Dominic Breazeale vs the following

It makes a big difference. It's all about being efficient. How do you know that Hagler and Duran couldn't do better if they had access to modern nutrition and training? You're assuming Hagler/Duran/Ali were the best they could ever be. Just because they trained or ate a certain way and became great fighters, it doesn't mean we can't do better. You are also forgetting that almost everyone trained and ate the same way during that period. They fought each other at the end of the day. Great athletes existed in previous eras. Those fighters were natural athletes. Today we can create athletes. I think Lomachenko is a great example. His training regimen is unlike anyone else and you can see it when he fights. His reflexes, speed, footwork, balance & coordination is exceptional. He's a modern athlete imo. You can look at a 6'6 245 lbs Wladimir Klitschko. That's a modern athlete. Compare him to Buddy Baer or Abe Simon. Just the athletic ability. Then you look at this giant at the age of 41. When he fought Anthony Joshua. He looked great. If you go back to the 50s and 60s. Maybe you'd find a couple of fighters who could compete at highest level in their 40s. One fighter would be Archie Moore. But he was 5'11 and a light heavyweight. Special athlete nonetheless.

What did fighters do before they skipped ropes or hit the bag? When someone finally started skipping rope, did they call it fancy "modern training"? Skipping rope happens to be a great exercise for boxers. Today fighters are doing strength training and old-school fans calls it "modern training". It has actually shown to help fighters performance. You can look up studies that have been done on this subject.

I don't know if you watch basketball. But if you do, you'd know who Kevin Durant is. This guy is almost 7'0 tall. Usually these guys are slow and not as athletic as the little guys. But he is one of the best athletes you'll see in the NBA today. He should not be able to move that quick considering his height. He shouldn't be as coordinated as he is.

You can look at another guy named Giannis Anetokoumpo. 6'11, 242 lbs. There's no way anyone his size should be able to move the way he does.

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Giannis covering 40 feet in 3 strides.

No way anyone his size in the 60s or 70s could even dream of doing this. I bet he'd beat most Olympians from 60s in a triple jump lol. But my point is, athletes today are superior to those from the 70s and 80s. There are some exceptions, obviously. But on average, that is the case.

 

"Just the way the C grade doctor today knows a lot more than the A grade doctor from hundred years ago. "

It's not like that at all. Not even ever-so-slightly. This is a terrible, terrible analogy, and you have absolutely no idea how cumulative progress is made in science. I quit reading right there, and I'd better not reply further before I cool down or I'll get booted for sure.

 

"How do you know that Hagler and Duran couldn't do better if they had access to modern nutrition and training?"

Because there is literally no such thing as modern nutrition and training. If you think there is, I want the very first line in your response to be the first in a series of links to relevant peer-reviewed papers. If the first line is going to be anything else, don't bother.

 

You're using revenue as a proxy for participation? Oh dear...

 

OK that is nearly 50 years ago now.

That would mean that boxing most emphatically did not evolve in the manner of other sports!

 

Boxing is a lot older than the rest of the sports. Did you think of that?

 

I guarantee he did. Did you?

 

My point was Hagler, for example, probably ate a very good clean diet athlete's diet but without any supplements, and I doubt the added supplements would make any real difference.
I say that from years of experience in the subject and involvement in bodybuilding, powerlifting as well as endurance sports and general fitness. The main thing is the main diet, the real food, the training and rest.

Duran and Ali possibly ate pretty bad through most of their careers and I believe they could have performed higher for longer if they'd clean up their diets ...... BUT we're talking about a couple of guys there with incredible longevity anyway, so it's ludricrous to imagine them doing more however logical it is.

Let's get back to Dominic Breazeale : his diet is probably crap. He might add some supplements into his crap diet. He's gassing after 8 or 9 rounds and he's fat.

Wladimir Klitschko at 39 was outboxed by Tyson Fury.
Tyson Fury already had a long history of bad diets and boozzing I saw Tyson Fury's "weight training" when he was training under his uncle for Wlad fight and it was ridiculous, like seeing a clueless teenage kid using the gym for the first time with terrible form and no reasoning behind the exercises.
He beat Wlad regardless.

Firstly, boxers always did strength training. Even if they were told to go and work as a lumberjack for a year or whatever (putting it in its most primitive example), that's deliberate strength training.
I'm not really talking about strength training though.
I'm talking in general about the idea that anything new or any impressive non-boxing-specific "athletic" gym feat must result in an improved fighter. It's a fallacy.
A fighter becoming more "athletic" (or fast or explosive) in any given gym drill needs to be converted to boxing-specific ability and that does not always occur, and even when it does occur it takes such time as to make its net benefit debatable.

