doesn’t take the top practitioners in the world to entertain or put their very lives on the line to make it a worthwhile experience.

There was a time when a ‘pretty good for around here’ fighter (wherever here was to your locality) was a thing to be applauded even if he wasn’t going to be the next Sugar Ray or Ali. Nowadays you’re either great or you’re excrement to most people who wouldn’t have the courage to walk into a gym and spar with an amateur — and even if you’re great, you lose one or two and now you’re ridiculed and dismissed by so-called fans.

Yes it’s great to see all the big fights, but coming up in my era we had boxing on TV — fights of real consequence, even among aspiring contenders — every weekend (sometimes you had to choose whether to watch the ABC, CBS or NBC bouts on at the same time — and I also used to peruse newspapers and consume magazines just to learn a little bit about this guy who’s on a roll from South Africa or Japan or California or Miami … in hopes that I might see him one day. But I knew a heck of a lot more about those guys then just reading about them than I do now.

 

Of course you don't miss something that you have never had.

Listening to the commentary of a fight on the radio, used to be the highlight of peoples week once.