I've been wondering about this for a while, it seems to me that the tendency for fighters to come in out of shape has gotten worse instead of better. Any thoughts?
15 rds don’t sound like much more than 12 rds, but those 3 extra rds is where hearts were tested and wills were broken. You knew you had to be in real fighting shape.
They fought more often, for more rounds, without the benefits of modern sports science, nutrition, or PEDs.
Not really, Probably in a training camp for 3 months an athlete can’t do much more than 3 hrs physical training a day. Most of these three hrs should be spent on physical things to do with close to exactly what a boxer is doing in the ring to increase coordination and muscle memory to fight better. Basically a lot of punching and foot work, working on technique which boxers used to do and still do today.
agreed. This is just a HW thing. Watch the smaller guys. They show up jacked and fit as hell. Y’all don’t think Inoue or Bam could go 15 rounds? They seem to have limitless stamina. Hell, you think Usyk or Fury couldn’t go 15 rounds?
Yes mainly heavyweight, although if anybody has any thoughts on the lower classes feel free to post it.
Its weird because with evolving sports science, we should be able to see the results. With boxers having better cardio, etc. But, I'm not quite convinced about it. With the exception of Usyk, and I think Parker and Joyce have underrated engines at their best - the top HWs of this generation would have really struggled to go 15 rounds against the best. I don't think it is a bad generation though, there are some good fighters in this generation, but I think they would have struggled back in the day in terms of conditioning eg - AJ, Fury, Dubois, Zhang, Wilder. Then again, as Foreman said the fighters then were much more fearsome than now.
On fight night, outside of HW they look pretty lean. But it's probably true they yo-yo more than the past because they can get really fat and use PEDs to get the weight off. HW's are degenerate fat slobs in a large percentage. More cruisers should go up because a lot of these HW's are smoke and mirrors. Ruiz is a perfect example. Plenty of cruisers could have landed that shot on AJ and probably got a real KO. However the SHW's are a real problem, even when a bit fat like Zhang or Fury or Helenius for a period, so that's likely what keeps the cruisers at cruiser, because they won't be able to dominate like they might at cruiser.
With all we know about physical training, and how to train the human body to it's max capacity... I would be surprised, if the old-timers were in better shape than today's boxers. Generally speaking, of course!
Not a chance. The understanding in fitness, science and tech etc has improved but the commitment and dedication from fighters has reduced as a whole.
Literally every single fighter that I have ever seen from yesteryear in every weightclass, even HW except Tony Galento, was in shape. Not sure if this is a serious question or not.