I'm neither for nor against, I'm just putting the thing into perspective.
The modern athlete is at an advantage, due to advancements in knowledge, yes, if they make use of it.
But the gulf isn't as large as all that. The basics and common sense still account for the vast bulk of training.

Much of the variation in modern training is simply to relieve the modern athlete of the monotony and boredom.
In the case of someone like Anthony Joshua you have to even wonder whether some of his training videos and practices and simply advertisements for equipment and apparel.
And there's a whole industry of 'training expertise' out there that overcomplicants things just to perpetuate itself. Careers depend on it.
That might sound cynical but there's truth to it.

 

"Most of the seeming improvement, especially in track and field, is most likely the result of rapidly expanding talent pools, improvement which has largely plateaued as growth of the talent pools did."

How did you reach that conclusion? You were talking out of your ass weren't you? And now you wanna act like your comments were backed up by some peer-reviewed journals but I shouldn't talk unless I cite some credible papers lol.

"Basketball is a far more popular sport than it was n the 1960's. Tell me, how easy do you think it would be to even find a publicly accessible basketball hoop within a three mile radius of any given residence in 1950, even in a major city?

How did you reach this conclusion? How do you know basketball is a lot more popular today than it was in the 60s?

 

The same way I conclude that horse racing and baseball are far less popular now than they once were. Some things just seem strongly apparent on their face, but if you insist I'll try to dig up some empirical sources tomorrow. (I'm about to go to bed.)

To be perfectly frank, I'm 95% percent sure you already agree with me without sincere reservation and just want to occupy me with pointless legwork.

 

No it isn't.

People have been running for ever!

 

OK, lets say that there is some cut off point to the sport's evolution.

Once you say that, it undermines your entire argument.

I could then say, yes there was a cut off point, but it was in the 1920s, when the number of active boxers peaked.

Personally I am a believer in the one off talent, and I think that the GOAT could theoretically crop up in any era.

 

People have been running competitively since 1896. Big difference.

No it doesn't. When I watch Ray Leonard, I can see him dominating today's division. I can see Roberto Duran as the lightweight champion. Hagler at middleweight. Hearns at junior middleweight. Spinks at LHW. Holmes at HW. Guys like Tubbs, Page, Thomas, Witherspoon were better than today's heavyweight contenders. Benitez, Sanchez, Gomez, De Jesus, McCallum, Curry, Chavez, Pryor, Pedroza, Chang, Qawi, Sterling etc. All these guys could compete today. It's hard for me to say boxing has improved since the 80s. It hasn't, as a whole. But I don't feel that way when I watch fighters from 20s or 30s. I don't believe they could compete today.

What else have you been saying this whole time? You don't think fighters have improved since the 1920s. You've been arguing that for the last few days.

I don't believe that. Ray Robinson is considered the goat by many. I think Ray Leonard was the better boxer. Duran was better than Armstrong. Thomas Hearns was better than Kid Gavilan. Marvin Hagler was better than Stanley Ketchel and Mickey Walker. Floyd Mayweather was better than Benny Leonard. Pernell Whitaker was a better boxer than every lightweight that came before him. Ricardo Lopez was better than Jimmy Wilde. That's what I believe. But I don't use head to head ability when I rank fighters. I like discussing fantasy fights like everyone else but I don't believe hypothetical matchups can determine anyone's place in history. Fighters should be judged by their accomplishments.

 

You didn't even say anything lol. All you did is talk shi-t. I tried to show you boxing was more popular in the Ali era than ever before. I don't want you to dig up on horse racing lol. Stick to the argument. Tell me how boxing was more popular in the 20s and 30s than it was in the 70s and 80s. Because this is what you said earlier. "Most of the seeming improvement, especially in track and field, is most likely the result of rapidly expanding talent pools" How was the talent pool in boxing larger in the 1920s? And how did you know that the talent pool in track and field is rapidly expanding? And if it is rapidly expanding, how did you know that's what led to an improvement in performance?

I want the very first line in your response to be the first in a series of links to relevant peer-reviewed papers. If the first line is going to be anything else, don't bother.

 

My point wasn't that all sports evolved the exact same way. My point was, all sports have evolved since the 1920s. There is no linear curve when it comes to progression. No one can tell you the rate at which a certain sport evolved. All you can do is watch athletes and see for yourself. And I believe we have a come a long way since the 1920s and 30s.