You don't think, that may be because we, with few exceptions, only have film of the very best old-timers? Surely every era must have had it's fair share of fat, less than top-tuned fighters. We just have no way of watching them!
No I really don't. People in general were in better shape than people today. They were far more physically active than most people today. My position would be that so were the ring athletes of yesteryear. Even thinking about "less than top-tuned fighters", many of the elite guys had day jobs back then, they were assumedly working those same laborious jobs as the "less than elite". Those guys were all in warehouses, docks, moving heavy ****, lifting etc......then sparring...................then fighting 3-4 times a month. I don't think they ever had downtime to get out of shape. For instance my grandfather had ripped arms well into his 70's and I never seen him even lift a weight . That's just how I think those old timers came out the factory.............ready for war (literally and figuratively)
So you don't agree, that there probably have been top-trained, as well as out-of-shape, boxers in all eras - just as we see it today?
That’s correct. An out of shape (like they are today) athlete in the past wouldn’t get paid. He wouldn’t be able to rely on YouTube videos, tweets etc to generate interest in his fights. Before, your performances dictated if you was called back. previously if fighters didn’t engage they wouldn’t get paid. standard of living has gone up = people graft less
Not to anywhere near the degree that we see today absolutely not. I'm sure Tony Galento couldn't possibly be the only barrel belly boxer to exist from yesteryear................."I've" never seen anyone else from those earlier time periods in any weight class though for me to think that there were out of shape boxers littering the landscape in abundance like today.
that’s the point I think, if you was a fat fighter you wasn’t a serious fighter. you wasn’t good enough to compete with serious fighters so didn’t get paid much. So you got a normal job. Fat, Out of shape boxers achieving is a fairly new thing because the competition isn’t as serious.
Surely, the only reason we haven't seen a lot of out-of-shape boxers from back in the day... is because the old films we have, only feature the very best fighters from back then. I mean, how many fights between two untrained journeymen from years gone by have we seen on film? I can't think of any - which doesn't mean, that such fights were unheard of!
Yes it is a serious question, and while I agree with you 100% there are people who will bring names up of past boxes and say that they were out of shape also.
The point is, being out of shape meant you wasn’t able to beat the many guys who were in shape. Nowadays lots are out of shape.
It's not that they are in better shape, I would say there is more sports science that gives these athletes more options to keep themselves healthy and/or in shape if that's the route they are trying to choose for themselves. We do often see a lot of fighter out of shape in appearance today rather the previous generations. I think that has a lot to do with the fact, more money is thrown at these fighters before they are mature, both mentally and financially. I've personally seen Errol Spence Jr., Adrien Broner, Jaron Ennis, Mikey Garcia, & Claressa Shields out of shape and/or heavy when not in camp. Those are some top names in the sport or at least at the time I ran into them and to see them get comfortable more often than not due to the lifestyle they've created for themselves through boxing. You get that $$ and you don't grind as much as you did when you needed that $$.
And my point is, that we have no way of knowing, if there are more fighters out of shape nowadays - for the simple reason, that we have only seen a tiny fraction (maybe not even 1%) of the fights that took place back in the day. So what happened in the vast, VAST majority of the old fights, and how many poorly trained boxers there were... well, we just don't know.
Even now, we don’t watch all fighters or fights. Probably less than 1% too. We only watch the main ones. By past fighters I assume you mean in 1900’s, Or are you talking about in 300bc? as always, in 1940 to 2020, only ticket sellers, top fighters or people with money behind them get recognised or watched. in 1940, there was only one way to do this and this was to take your job seriously. in 2020 you just need a good following or a publicity stunt. Put it this way, top guys were always in shape in the 1900’s as you had to be in shape to get to the top. top guys are not always in shape in the 2020 as you no longer have to be in shape to get to the top. (As others are not in shape either) The bar has dropped, the minimum requirement is lower, the competition isn’t as fit so you can be fat and get to the top now. The people at the top represent that they have overcome those beneath them…fitness is very important in boxing. I’m not sure why this is hard to understand. regarding there being poorly trained guys, yes there would have been but who cares about them they are irrelevant and was at the time.
If you pose the question if we're better at athletic training because of more sophisticated understanding of the science, we are definitely better capable of training athletes' bodies for boxing now. If you ask if that materialises into boxers being in better overall fitness, I would agree with you that it just hasn't and maybe never will. So, then we're left with why and we're probably going to have to say desperation isn't as desperate as it was, we don't produce the same kind of motivation in most countries where boxing is popular as we did, in an overall sense, and food quality has been lowered by an influx of hyper-palatable, salty, sugary, oily, syrupy, msg-laden, insulin-spiking garbage carbohydrates and fats, and giving a lesser motivated group of individuals a backdrop of that kind of nutrition will combine to make people just be fatter, less disciplined and mentally less expected to be able to take advantage of the fact that we COULD make them in better shape now than the older generations were. There is a lesser factor that I'd point out, which is a very disagreeable idea that in heavier weights, having a lot of weight to sling around is better, even if it's completely unathletic bulk of muscle or fat that doesn't give you really anything you need to have stamina, speed, maneuverability, flexability, etc. Another lesser factor is that coaching has become more of the ideology of boxing "specialists" over well-roundedness. More Pac, less Cotto. More Khans, less Mayweathers. If you can take freak abilities like Amir Khan speed or Kovalev punching power, you stop conditioning guys to be able to do everything for all the rounds and start trying to maximze the physical attributes that set them apart the most, and in just one way. Sometimes that just makes you stop caring about diet and stamina and just work on crushing someone or wrestling them around or coming in for bursts of offense and darting back out, etc. The more complete your skill set is trained to be, the more fit you have to be to maintain the total game, have lateral movement, the ability to stop and start on a dime, punch in and out of clinches, roll away from exchances, etc. We're better at maximizing freaky qualities for one style and training for that also, but it does not make you fitter. My take anyway.