Boxing, the Evolution?

I'm not a knowledgeable enough poster unlike many on here to fully know,but I suspect contrary to what the modernists think, boxing skill wise hasn't progressed since the 30's and 40's,i'm not even sure it has athletically,although heavyweights have obviously got bigger.

 

I think skills and techniques were mastered years ago. I mean, in any manual craft there's a master level that the best will reach with the tools, and that won't change in hundreds or thousands of years. Look at 14th century stonemasonry, for example ... something I know nothing about ... but you get my point. Or not.
The levels of craftsmanship and skill are reached in a certain epoch.

I wouldn't like to say exactly when that is in boxing but if someone said Joe Gans actually had as much skill as anyone since, I wouldn't find a convincing reason why not.


Fitness and conditioning may or may not have improved. In some cases it must have - because it SHOULD HAVE, with technology/science developments (drugs, training apparatus, physiology knowledge, DRUGS and nutrition - *ok, I said drugs twice.).
On the other hand, it can be said that modern fighters don't actually demonstrate superior conditioning at all ... they fight less rounds and fight with added protection, ie. boxing just isn't as "physically demanding" as it used to be. eg, fighting 25 rounders in the mid-day sun and what not.

 

:rofl

 

as time passed/passes medicine, sport science and ped's (yes, performance enhancing substances have always been available) get better, doesn't mean every fighter took/takes full advantage of what is available though.


ive read many times on here that the quality of trainers has decreased, i don't know the true extent of this as not every fighter in history was trained by arcel and brown and steward was very good and hunter seems so too. ive seen/heard about some highly questionable things from friends who fought am and unlicensed fights, but fo sure there will always have been charlatans.

 

I don't know,, there will always be great fighters so long as we have great fights. It's the level of competition that I feel maintains the art that has been developed so far. Trainers are one thing but if there were not trainers couldn't a study of all the footage availible provide all the insight to required game plans and boxing styles?

Great athletes are born every day and fighting men will always exist. I won't knock the kids who will provide the future. There will be great fights and therefore great fighters in the future.

Is there anything more to acheive though? Will strength and speed ever create better techniques? Will the best techniques improve with better strength and speed?

or is it the competition that hones technique?

I think it is an awful thought to just shut down and say there is no more progress. it is as good as it gets now and it can't get better.

I think it just changes. And I'm glad that it does change because that's what freshens things up and creates a situation where you never stop learning. If you know everything and there is nothing more to learn it's over.

Fighters now and in the future can take and learn from the past and add what ever is new. But you need competition that's what produces the greatness.

Evolution is just evolution. Things change but there's no proof of progress or regression, peak or prime. History itself produces desperate times and differing social measures but that's not saying fights were ever better. Boxing is not something you can measure. A punch in the face is always a punch in the face what ever the year.

 

I used to think that everyone from 1890-1920 was fairly crude and in a sort of transitional period between different eras of rules. Now, I've seen a few clips that make me question that idea, and I'm not quite sure what to think. Based on the footage I've seen 30s-60s had the best fighters, but 70s-today still always has a couple of really good guys.

Whitaker and Jones, Pac and May could be great in any era, and so too would likely any of the top ten of each decade. I wonder if the difference isn't so much in the top 10 as in the top 20 of an era. Would the drop off perhaps be sharper now and would there be more quality contenders in bygone days? The quality of journeymen seems to be a constant.

What really tweaks my mind lately, is when I try and think about boxing before James Figg. Sure we had boxers. You can read a little about them in passages of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, or the Thebaid. You hear a couple of stories passed down from the ancient Olympics or the Colosseum. But we never get a quantitative ****ysis of the scope of the sport. In the Renasissance and the middle ages, I get the impression that boxing was usually mixed with wrestling in western martial arts. At least, that's how it appears from a cursory evaluation of the fight books.

But even in the 1700s and 1800s when things are once more formalized and popularized, I have to wonder how provincial the sport was. Surely, boxing wasn't confined just to Britain and it's colonies. Fighting comes naturally to every man everywhere, but the particular rules that divide boxing from wrestling, kung fu, kickboxing, karate, or judo are probably specific and rare. If I had to guess, I would say that when James Figg opened his school of boxing where he taught wrestling and stick fighting the emphasis was probably still on the latter rather than the former, and boxing was just a supplementary art to round out the deficits of wrestling and stick fighting as people grappled.

I often wonder if an athlete can be limited by the scope of his sport. If there is no world class competition can there be world class athletes? Would Daniel Mendoza or Tom Cribb only rise to the level of national champion today? Were they merely better than their peers or truly all time great talents? I have my doubts. I suspect that the twentieth century was the time when the greatest number of competitors from the greatest number of countries competed together. I suspect that there was never a time when so many great trainers and clubs promoting the sport existed, and athletes need this to rise to their true potential. I don't know that you can get a Sugar Ray Robinson any other way.

 

I put together a big picture of like sixty boxers, like the ten best of each decade from the 1890s to 40s I think awhile back.

