Boxing & Horse Racing vs the other sports

This makes perfect sense in actuality, if you are going far enough back into time when boxing, horse racing and baseball were the "Big Three" sports.

Baseball was segregated. Nonetheless, in Major League Baseball, Ruth was a record setting pitcher in World Series competition who hurled a total of around a hundred wins throwing from the mound. (Try that, Bonds, Aaron, Williams and DiMaggio!)

Among the earliest sports stars were horse racing jockeys of African descent, honored and commemorated with the ornamental lawn sculptures popular during the late Victorian age. Horses and jockeys were to that era what racing cars and their drivers became in the next century. (And racing car drivers were most definitely athletes. One of the Indy drivers, Eddie Rickenbacker, became touted around 1910 as the first man to drive a mile a minute. Then, he became the leading American air ace during WW I.)

To gain athletic acclaim and fortune, regardless of stature, boxing was one of the very real options for an athletically talented individual. It was the ideal vehicle for exhibiting the emerging medium of moving pictures in proliferating nickelodeons, inspiring new generations of enthusiasts.

Like horse racing, boxing was an ideal spectator sport to present before large audiences.

Certain sports have produced athletes in the past considered superior to their modern counterparts. Al Oerter won the Olympic discus throw in four consecutive games, beginning in 1956. Yet, in his mid forties, during the early 1980s, he threw the discus 74.67 meters while filming a television segment, which would have been the world record at that time, if it had been official. Oerter had the physical ability to win the gold medal in every Olympiad from 1956 to 1984, for a total of eight in all. I don't believe the next Olympic discus gold medalist will be able to match Oerter's potential by maintaining such a winning streak in each Olympiad, from Beijing in 2008 until 2036, let alone surpass Oerter's potential by extending it into a 2040 discus gold medal.

In American gridiron football, Bob Hayes ran the 40 yard dash in 4.1 seconds during the mid 1960s. (Unfortunately for Bullet Bob, brains guts and leadership count for more in tackle football than physical ability. Nobody to play in the National Football League over the last 40 years has been faster than Hayes. Yet, he did not dominate the NFL, and is not in the Pro Football HOF. And virtually all of the early quarterbacks enshrined were originally derided as "too small" or "too short.")

Many of today's sports stars might actually be superior athletes in a highly specialized physical sense, but are they better competitors, smarter and more creative, more versatile and adaptable, or endowed with superior potential and motivation?

 

Horse racing, at least in the United States, is one sport in which the best times for past champions is better than for current. Secretariat still holds the record for the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.

One thing I would point out about boxing which is rarely mentioned--the rules have been tightened. If you brought back a boxer from say 1940 (at least from the United States) he would be entering the ring knowing that the referee will quickly intervene if he gets into deep trouble. That was not as true fifty or sixty years ago and even less true a century ago. I see no reason why an old timer would be particularly afraid of fighting today. The opposite may not be as true. A modern fighter would be entering a ring where if he is stunned and helpless but instinct keeps him going, his opponent might have free rein to keep pounding him. Watch Ike Williams against Beau Jack, or Kid Gavilan against Johnny Bratton, or of course the even older fights like Dempsey against Willard. Victorrio Campolo was allowed to score 36 knockdowns against Miguel Ferraro. A fighter could stand over or even behind a fallen opponent and attack him before he was really prepared to defend himself. Deaths were more common. There were 22 boxing deaths in 1953.
All told, fear would be much more of a consideration. A boxer in the old days had to be mentally willing to take a potentially vicious beating.

I would point out that baseball is another sport in which the rules have been tightened. Fifty years ago they did not have batting helmets and a pitcher was not ejected for beaning a batter. If a batter dug in, a skull fracture from a fastball was a likely response. Old time batters might find it much easier to adjust to modern pitching than modern batters would adjusting to beanings.
By and by, Babe Ruth, from the twenties, is still more often than not, rated the best baseball player. And Jim Brown from the fifties would get plenty of support in gridiron football.

