Better All-Around Fighter: Primo Carnera or Riddick Bowe?

We can, but we must understand its limitations.

For example Greg Page looks much better on film than Rocky Marciano, but it is fairly clear that rocky Marciano was more successful.

 

I wouldn't think that there would be much separating the tomato cans of any two given eras.

We could also say that some kinds of men don't get to the top regardless of era.

 

1) Why not?

2) I don't think that it would help much even if you could establish that the floor was the same, since most professional fighters don't occupy the floor.

 

Because all humans function in broadly the same way. How could the tomato cans be better, unless there was some sort of evolution of the species. They are still guys with two hands, who basically get paid to lose. If you go to a boxing club, then you have touched them.

No, but I suspect that the tiers are broadly the same.

The man with the poor work ethic, and the man who is not up for a beating, will find their level fairly quickly.

One constant throughout history, has ben the training camp.

From the early 1800s onward, you basically needed to throw in the same amount of effort as a modern champion, in order to get to the top.

 

All sorts of ways. They might be malnourished or less healthy on average. They might have higher risks of substance abuse. They may be more poorly trained on average, or, conversely, in a time/place where they have more time to devote to boxing. Their country or era's infrastructure and gym availability might be better or worse. They might be physically larger people (as heavyweights). The coaches can be good or incompetent. They might come from a country with a long tradition of boxing where everybody gets exposed to it from childhood onward. Maybe they come from an environment where violence is more / less expected than in other times and places. They might come from a time or culture that has a better work ethic. They might come from an era with lots of fixed/fake fights. Their skills might need to be different because they fight under different rules. They may have terrible nutrition and sports medicine. All kinds of ways. The list goes on.

The only way you avoid this kind of stuff is by insisting you're only going to compare the absolute worst boxers ever to lace up gloves. As in, two random drunk people you found in a bar. But that would tell you basically nothing about any of the real boxers of their eras. And the factors above would probably still be decisive in a fight between two awful boxers.

Unless you mean boxers who are literally paid to take dives. But that again tells you nothing, since those guys aren't competing for real to begin with, so comparing who took the better dives across eras is pointless.

How do you measure the effort that entire eras' worth of fighters had to put in to establish this?

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure that this would prove much. You could put a journeyman through a training camp and he'd presumably be better prepped at the end of camp, but he won't be Muhammad Ali.

 

Training camp's are well documented.

For example there is no heavyweight today, who has a more intense training camp than Peter Maher.

Tom Cribb was obviously in the same general category, as champions since him.

 

Cribb was being systematically dehydrated and being given potions to make him vomit by Barclay Allardice.

The problem here is that you have no way to prove how good a training camp was, because you haven't yet accepted any cross-era standard for what counts as good training.

Thus, appeals to the intensity of training camps among champions is an illusory argument.

 

My own limited experience of combat sports, tells me that these differences soon level out at the lowest level.

In any combat sport, you have to be prepared to get beaten up, to get competent against he men in the nearest town.

A man who is outclassed, who wants to win, will rapidly fall back on cunning.

Out of this low level pool, a few men/women will try to make a living out of it.

Beyond that, it turns on their work ethic, and what resources are thrown at them.

 

Some training camp's are better than others, but they have one thing in common.

You are basically throwing everything that you have got at it.

You are taking the greatest athlete, and systematically doing as much as you can to make the better.

Yes I absolutely stand by the training camp!

 

I train my brother, the best fighter in our village of 50 people, for a fight with Jack Dempsey. I throw everything that I have at the problem. I give my brother nausea pills. I dehydrate him. I beat him with wooden sticks and force him to hold stone jars while standing in karate horse stance. He spends four hours every day sitting outside in the middle of winter without a shirt on, in extreme discomfort, to toughen him up. Followed by getting hit more with wooden sticks.

For sparring, we have a round of boxing every once in a while, but most of the time we spar with cudgels and swords like James Figg. He takes a real beating in these sparring matches, since he's heavily dehydrated and suffering from the aftereffects of freezing weather. I buy my brother the most expensive protective magical amulets I can find to protect him from Dempsey's boxing abilities. His nutrition consists of dried out bread and alcohol.

This is a pretty intense and uncomfortable training regimen. Clearly, my brother is the best of his time and place, since he beat the five other men from my village (he was 140 pounds; they were 120, 105, 115, 119, and 124, respectively, and highly trained under the same intense training regimen.) I threw everything I have at the problem. How do you like his chances?

 

Would you even attempt that, if you did not expect to get some sort of return on your investment?

The training regimes of the champions of the early 1900s, are very impressive, and I don't see how that can be argued.

As an ultra runner, I understand one key component of the training camp.

It is as much psychological as physical.

You get the fighter into the best physical shape possible, but you also get them thinking that winning is everything!

 

Of course I expect a return on my investment! This is the training regimen that carried my brother to victory against five other fighters in openweight championship fights. I fully expect him to be just as good as Jack Dempsey as a result. Don't you?

It can't be argued at all unless you have a standard for what counts as "good." What's your standard?

Oh, my brother is psychologically very prepared to beat Dempsey. We are both incredibly confident that Dempsey will fall beneath the blows of my brother's dehydrated, frostbitten fists. We even have the magical boxing talisman, which will protect my brother from harm in the ring and make Dempsey's punches feel like raindrops.

 

Riddick Bowe would violently demolish Carnera. He would put a savage beating on him and he'd have fun doing it too. He would beat Carnera in his sleep. The fat version Bowe that get whooped by Golota would arguably beat Carnera. I am not joking

 

Mr 130