does anyone honestly doubt that technical skills have gotten worse in boxing?

Don't forget the guys we looked at in those black and white flicks also were the top of the bill in amany different weightclases in quite a long period of time. And sometimes against guys who had less skill and speed than for intance Froch. If you could show them footage of a prime Jones, Wright, Toney or even Floyd they would be in awe too...

But other than zeitgeist there's another difference. And it's not only in boxing, it's called effectiveness. See it like the skills in a computer beat'm up game. The guy who can use every possible technique -from every possible caracter- fast, well timed and on the right moment often loses from a guy who can use one or two of the more effective techniques -from one caracter- over and over again perfectly.
In that case a persons huge skill gets bashed in the head by using the other persons streghts to the max.

 

Has a lot to do with the shift from 15 to 12 rounds and the way the amateurs are going to ****.

Our 'best' fighters today, guys with huge amateur backgrounds etc. are guys who just can't put a fight together. They can do all the tactics correctly, but they're strategically flawed. They don't think ahead in the fight and rely more on out-skilling their opponent in every exchange.

Look at the recent outings by Dawson and Alexander. They just went out and tried to out-do the other guy without a real master plan for the fight. Just go out and be better. In 15 round fights you could rely a lot more on strategy.

Also, the amateur system nowadays rewards a style of fighting that isn't effective in the pros. It's all about speed now. There's no real strategy involved. Guys just seem to fight in the moment without trying to be a step ahead.

 

You now, once calligraphy was an essential skill every pupil should master. Now this skill is lost. Basically because its value is rather aesthetic than pragmatic. Many things got more pragmatic, and sports did too. Early sportsmen of 19, early 20 century looked for balance between competitive and aesthetic sides. Later competitive side took over.
If a sloppy and awkward fighter keeps winning, why bother polishing his technique? Trainers of the past bothered still, cause this early sportsmanship paradigm of perfection was ingrained in their culture. Modern trainers don't. Efficiency is the name of the game as someone already noted in this thread.

 

Good post.

 

Ward, Bradley, Dawson, Bute...

But you're absolutely right for the most part.

 

Most modern boxers spend way too much time lifting weights because they think it's all about strength.

 

i honestly doubt it. you are trying to compare a group that took 100 years to compile versus an average group fighting today. take a pac, delayoya, jones,chavez, lopez, whitaker, etc... and compare it to a group from 20 years prior and you wont find much difference in skill level. you can do that with almost any 20 yr group in boxing history.
i do believe the activity has dropped and so the effectiveness of the average skill level has dropped but not the level of skill, if that makes any sense. of course you will find pockets of gold in any era where a small group of fighters just stood above everyone else.

 

I agree, guys in the past were more skilled overall

 

yes, there is plenty of doubt. MAB, JMM, EM, Pac, ODLH, Trinidad, Nard, RJJ, JT etc and so on stack up with any fighters from ANY era.

In fact, this is a stupid thread.

 

Word. Berto, Williams, and even to an extent someone like Pascal are all pretty good examples of this. It's a damn shame the training talent and facilities just arent there anymore. Maybe with all the Mexicans moving to the US we'll see a resurgence in boxing? I think that in Cali and Texas we've seen more prospects recently.

 

Yes, they were so polished and versatile, those old 60 rd fighters.

Truth is, about 54 of those rounds were spent holding. Literally. Also, watch some actual fight clips of those guys, then come back here after seeing these windmilling, wild swinging, rushing, lunging, super wide punching, no head moving, chin up in the air having avatars of boxing science compete, and tell us how easily they would polish off RJJ and SRL.

 

maybe technical skills have declined, I lean toward yes they have, but theres no solid way to prove that. one thing that clearly has declined however is conditioning, and perhaps this plays into why people believe technical skills have declined, because fighters are literally so fat that they can't execute what they're taught in good fashion. take today's heavyweight division however. only recently have some well conditioned guys stepped up whose last names did not start with a K. before that, the top positions in boxings most storied division were occupied by fighters whose body mass indexes would probably land them in the obese range, literally. come the **** on.

 

World records in track and every other sport from earlier in the century are routinely broken by high school kids today. A game between the Bears of 2010 and 1946 would be 728-0 for today's team. Boxing is somehow, someway, in some mystical fashion different from every other sporting endeavor?

Use say.... 6% of your brain when answing this question. It will give you the right answer.

 

lol, very sharp point.