Different Fighters Different Era's: No Comparison

Lots of great comments in your post.

But I strongly disagree that fighting is the best training. When training (outside fights) you are training in a much more controllable environment. You are able to practice all the little details again and again until they become second nature. You are also better able to dosage training and isolate different types of training (this is impossible in fights).

Now I am not saying that fighting is not important to gain experience - of course they are. Only during fights that you can put all the pieces together under extreme pressure. So fighting is very effective for gaining experience - but I think it is very inefficient as a means for technical and physical training. A fight environment is simply to unpredictable and uncontrollable.

I think there is a clear reason why all sportspeople use specialized training outside competition.

 

That's really the point. Jack Dempsey is great for different reasons than why Mike Tyson is great, Sugar Ray Robinson is great for different reasons than why Floyd Mayweather Jr. is great, Henry Armstrong is great for different reasons than why Manny Pacquiao is great, etc. You can't compare them because greatness comes in a different package each era.

 

Imagine if you took a Pep, or SRR or Greb or whoever and gave them three months to train and all the advantages of technology, muscle-building, diet and equipment that the modern fighters enjoy. Oh, and make the fights 15 rounds again; seperate the boys from the men. There are so many variables. In most other sports (American football, basketball for instance) there's no comparison as the athletes are so much bigger now. But in boxing it's really open to debate, because a weight class is a weight class. No getting around it.

 

8-10 weeks is not enough. With VERY FEW exceptions many great fighters developed their skills and talent over a LIFETIME. Meaning, many learned the basics of boxing during early youth, basic tactics in their teens and refined it during their professional career.

We are talking about growing up in a totally different athletic and professional environment.

 

I mentioned this once before, not only the conditioning improvements have been made, but also modes of communication. Fighters are able to see a fight and study fighters from even their own home. We are able to see fights from 50+ years ago, to the fight that just happened the other day with a few clicks.

Secondly, the vast amount of information available only continues to grow. Never backtracks. Back in the 50s, who freely knew the rope-a-dope strategy? Today its a common term.

It's the continuously growing pool of information that the trend in overall ability will increase on average. There will be declines, but the overall trend will only improve.

 

Agreed. How I compare fighters from different eras (and I do this in different sports too) is simply who dominated their era more? There's no fixed way to determine the best ever you just take quite a few guys and say these guys are some of the best ever.