 

Could a modern American footballer handle the game of 60 years ago, though? I'm not really familiar enough with the sport to say, in that I don't know what rule changes there have been. Nevertheless, modern American footballers will have adapted their technique to fit in with having more protection, which would require a lot of adjustment if they were transported to the past.

 

That's what I thought, but evidently, whatever Barry Bonds was taking actually did have the side effect of making his eyesight more acute, the year he led the league in batting average. (I don't know that this is true or not, but an interesting claim in light of his performance that particular year.)

 

Figo, Beckham, Kaka, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cantona, Buffon, Khan, R. Carlos, Henry, Deco, Messi and a lot more that don't jump right out of my head.

 

You forgot Ronaldo.

 

I assume this is in reference to American gridiron football.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, Bob Hayes ran a 4.1 40, over four decades ago, yet he is not enshrined in the Pro Football HOF. Les Bingaman of the Detroit Lions played seven years in the NFL, from 1948 to 1954. He was listed at 6'2," and 295 pounds, but he was actually closer to 400. Playing middle guard (nose tackle today), he did go to the 1951 and 1953 Pro Bowls, and won the 1952 and 1953 NFL championships with them, both times over the Cleveland Browns. But by 1954, the Browns had figured out how to deal with him, and blew Detroit out in their third consecutive title meeting, 56-10, sending Bingaman into retirement. (Les was later the defensive line coach for the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins.)

Roger Brown, also of the Lions, played defensive tackle from 1960 to 1969. He was the first player in NFL history to be officially listed at over 300 pounds. Standing 6'5" he could run the 100 yard dash in ten seconds, and outsprinted an Olympic gold medalist by a step over 40 yards. Like Bingaman, Brown is not in the HOF. Unlike Bingaman, Brown never even got to a championship game, although he was an eight time All-Pro.

Ernie Ladd was one of the first defensive stars in the American Football League. He stood 6'9," weighed 315 pounds, could dead lift 700 pounds, and played from 1961 to 1969. He ended his football career by being one of the two KC Chiefs players to carry Hank Stram off the field at the end of Super Bowl IV. He is not enshrined in Canton, but he might be a good candidate to eventually follow Billy Shaw as the only member to play exclusively in the AFL. 52 inch chest, 39 inch waist, 20 inch biceps, 19 inch neck, and size 18 D shoes.

Ladd played right defensive tackle for the Chiefs. The left defensive tackle, Buck Buchanan, is indeed enshrined in the HOF. He stood 6'7," and weighed 287 pounds. He played from 1963 to 1975.

Morris Stroud was a tight end who also played for the Chiefs, from 1970 to 1974. He also specialized in blocking field goal attempts from under the goalposts (since ruled illegal because of his play). At 6'10," Stroud is the tallest player in NFL history, but he was only a fringe token player.

Tobin Rote was a rambunctious rollout quarterback who began his career with the Green Bay Packers in 1950. At 6'2" and 220 pounds, he could be considered a huge quarterback by the standards of 57 years ago. In that first year, Rote rushed for 150 yards in two different games for Green Bay. That single game rushing yardage record from the QB position stood for over half a century, until eventually broken by noted dog lover Michael Vick. Unlike Vick though, Rote led two different teams to championships, quarterbacking the 1957 Lions to a 59-10 blowout of their archrival Browns, then, as the AFL MVP, calling the plays for the 1963 San Diego Chargers in their 51-10 shellacking of the Boston Patriots.

Sammy Baugh set a single season punting average record which also stood for around half a century. What's that, you say? "Oh, that doesn't mean anything. The ball back then was shaped differently, better for punting longer distances." Then how is it, that Baugh used the same shaped ball, at the same time, to set a pass completion percentage record which stood until Kenny Anderson finally broke it around forty years later?

The largest NFL championship ring ever made for a player was size 19. Two were produced. One of them was for 6'9," Ed "Too Tall" Jones. The other? That one was for 6'3," 230 pound Bronko Nagurski, who played for the Chicago Bears from 1930-1937, then made a one year comeback during WW II in 1943.

Needless to say, none of these players used performance enhancing drugs. (Although "Too Tall" has been the subject of some suspicion.")