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*I think I might have accidentally slipped Flash Elorde in for Pancho Villa. I have an updated version of the photo with the error fixed which I can't find at the moment.

Some of those guys are in phenomenal shape, but often you can find pictures of their challengers who are in even better shape. Young Peter Jackson looks like a Greek god. I think him and others got into their optimum shape. But they did it with other methods. You can lift weights or you can do a lot of push ups, etc. Anyway, here's a bunch of fighters from the past who look in better shape than most modern fighters.

Joe Choynski
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Packey McFarland
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Sam McVey
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Joe Jeanette
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Harry Woodson 1880s Light Heavyweight
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Hank Griffin 1890s Heavyweight
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Tom Sharkey 1890s Heavyweight
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George Byers 1890s Lightweight-Light Heavyweight
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Kid Norfolk 1910s Light Heavyweight
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Battling Siki 1910s Light Heavyweight
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Jersey Joe Walcott 1940s Heavyweight
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Archie Moore 1940s Light Heavyweight
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Beau Jack 1940s Lightweight
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Young Peter Jackson around 1900
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Kid Lavigne
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I've found cyberboxingzone to be a treasure trove of 19th century boxing pictures and information about early fighters.

Jimmy Elliot 1860s heavyweight
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William C Mclellan 1870s middleweight
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Edward McGlinchy 1870s middleweight
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John Banks 1880s middleweight
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Joe Butler 1880s-1890s middleight-light heavyweight
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Viro Small 1880s heavyweight
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C.C. Smith 1880s heavyweight
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Mchenry Johnson 1880s heavyweight
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Dominick McCaffrey 1880s middleweight-heavyweight
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Bob Armstrong 1890s heavyweight
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Les Darcy 1910s Middleweight
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Otis Thomas 1930s heavyweight
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Leroy Haynes 1930s heavyweight
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Tiger Jack Fox 1930s light heavyweight
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Primo Carnera
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Max Baer
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Well said, sir!

 

This is a superb post, and I am sorry to chop it down, but I will confine my observations to the last paragraph.

Can there be a world class competitor, without a world class field to compete against them? I would say very rarely. Bill Kazmaier in strongman competition might represent a recent example of this. He came along when the sport lacked any real global organisation, but is still compared to the better competitors who came along later. I have sometimes speculated that John L Sullivan might have been the Bill Kazmaier of gloved boxing, i.e. a guy who was roughly comparable to Jeffries or Johnson, but came along before there was a crop of contenders able to field a serious challenge.

I don't think that a global talent pool is necessarily a deep talent pool. Even in the eras where the talent pool is deepest, it often turns on one or two countries, that have a strong tradition of the sport. Tom Crib's England might have been just such a melting pot, with his fights garnering more media interest than the Battle of Trafalgar. Then again, exceptional talents sometimes crop up in countries with no talent pool worth speaking of, such as Barbados Joe Walcott.

Your observation about the 20th century being where everything came together, is probably correct.

 

that's interesting to think on, i would say yes there can too, but being so much better than the competition makes it hard to say either way, and it is likely, as you said, to be in developing or just plain smaller sports. from the few other examples that i think would fit(and there weren't many); loeb(rally), vouilloz(mountain bike) and hawk/mirra(skateboard/bmx), loeb was in a sport experiencing a slump in popularity and the other three were in still developing sports, but, from what i know of them they would all have been something in better/later eras.

apart from loeb, and accepting i know nothing about the development of strongman before i was watching wsm once a year, maybe the link between these names is that they were so good they basically changed their sports, and can be seen as bringing in better, more proffesional eras through example and/or through the increased popularity they brought to their sports($£$ and talent pool).

 

When you look at the fantastic photos posted by Ovids Exile of the old time fighters, it's obvious they knew a thing or two about getting in shape. Conditioning is conditioning. I've always believed that the old school methods of getting in shape are just as good as modern methods. What I think has evolved however is boxing technique, partly due to equipment and rule changes over the years/decades. The "Form follows function" truism applies here I believe. Time travel a modern great back 100 yrs, give him the same equipment of a fighter back then and put him in a 25 rnd fight under a hot sun out doors and you would see a different fighter. Same for an old timer from 100 yrs ago...time travel him today with more modern well made equipment in a 12 rnd fight in an air conditioned arena and you would probably witness the same thing. Both fighters would be out of their element so to speak and would have to adjust their style of fighting to the times. Size also plays a part. Does anyone really see the Fitszimmons that beat Corbett beating Ali...or Holmes...or Tyson etc..good big men with speed, size and power? The difference between a good lightheavyweight and a good heavyweight champ used to be 10-20 lbs. What is it today? 40-50lbs? I don't think boxing has gotten any better so much that it has changed due to different factors. In some ways (for better or worse) it's a different sport (mostly worse in my humble opinion). Just my 2 cents.

 

Surely pro boxing must be more widespread (takes place in more countries) today than in any previous era?