Yeah right, todays fighters are so much better. I mean how could the likes of Ali, Foreman, Louis or Frazier last three rounds less than they were actually used to fighting, when matched against such highly skilled, well conditioned, supreme athletes like Chris Arreola or Sam Peter
A fat a ****, near 40-year-old Toney was unlucky not to get a decision against a prime 26-year-old Sam Peter. And the reason why the old, past prime, obese Toney was competive against the much larger, much younger and much stronger Peter is because unlike Peter, Toney is actually a skilled boxer. This is the same Sam Peter who dropped Wlad multiple times and is considered one of Wlads best wins.
Just got back, R. Here's my two cents 'bout Pac. Watched him train 'n fight when he first came to the states as a '22-pounder; 'n got to know him doin' interviews. He's an extraordinary little guy; the first impression he makes -- diamond-shaped calves 'n Bruce Lee cuts, not withstanding. Think the secret's the Pinoy public relations gold mine: His million-dollar boyish grin. Intimidator's the last thing comes to mind Will leave the PEDs assertions to the muck rackers 'n flame warriors. Saw him regularly, as basically a one-arm fighter, drop 'n wobble much bigger spar mates over the years, with big gloves 'n without rancor, like Darchinyan. To a man, the guys who's noses 'n ribs he's broken -- study him intently on the ring apron to solve the riddle. After all, they look like arm punches. Even Manny's baffled. "They fall down when I hit'em,"he giggled. He should be spreading the gospel, anybody he hits gets religion. Others around him -- now that he's a meal ticket -- are uptight 'n suspicious, but Pac's a happy warrior 24/7. In the one match every fan wants to see, with Mayweather; on paper, Floyd's better in every category but crowd-pleasing. But, Pac's the train too far way to hit you at a railroad crossing. Aside from Pinoy loyalists, the smart money will be on Floyd. I ain't smart, think Pac will catch lightening in a bottle.
Toney fought Sam Peter (who Wlad struggled mightily with), KOed Holyfield, and fought Hasim Rahman (who KOed Lennox Lewis).
John Garfield, why do you post in the general and not the classic anymore? Are you keen about the thoughts of the younger generations as opposed to just hearing conforming views?
It's pretty simple. Boxing is a sport far more about skills and technique (Which have blatantly devolved if anything) than it is about athleticism. It's very much a mental sport, rooted in degrees of strategy and spontaneity all while maintaining a grasp of the fundamentals, techniques, and old school skills. In any case, the talent pool has diminished over the years in boxing. Hopkins is an anomaly in the sense that his disciplined has allowed for such longevity. He's anomaly in another regard because he upholds old-school boxing skills just like Archie Moore which allowed both to be successful in the sport. A guy like Bernard Hopkins is in the game and champion mainly because he can take advantage of fighters that are poorly schooled. All that natural ability and athleticism means little when your grasp of boxing skills and its fundamentals are limited. Yes, I'm talking to you Pascal. There are a laundry list of fighters similar to Pascal, so don't fool yourself with any arguments of evolution of other sports. It's not there in boxing, not because the athletes are lesser, but because the techniques and knowledge learned for ol' time trainers are dying out and not being passed down anymore.
Everyone in the world is younger now, P I just respond to threads that interest me in any forum; but as far as the classic forum, can't imagine anything more thankless than mythical match-ups.
So your saying the trainers have gone down thus we have lesser skilled fighters? It seems to me a lot of good technical boxers like hopkins or toney would be great at training boxers and passing on their wisdom.
I agree with this but part of the reason why boxing will never evolve like every other sport does, is that is relies far more on intangibles which can't be measured. It's very easy to look at a guys height, weight, bicep size and make him out to be an impossibly tough opponent but when it comes to things like heart, desire, toughness, how could anyone ever measure something like that? And those are attributes that are far, far more important in boxing than sheer size and that has been proven so many times over the years that it seems utterly pointless to list exceptions. If we were talking about runners for example, all you'd have to do is look at their time and you can figure out who is better than who. It's not rocket science but running is completely different than boxing, obviously, and it's foolish to take such a simplistic approach to a sport which is far more complicated and difficult to predict than running is. Like you said, there's skills and technique which have both declined and even though the intangibles like desire, heart etc.. shouldn't change, they play such an important part in boxing that they shouldn't be ignored either. A short, unathletic, flabby but skilled guy won't always beat a primitive Ronnie Coleman lookalike, but if the skilled guy is the one with the more desire, toughness, heart and so on, you would give him a much better chance of beating his opponent. Anyone who writes a fighter off because of his size and physique should take a look at what truly makes fighters great. There's not a single fighter in history who is great because he was big. There are, however, guys who were very physically limited and yet should still be considered great because they had something inside them that visiting a gym and bench pressing can't instill.
I dont understand how some ****ers can say that Robinson would absolutely beat the **** outta Mayweather and stop him inside 2 rounds. Also how Duran gets a pass for quitting against Leonard absolutely baffles me. Fighters like Ortiz got ****in ridiculed when he packed it in against Maidana. The excuse some posters on this site give for Duran is 'yeah but he is an ATG and a badass'. Absolute bollocks if a fella quits he quits.
A shell of Sam Peter in comparison and someone Wlad absolutely destroyed the fight after, Wlad in 2011 is twice the fighter he was in 2005 and even then, that was twice the fighter he was in 99 - people evolve. Hasim Rahman, yeah, got lucky with a one puncher against a cocky Lewis - look what happened when Lewis went in angry with him, again the version Toney got as a shell of the Rock that used to be. And Holyfield? Seriously? Again, put Toney in with a Klitschko, an Arreola, an Adamek, a Povetkin - any of the real HW's who aren't old shot versions of their former selves and he'd get spanked