Boxing is getting worse, not better!

No attack from this poster...I agree with you.

 

I also agree, but the argument and vitriol once it REALLY starts ceases to be about boxing. It's about wars between generations. This forum could be about music, baseball, cars, ANYTHING.......and the arguments and name-calling would be the same. The oldsters are partial to their own naturally, so you have to look for the odd red herring who is indeed blind to any progress with time or looks through all aspects of life through sepia lenses, but for the most part there's also more than a grain of truth to what they say when they offer comparisons of eras.

And likewise, the kids don't want to be told by their elders that anything their era represents is less than or worse than the old fuddy-duddy's. It hurts the pride, that's all. They won't give up the ship because of what it would say about their generation as a whole, however silly that may sound.

 

I think boxers were slightly more skilled, on average, in the 1950s to early 80s. They're much better trained now physically. Those considerations even out to some degree.

 

I just watched a pretty killer fight. I think the decline in frequency is giving us better performances. You can't tell me that the guys fighting 3 times a month in the "golden era" were giving top notch, fine-tuned performances. It is just physically impossible. Meanwhile, the money is still very large, the demand insane (what other sport operates solely on PPV?)... This is the best of all possible worlds.

 

Fighters are still fighters, tough is still tough, three minute is still a round and ten seconds is still a knockout.

The problem is that when you have four titles in each weight class; is a titleholder number one or is he number four. When you have four titles, you have four top tens. Is a rated contender number ten or is he really number 40?

Boxing is always better when the top two guys are facing off against each other. Don't start talking about moving up in weight until you have unified at your current weight.

We've had ho-hum eras before. Boxing as always come out on the other side better than ever.

 

That's true, although the frequent fights seemed to have helped develop additional experience. (More training camps, preparing for a larger number of opponents with different skillsets, encouraging activity, getting boxers more acclimated and comfortable with stepping into the ring for a major fight, etc.)

 

Hwt division is the worst I have seen it in my years of covering the sport and that dates to the early 70s. Nobody even knows how to throw a left hook anymore for CS.

 

Yet the lighter weights seem perfectly capable of throwing left hooks, and they're trained by the same guys.

The "lost techniques and inferior coaching" argument gets overplayed. It's there, but it's not decisive on its own.

 

Yeah, that KD of Povetkin and the brutal KO of Chambers by Wlad were "inverted right hands"...

The post-Zaire 70's was the worst era for heavyweight boxing I can remember, just a horrible pop-culture worship of a washed-up Ali that frankly I find embarrassing for all involved. That is followed by the pre-Tyson Holmes era with a load of talented but indifferent (or drugged up) contenders.

There's a lot of good talent now. They just need the impetus to face one another. My hope is that once some of the older players are out of the way we get some tournament style action in the division.

 

To be fair, both Foreman and Holmes came out of that milieu, and they did well against the 90s heavyweights as old men.

 

Throwing left hooks and throwing them correctly are two different things. Very few good trainers today so few who know how to teach good technique. I'm in gyms all the time all across NA and can see the difference very clearly....as the decades passed fewer and fewer gyms and within those gyms that are left you would be hard pressed to find capable cornermen. Lots of amateurs out there posing as trainers.

 

There was a gym in almost every neighborhood in almost every city of the US. When a guy is fighting 15-20-25 times a year; they are always training, so they are always in shape, and they are always learning, and they are always ready.

We can go back and look at the number of licensed fighters from any year in any major city; NYC, LA, Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, etc. I guarantee you that there are fewer licensed fighters now than there were in the "golden era".

Fewer guys at 6 rounds, at 8 rounds, at ten rounds. The field of competition is not as deep as it once was. We will always have special fighters and the cream will always rise. But more guys will rise through the ranks without being tested the way they could be, they way they should be.

 

To imply that the crop of fighters today compare to the boxers of the 1930s to the 1950s
is ridiculous. With very few exceptions the fighters of my favorite era couldn't compete with the great fighters of those days for a simple reason or reasons. There were at least
7 times as many pro fighters fighting almost monthly than today, in hundreds of fight clubs in the USA. There were great full time boxing trainers as Ray Arcel, Whitey Bimstein, Charley Goldman, Freddie Brown, Eddie futch, Chickie Ferrera, etc . There was for example a fight card EVERY night of the week in NY, except Sunday where boxers learned their craft hoping to get a shot at a prelim bout in MSG. To get a main event
at MSG a fighter had about 45 or more bouts to be lucky to get a main event in those days...To say that the fighters of today can compare with such men as a Joe Louis,
Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore, Lloyd Marshall, Jake LaMotta, Marcel Cerdan,
Tony Zale, Charley Burley, Ray Robinson, Kid Gavilan, Billy Graham, Tommy Bell, Johnny Bratton, Ike Williams, Bob Montgomery, Beau Jack, Sammy Angott, Willie Joyce,
Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, Henry Armstrong, Chalky Wright, Sal Bartola, Manuel Ortiz,
and so many other seasoned fighters of that rich era is preposterous....When we have so many, many more fighters, fighting so often in so many more fight clubs, competing with each other it stands to REASON that the top fighters of that day would have to be better than today's "part time" fighters who fight a few times a year against less experienced boxers of yesterday. Common logic dictates that...Yes there are a few exceptions like Mayweather who is the best of today, but were he fighting in the explosive 1940s for example every 4 weeks or so against the likes of a Robinson, Gavilan, Holman Williams,
Charley burley, Ike Williams, or a Beau Jack or a Henry Armstrong or a Fritzie Zivic, he
would be not undefeated for damn sure, and because of his style of mostly defense would
have had to engage in milling more to be known as Money Mayweather...
So to answer the question today the top fighters of today cannot compare to previous decades when there were fight clubs galore for thousands of young boxers to learn their craft, and the advent of tv, hastened the downward spiral of boxing today...

 

A license fee, a q-tip behind their ear, a bucket in one hand and a towel in the other; all of a sudden some guy's a trainer...