The gridiron players of yesteryear were far more intelligent and versatile than today's glorified and specialized chess pieces. They had to be. The middle linebackers and quarterbacks had to call their own plays. Most of today's players wouldn't be smart enough to compete in earlier times. The offensive lineman are too fat and poorly conditioned to lead interference for a running back 80 yards down the sidelines from the opposite end of the formation, like Jerry Kramer and Billy Shaw used to do.

Alan Page entered the NFL in 1967, weighing around 300 pounds. Then, he took up long distance running as a hobby, and dropped down to 218 pounds. The Minnesota Vikings, concluding that Page had become too light to play defensive tackle anymore, traded Page off the the Chicago Bears, where he terrorized quarterbacks and big, dumb, slow offensive linemen for four more years, while mentoring the players who would eventually form the core of Buddy Ryan's legendary 46 defense in 1985 (considered by many to be the greatest single season defense in NFL history). How smart was Page? Well, he got his Juris Doctor during his football career (in 1978), and eventually was elected an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court (becoming the biggest vote getter in Minnesota's prominent political history). An interesting bit of trivia concerning Page is that he's a native of Canton Ohio, and actually worked on the construction of the Hall of Fame building that he eventually came to be enshrined in.

Could 6'2" 230 pound Bronko Nagurski make it in today's NFL? Could Bob Hayes, with his 4.10 40 yard dash do it? Could 6'9," 263 pound HOFer Bob St. Clair, who played for the San Francisco 49ers from 1953 to 1963 fit in today? Could 6'5," 300 pound Roger Brown succeed today? How about 6'2," 400 pound Les Bingaman?


Could today's "bigger, faster, stronger (but much more stupid), players succeed in the National Football League of 40 years ago, if they were sent back as they are to that period in a time machine? I wouldn't necessarily put my money on it. (Today's bloated linemen would be leaving preseason training camps in bodybags, during that run oriented era in the gridiron's history.)

Nick Buoniconti was "too small" to play middle linebacker. Yet, he's in the HOF, is the all-time AFL middle linebacker (with the Boston Patriots), and led the "No Name Defense" to the first perfect season in NFL history. During the off-season, Nick supplemented his income with a law practice. (How many practicing attorneys are playing in the NFL today?)

At 6'3," and 255, Bill Lenkaitis played center, guard and outside guard for the Chargers and Patriots from 1968 to 1981. During his off-seasons, Dr. Bill supplemented his income with a thriving dental practice in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Gee, I wonder how many National Football League players are practicing dentistry today?)

Is it necessary to be taller to have a successful pro career in basketball today? Well, the shortest player in the 61 year history of the NBA was 5'3" tall, and he lasted from 1987 to 2001. Muggsy Bogues didn't exactly represent the ancient antiquity of basketball's history.


How does all this relate to boxing? That depends on how well you think today's boxers would do against opponents with 300 to 400 matches of experience under their belts.

The automatic assumption that newer is better is a potentially extremely slippery slope to try to stand on. Considering what old fat Larry Holmes was able to do to a peak Ray Mercer, what might a peak Holmes have done to the Merciless one? "I guess I'd better learn how to box."-Mercer. Put today's best in with yesterday's best, and that would become the modern boxer's mantra. (SRL has hinted very strongly that he would not disagree with that.)

 

Lots of interesting discussion material here, but there's one item I have to ask about:

Who's the Olympic gold medalist that Roger Brown outran in a 40?

 

I belive the horses are about the same EXPECT for a few things, Man o War and Secretariat's records still stand. And if Speed is the name of the game, does that me say War Emblem's who cant win in regards to stats are less of a horse???


It proves that in most cases imo, that Man or War, take him out fresh from the early 20's, could very well complete with todays horses.

 

Tony, I knew mentioning that was a mistake as soon as I submitted the post. Your inquiry send me hopping in the car for a drive to my storage space, looking for a book of juvenile literature I hadn't read in eons. Success!

