Best aging heavyweight era v the new wave?

I'm just saying how many at the time perceived it.
I can't say for sure that there was not depleted talent. Everyone at the time though there was.

As for Walcott's improvement - yes, I believe he did improve. And management was a big part of it ... it always is.
However, he wasn't the only fighter out there who was suffering from the ills of the Great Depression, had a large family to feed, and worked labouring jobs when he could. I reckon those circumstances applied to many of the men he faced too.

 

Nat Fleischer wrote at the end of 1946 - "never in the entire history of boxing has the (heavyweight) division been so devoid of top talent as at present".

 

Lyle was no "next generation 2" Quarry , he was 4 years older .
Y does Middleton count ?
U chose d oddities and ignored d majority of cases .

 

Jimmy Bivins
Ezzard Charles
Jersey Joe Walcott
Joe Louis
Elmer Ray

Ya, that's **** top talent


:-(

 

End of 1946 ...
Joe Louis was an aging champion coming towards the end of his era.
Walcott and Ray were even older than Louis and had been fighting just as long.
Charles was still a light-heavyweight, and rated at light-heavy.
Bivins had just lost 3 in a row.

Tami Mauriello (a very goog fighter but not in Louis's league) was the Ring magazine number 1 contender at the time.
Ray was 2, Walcott 3.
Bivins wasn't even in the ratings, and had looked bad losing to Charles. Charles was rated at light-heavy.

Nat Fleischer saw these guys from ringside, week in week out. And he'd been watching boxing for 40 years or more. Some of the fighters you rave about you've probably barely even seen much film of.
Fleischer saw them up close.

 

There was also a reporter who felt that Archie Moore was better than all the heavyweight contenders he had seen in the mid 1920s.

The late 1940's wasn't a strong era though, you're right.

 

A.J. Leibling wrote in the 1950s that Archie Moore as a challenger to Marciano was better than Jack McAuliffe II, Luis Firpo, an old Jess Willard and Floyd Johnson - who he had been in elminators in Yankee Stadium in 1923.


Yes, the post-war years were far from a boom in th HW division. Almost everyone was in agreement about that. That might partly explain why Joe Louis took 15 months between the Mauriello and Walcott defences. And why the NBA failed to name a "logical contender". It also accounts for why promoters and managers were begging veterans like Walcott to fight their main events.

 

And another thing is that Quarry didn't really beat Lyle as there were no KDs or serious hurt as far as I remember . Not every points win is a beating , and it was also much closer than d judges had it .
Lyle had experience from prison , didn't he ?
There is not much solidity in Middleton's record .
People here dismiss Ron Stander & Duane Bobick but both men were much better than Middleton .
He just doesn't count .