Deontay Wilder: I would knock Joe Louis out

Okay, there's a premise, but there's no obvious conclusion in sight.

 

Bullsh*t.
Bullsh*t, bullsh*t, bullsh*t.

Let me offer you a palliative for the painful statement, and point out that neither you nor anyone else has ever so much as suggested - let alone really adduced- any causal mechanism that comes even close to justifying the confidence of these kinds of statements.

 

Well, bear with me here. If I want to learn how to box, right, I can in literally 30 minutes not only have great classics like Dempsey's book at my fingertips, but also how-to videos from champions and trainers. I can have expert breakdowns like those from Jack Slack. I can make my own conclusions if I'm smart enough, by not only watching the (magnified, if I so choose) footage of champions but also slowing the video down. I have commenters like RJJ and other champions that point out the finer points. I can get the latest advice on nutrition and training, just as quickly.

In the "old days" I'd have to go to a gym, and hope that my trainer had a clue. Judging by footage of "old fighters", a lot of them did not. Obviously, today I'd go to a gym too, so that's not changed, but it's all the "extras" that have.

 

Great vid Reznick. I could watch Joe Louis clips all damn day.

 

In the old days, there were a lot more gyms. And quite frankly there is no "latest advice" on nutrition and training that has any basis in actual science. As I've said many times, if anyone thinks this is an outrageous statement, there is a very simple exercise you can perform to prove me wrong: start citing papers. No one will, because they simply don't exist.

Training may change over time, but it's a huge and wholly unfounded assumption to say that just because certain training techniques are more recent they are more effective. Boxing is an art, and unlike sciences, arts don't continually accumulate knowledge. What actually tends to happen is that over time skills are both acquired and lost. It's much more like genetic drift than evolution.

 

I'm Deontai Wilder WBC heavyweight champion of the whirl

 

Very informative reply. Thanks!

 

Let me start off my saying that I'm not a Deontay Wilder fan by any means. Not even close! I can't stand him whatsoever and there isn't a boxer that I dislike more than Wilder.

However, there has never been a heavyweight in the past that was 6 foot 7, and possessed the punching power, speed and athleticism that Deontay Wilder possesses. Deontay Wilder is either an anomaly, or just a normal new heavyweight in the modern era that didn't exist in past heavyweight eras.

There were heavyweights obviously prior to 1990's that were as tall, or even taller than Deontay Wilder. However, none ever possessed the combined speed, athleticism and power to go with their height and size.

The same can be stated of Anthony Joshua and the Klitschkos too. These are all new breed of super heavyweights.

Deontay Wilder may not be a 'super heavyweight' like Anthony Joshua is. However, his height and reach simply cannot be ignored. They make up for his lack of weight.

Modern heavyweights, and boxers in general are simply superior and more advanced for the most part. Due to advancement in doping and PEDS (I don't care what anyone says, but pretty much every top boxer is artificially enhanced) and exercise methodologies.

 

No, I'm sorry but everything you said is wholly unfounded assumption.
Let's consider this disjunction you present: Deontay Wilder is either an anomaly, or just a normal new heavyweight in the modern era that didn't exist in past heavyweight eras.

First, if he's an anomaly, what exactly is the anomaly? Merely that he's 6'7"? Neither his weight nor his power are in themselves even close to being without precedent, and a long line of precedent at that.

Now let's consider the second possibility in your disjunction. If you're going to posit that there is this new breed of modern heavyweight, you can't just assert this as though it's self-evident. You need to cite a causal mechanism that could plausiblly explain this.

The causal mechanism(s) people will usually cite if pressed are "modern scientific training and nutrition" but I'm telling you - and this is not an exaggeration - there quite simply is no such thing. I know that sounds crazy, because you've no doubt heard the contrary so many times that you're confident that if this were baseless horsesh*t someone would have spoken up and said so by now. What I guarantee you haven't heard countless times, or even once, is the slightest actual evidence furnished in support of this assertion. Unfortunately, to most people the repetition of falsehood is more persuasive than the demonstration of truth.

