At what point did modern boxers surpass old ones?

Basing eras off of names is folly.

Is X from the 80s better than Y from the now speaks more to what X and Y could do then what their eras were like.


I mean damn, you've Birmingham talking about Wlad, who never learned to pivot, beating Ali. Which yeah, my initial reaction to that of course was "Is he ****ing with me?" then I wanted to talk about Ali and angles and Wlad and tracks but here's the truth, who the **** did Wlad fight?

I don't mean that like look at Ali he's got a better resume him better. I mean we're meant to be comparing eras not men. Wlad comes from one of the weakest eras of modern HW boxing and Ali comes from literally the Golden Age of the division.

So rather than talking about Wlad's specific skill set vs Ali's I think it's much more telling to include it all. What are the actual skills of Wladimir and any other HW of his era vs the skills displayed by the HWs of the 70s? If time in any fashion has improved the caliber of human who fights why is it pivots are coming back to the division? There's not that many HW right now who can pivot, there was damn near none during Wlad's era, in the 70s almost everyone could pivot. What's going on there with that pivot? How is it the pivot went out of fashion and is clearly on the comeback now if Wlad's era was improved by anything and is after the 70s?


I have an explanation, though if I'm honest I'm on this thread because I've never explicitly tackled the issue and I'm not sure how I feel myself, so ya know, grain of salt maybe. When the Eastern Euros owned the division you saw much more of their style of boxing. The west is coming back and with it Western Boxing. Neither improved nor degraded, neither better nor worse, just different and in cycles.

 

It's not a bad assumption. You don't think rule change has more effect though? Consider this:

Every major era has a rule change and a defensive innovator, but when you look into who was doing what they basically did the same thing they just changed it to fit the rules.

So, did Melankomas, Mendoza, or Corbett innovate defense?

Is Corbett's version applicable in Mendoza's or Melankomas's or vice versa in any direction?

Given Mel knows dick all about rounds of any form his form of defense would have to be adapted to rounds. Since Mendoza knows dick all about judges his defense would have to be adjusted for judges. It's easy then to say Corbett is the final innovator but Corbett didn't come up with any technique and Corbett knows nothing about a fight to submission

So really what do they gain over time? The ability to employ the past's abilities in the new rules while at the same time growing an ignorance toward using those same abilities in the old rules. So yeah, that knowledge gained it a two way street, there is also knowledge lost. Mendoza beats both in his era, Mel beats both in his own, and Corbett is the only man of the three to understand how to get a points victory.

So I'm not saying the innovation didn't happen or that it doesn't aid the present, but I do not see is as a handicap in the past until you bring them to the present and that works in both directions, when your bring Joshua to 1840 what is his knowledge of Mike Tyson going to do for him other than get him kicked? Isn't that just as fair as bringing a guy who never fought rounds into a modern 12 rounder and beating him on points because he's not used to doing real work until an hour or so in?

Not saying your wrong, just giving you some **** to think on.

 

Watching Burnett-Haskins I was struck by how much they looked like lesser versions of McLarnin and Canzoneri. Haskins-Burnett was for a world title, and Burnett would go on to attain partial unification at bantamweight in his next fight. So, aesthetics aren't a must in any era.

 

Talent pools don't work like that. A. There are more total people competing than ever before when looking worldwide and more importantly B even in countries like America, where boxing isn't as popular a sport as before, the talent pool is bigger than before. There are plenty of Olympic sports that aren't as popular as they used to be, but the records are still getting broken, and the average size of competitors is still going up in a similar pattern to what is seen in HW boxing. Why? Because people with the right skill sets still tend to self sort into appropriate sports. There are plenty of people who can't cut it in football or basketball who are still just right for boxing.

Also, people don't just forget training methods; they improve upon them. That's a constant in human history.

 

I don't see any improvement on skills and techniques. Got any examples?

 

That's a strawman if I've ever seen one.

 

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Talent pools can certainly shift depending on the popularity of a sport in a given region. Records are getting broken in sports that depend on pure athletic performance. A sport like boxing is generally less affected by dimensions such as size, muscle mass, strength, etc. And things like material incentives and local availability matter as well, both which have declined in major boxing nations.

The assumption that the quality of training can’t ever decrease in quality is also bizarre. There is an observable decrease in the well-roundedness of boxers competing today compared to their counterparts from decades ago. Their physical training might be more scientific, but knowledge can fail to pass on, and the lack of institutional rigors for qualifying who can be a boxing trainer helps facilitate that loss.

Look at someone like Deontay Wilder and the general form of the average heavyweight contender in the last decade. Look at flat-footed fighters like García and Canelo who can still afford to be elite. Look at the lack of expert ring cutters and inside fighters. Look at how few fighters in the top 5 of each division can win a fight off the jab alone. I’m not saying these fighters are ****, but skills have eroded.

 

In some ways yes
Not in all

 

If talent pools shift for the reasons you suggest and not me, then why have sports like javelin throwing etc, which have unquestionably declined in popularity much more than boxing, still seen records keep getting broken and average size of competitors keep going up? Talent pools just don't work the way you think they do. The more physically talented people present, the higher number will find their way to a sport, even an unpopular sport, that they can excel at.

Moreover, a sport like boxing depends on size much MORE than other sports. It is one of the few to actually have weight classes, after all.

Well roundedness may very well have declined, because of the obsolescence of some tactics. There's not much in human history to objectively point to, that we still actually do, and say " we don't do that like we used to". We don't make certain cars, or other technology etc, because it's been replaced by higher performing tech. The concept is the same with boxing. It goes against the human experience to actually regress, and get worse at something that we still try to do. Can you name something that we do that has unquestionably gotten worse?

I don't think AJ etc is as skilled as an Ali or Holmes. But then, he's not as skilled as a Usyk either. It wouldn't matter, because he is skilled enough that his massive size and power advantage would win out h2h.

 

Outside the HW division size doesn't matter. Everyone is required to weigh in the same.

You realize that?

 

Yes, I'm talking primarily about HWs, as my first post established.

 

I think athleticism has improved with advances in diet, supplements, strength&conditioning etc - while the skills of the average boxer are way, way less advanced than was the case in previous generations. Boxers these days spend far, far more time on long spells out of the game, filming what are basically extended MTV-style mediocre rap videos for HBO, getting in touch with their 'feelings' and basically doing all kinds of bull**** that have nothing to do with boxing.

Floyd Mayweather is an extreme example, because he's more of a deluded jackass than most, but here is a guy who spent well over a decade tapdancing to *avoid* fighting any decent opponents. And there are actually people around who believe his TBE crap.

If you were to have a multi-weight tournament pitting four teams of the 8 best boxers of the '50s, '60s, and 70's, and the best of the current decade against each other..... the teams from the 50's, 60's and 70's would each kick the **** out of the current day team.

Simple as that.

 

Heres a simple question for all of you. Give me what you think Babe Ruths stat line would look like if he played in the majors today at the peak of his abilities. Avg Hrs Rbi slgg? He played in an era of bigger ball parks and still managed 700 homeruns and his career batting average was like 350 or something crazy. In todays game is he still the best in the game? Allstar? average? I know this is boxing but boxing and baseball are very similar in the sense that its at its core the same today as it was 100 years ago. could the 1927 Yankees beat the 2017 Houston Astros? Could 186lb Joe Louis beat any Cruiser or lhw? Could he beat the big hws?

 

Indeed.

Eubank jr comes to mind....