This is my source:

GREAT UPSETS OF THE NFL by Richard Kaplan. 1972. Random House. (NFL PUNT PASS AND KICK LIBRARY) GV950.7.K3 796.33'278
LC 72-1592. ISBN 0-394-82466-0 ISBN 0-394-92466-5 (lib. bdg.)

6.

DETROIT vs. GREEN BAY, 1962:

The Turkey Day Massacre

Page 88, paragraph three:

Detroit's right tackle Brown was the pass rush hero. He was a 303-pound lineman with speed that had to be seen to be believed. In training camp, Roger had raced blazing fast track star Glenn Davis in a 25 yard dash. Davis had won gold medals in the longer dashes at the 1956 and 1960 Olympics, but Roger Brown nipped him by a step at 25 yards-and barely lost at 50 yards.

atschWell, I'm ashamed and contrite at having mispoken about Brown winning over an Olympic gold medalist in a 40 yard dash, and beg your forgiveness.(I'll try to do better next time!:good)

In the process of answering your query, I of course looked up this athlete Brown performed against.

Glenn Ashby "Jeep" Davis won the gold medal in the 400 meter intermediate hurdles in both the 1956 and 1960 Olympics. Additionally, he won a gold medal as a member of the United States 4 X 400 meter relay team in Rome. In 1958, he was awarded the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete. He set world records in both flat and hurdle races.

After his track career, Davis played wide receiver for the Detroit Lions in 1960 and 1961. He had ten catches for 132 yards in his two NFL seasons.

Having discovered all that, I'm rather pleased that you challenged me to retrieve this information. Once again, here's an example of somebody from nearly a half century ago who was "faster" than those he was competing against, yet failed to make much of a mark on the gridiron.

At the time Jeep Davis made a go of it in the NFL, only 1952 Helsinki Olympics 400 meter medalist Ollie Matson had successfully made the transition from amateur track and field stardom into a Hall of Fame NFL career. (Matson played from 1952 to 1967, was inducted into the Pro Football HOF in his first year of eligibility, and will forever be the greatest gridiron player ever produced by track and field athletics, if for no other reason than the fact he was the first. When Matson retired, he trailed only Jim Brown and Bobby Mitchell for most combined total yards gained, despite only playing 12 game seasons over the first half of his career. Ollie Matson was the first player to return six kickoffs for touchdowns in his career, a record that has since been tied, but never broken since he set it in 1964. Matson blazed the path which Bob Hayes tried to follow, and it is because of Matson's far greater individual success and impact that Hayes has never been able to gain enshrinement into Canton.)

 

Great stuff, guys, thanks. This thread is already a treasure.

 

Wow -- that's much appreciated!

I was actually just figuring that you'd just throw out a name! Kudos to you for going to all that trouble to retrieve the original source. I'm a fan of track and football to much the same extent as boxing, so I pay attention to stories like those about as much as I scan contemporaneous accounts of Rav Robinson vs. Henry Armstrong.

Of course, you get no demerits for being off by a few yards in the Davis vs. Brown race. And speaking of "Browns," I'll mention an account from Jim Brown which is another example of the point you're trying to make. In his 1989 autobiography, "Out of Bounds," he mentions another Olympic athlete who couldn't make it in the NFL: 1956 decathlon winner Milt Campbell, who according to Brown was as fast and strong as anybody on the team, thus emphasizing your point that success takes more than those two attributes.

I'll disagree a bit with one of your other points, though. I don't think Bob Hayes quite fits the mold of failed NFL speed merchant to the degree somebody like Renaldo Nehemiah would. Hayes played in three Pro Bowls, led or tied for the lead in TD receptions three times, was in the top ten another couple of times, and is pretty widely credited with scaring NFL coaches into wider use of zone defenses. I think he's not a Hall of Famer because he didn't excel long enough, not because he didn't do very well at the top of his game. Of course, another reason he didn't run up huge numbers is that he was playing in a run-first era for Tom Landry, a coach who believed far more in spreading the offense around to keep defenses off balance than he did in running something until the other guys proved they could stop it.