Again, if I'm making bold statements, it should be trivially easy to put that egg on my face. Start citing peer-reviewed papers from top-tier journals.

 

Deontay Wilder is 6 foot 7 + more athletic than any other past heavyweight of that height + faster than any other heavyweight of that height + more powerful than any other past heavyweight of that height. Are you getting what my point is now?

It's not just size or height alone. But it's the combination of height and size, with skills + athleticism + power.

In ancient heavyweight eras, heavyweights of Joshua and Wilder could not move with the same speed. However, Joshua and Wilder at 6 foot 4+ move as fast and are just as athletic as the small - 6 foot 3 move.

The onus is upon the ones claiming that ancient heavyweights were better or more athletic, to prove their claims and not vice versa.

 

I don't share your perception, and even if I did I wouldn't find the fact that these factors happen to have aligned with a height of 6'7" anywhere near as significant as you do. And you're shooting yourself in the foot by placing this stress on height as the product (presumably?) of modern nutrition. Two of the four examples you've cited - half your sample size thus far -grew up in late cold war Ukraine. You seriously think they were better nourished than Rocky Marciano? At best, that's far from obvious.

"In ancient heavyweight eras, heavyweights of Joshua and Wilder could not move with the same speed."

Bull****.
Carnera was faster than Wilder - with far better form - and almost as fast as Joshua. So was Jack O' Halloran. Cooney was the same size as Wilder, may very well have hit as hard, and certainly had a far, far, far better jab and overall technique.

"The onus is upon the ones claiming that ancient heavyweights were better or more athletic, to prove their claims and not vice versa."

I didn't make that claim. I claimed, correctly, that your assertion is without the slightest support. That's not the same as actively asserting its opposite. And once again, you're simply assuming modern = better. You clearly think that's the null hypothesis, and that you get it by default, for free, without paying a penny in evidential dues.
Not the case.

 

First he needs to give Ortiz a rematch

 

I don't like comparing era's and I don't like matching fighters from different times, but with Heavyweights we have to take in to consideration the size differences.

Heavyweights back then were not very big but I do believe they were a tougher bunch in general.

Tales of the tape would be very interesting comparing sizes of the champions back then to recent world champions.

 

Really? The "state of the art" way "back then":

"Cornermen did a number of things that would be hard to believe today. For instance, with fighters getting bruised, bloodied, and oftentimes blistered by the sun in the ring, trainers would give their men some whiskey between rounds to dull the pain. And when a bloodied fighter came back to his corner, it was common for dutiful cornermen to place their mouths over their fighters’ noses, suck the blood clear, and spit it out to clear their breathing passages. They would use a similar method to get the blood out of their eyes to clear their vision."

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=za&client=firefox-b-ab

Can you imagine getting your fighter drunk in the middle of a boxing match, screwing up his balance and dulling his reflexes? Yeah, that was "cutting edge" in the old days

Ummmm. Back in the 20's and 30's they were only finding out what vitamins were and why they were important:

http://www.vitamins-nutrition.org/vitamins/history-vitamins.html

There's a whole goddamn history of biochemistry between 1930 and today. If you genuinely think that nothing has changed, then I can't help you.

Here's a paper from 2000:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10637381

That would have been total gibberish to somebody from 1940 because half the terms and concepts did not exist or were just being discovered at the time.

No, see here, if these "lost arts" were so darn good, you'd see guys like Dempsey, Louis and Tunney use them on film. And if they exist on film, then they can be duplicated today. Because, well, we can kinda see them being used. Conversely, to the best of my knowledge, there were no time machines around in 1930 for those boxers to see what they do today. Hence, yes, the knowledge does build on itself.

 

But some heavyweights were very big, and at the extremes were every bit as fit and physically impressive as those at the extremes today. Look at Carnera in the Impelletirre fight: 268 and ripped to shreds. Or Jose Santa, who was billed as 6'9" and weighed around 250 without an ounce of fat. Of course heavyweights of the past were smaller on average, but there was no cruiserweight division, the fights were longer and the gloves were smaller.