But I won't disagree that Hayes was no Ollie Matson, who from all accounts that I trust (eyewitness testimony from my father and his friends), was an all-around marvel on the football field.

 

Usually, when I type out something seemingly outrageous, I'm prepared to substantiate it. (But not always, admittedly.)

That's perfectly fair. And he did play on the Super Bowl VI Championship team with the Cowboys, albeit actually overshadowed by his HOF teammate pass catchers Lance Alworth and Mike Ditka (who respectively scored the first and last touchdowns in that game). But hey, when you also have a running back corps comprised of Dan Reeves, Walt Garrison, Calvin Hill and Duane Thomas, and the original Doomsday Defense, you take full advantage, and he did. (Being a second generation native of the Miami area, it pains me to admit that.)

And Willie Gault later won a Superbowl playing for Bullet Bob's Cowboys teammate Ditka, so it has certainly been done since.

It would be expected that Hayes would hold the NFL record for highest average gain per pass catch, but his HOF rival with the Browns and Dolphins, Paul Warfield holds the distinction of being the first to surpass 20 average yards per catch for an entire career.

Statistically, Warfield and Hayes have strikingly similar pass catching numbers. So why is Warfield in Canton while Hayes is not?

Paul Warfield played his rookie year with the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns, catching over 1000 yards in pass receptions through both the regular season and playoffs combined, the year Hayes won his gold medal. In fact, Warfield was the offensive catalyst who finally allowed Jim Brown to become a champion. In the championship game against Unitas and the Colts, Warfield drew the double pass coverage which freed Gary Collins to catch three touchdown passes in the greatest single game performance in Browns franchise history.

The week before the Ice Bowl, Hayes gained over 300 total yards against Warfield's Browns, in nearly single handedly eliminating Cleveland from the playoffs. It was the probably the greatest game of Hayes's NFL career. But in the following two years, Warfield was the primary offensive weapon responsible for ending the Cowboys season. Later of course, Warfield would help the Dolphins win a pair of Super Bowls, and be largely responsible for Bob Griese accumulating sufficient passing credentials to gain entry into Canton himself. Warfield also continued until 1978, finishing with the Browns again (the favored team of his boyhood), and completely overlapping the career of Hayes.

Just because Hayes isn't in the Pro Football HOF (and he may get in yet), in no way shape or form is to suggest he was any kind of failure as an NFL player. He was a legitimate star in the league, and a worthy and deserving champion.

The earlier post I submitted was merely to point out that somebody with the speed of a Michael Vick would not necessarily rule over the National Football League of forty years ago. Heart, leadership, determination, durability, and creativity, among other intangibles, can be far more critical than physical statistics.

In closing, I'll refer to Lance Alworth again. (Blue eyed, blond haired "Bambi" is of course the sports star who makes "White Men Can't Jump" one of the most stupidly ignorant titles in cinematic history. Incidentally, former quarterback and youth football coach Snoop Dogg, wore an Alworth throwback jersey in one of his videos, something he knew astute football fans would appreciate.)

Alworth broke Don Hutson's long standing NFL record for most consecutive games with a pass reception. Hutson was fast and shifty, while Alworth had R.C. Owens type leaping ability. But Alworth's consecutive games reception streak ended around 98 games long.

Here's an interesting trivia fact. Who was the first pass catcher in NFL history to catch a pass in more than 100 consecutive games? It was Danny Abramowitz of the New Orleans Saints, who played from 1967 to 1974. How fast was Danny? While Hayes ran a 4.1 40, Abramowitz ran the 40 in, get this, 5.2 seconds! (The race is not always won by the fleet.)

 

Hayes averaged a very impressive 20 years per catch and scored 76 touchdowns. He was certainly a successful reciever. If I remember correctly, he got into some drug trouble after retiring which might be why the conservative NFL did not put him in the Hall-of-Fame. His numbers are not obviously unworthy.

Matson was the most exciting player back when the NFL first come onto national television back in the fifties, a 220 pounder with all the way speed.

It was stated in an earlier post that Matson was the first and greatest football player to emerge from track and field. What about Jim Thorpe?