Exactly when did boxing technique stop advancing?

Technique and ar t certainly have never advanced past displayed by the 40s and probably sometime before that

 

I think it's still evolving, especially in the training and weight cutting departments.

As far as effective fighting techniques, there was a high water mark in the 30's through the 40's, when the talent pool for both fighters and trainers was deepest. General interest and popularity in the sport was at its peak, unmatched before or since.
Boxing gyms were packed then. Now most of the athletes are in other sports.

There was also another quantum leap in the 80's, but really you could say it was just a continuation of the momentum from the era just mentioned.
Definitely a leveling off by then (late 80's).

The great fighters now are fewer and further between.

 

Thanks to better/more knowledgeable trainers, and a deeper talent pool today than 30-40 years ago, we are now seeing more and more great fighters being produced around the world.

 

It’s difficult to say when technique stopped advancing and clearly some people in this thread think it is continuing to advance even now.

I would say that by the 50s there was a greater orthodoxy in technique which may or may not have been cemented by television becoming the dominant medium for watching the fights.

 

I don't think it stopped. Although I think the quality of fighters went down about 1995-2000.. More titles easier to get a title because more of them, so less fights needed to win a title and be on top. Canelo is so good now because he has so many fights and has fought everyone, so that has helped him improve. He could do well in any era. Only a few guys can say that now. Today boxing is not that great. Many of the top guys we see as dominant would be easily beaten by the fighters of 20 years ago. Canelo against a Hagler would be an easy fight for Marvin I think. I think Roberto Duran of 1989 gives Canelo a great fight and could win. And he was seen as old then.

 

Crawford and Usyk were also mentioned in a study of fighters using the dominant hands as their lead hand.

 

Canelo would have destroyed Duran at 39 and is a far better middleweight than Duran was, GGG would have done better v Duran than Hagler did.

 

I’m no expert on boxing techniques but I refuse to believe today’s fighters have higher skill levels than the fighters of the eighties and before.
There are some exceptions in the modern day, but generally I don’t see any evidence of these “modern techniques” being superior.

 

I see fighters from the middle 1920's to the end of the decade that I think are just as skilled as any that have come after.eg
Gibbons
Tunney
Delaney
Leonard
Genaro
Labarba
McLarnin
Berg
Chocolate
Shade
Canzoneri
Petrolle
Loughran
Mandell
Tendler
Brown

I think there have been some advances in the heavy ranks up to around the late 60's early 70's but overall I don't see any significant improvements .

 

Technique never stops advancing. What are you guys talking about? As long we have films and books and great clever trainers and fighters with high ring iq who are willing to learn from the past, one can always make imorovements.

For example, wladmir klitschko had an amazing jab but why would it be ludicrous that a guy 30 years from now could study his fights on film and find an even more efficient way to throw the jab the way wladmir did? Maybe someone studying film notices wladmir was a little too tense in the shoulder and said future guy found a way to be looser while maintaing the speed and power?

Unlike team sports, combat sports are all about the individual. You cant look at an era as a whole and say "boxing stopped evolving" because there arent many innovators. It's why you have guys like floyd maywearher or joe louis whi were way ahead of their time in terms of technique. Individually, they took skills and moves of the past and improved on them drastically compared to their contemporaries. Right now i have Floyd as the #1 defensive fighter at 147 and easily top 5 of all time. But just because he's undefeated and an ATG, that doesnt mean a guy 30 years from now couldn't improve the philly shell after studying Floyd's moves.

 

The sweet science has gotten much more scientific over time. It would be hard to imagine even great champions of the past like Jeffries, fitz, tommy burns or Johnson being competitive with a amateur nowadays with their stiff upright posture and lack of body leverage in their punches.

I think Willard vs Dempsey was a great example of how modern boxing would look against fisticuffs.

But to awnser the main part of your question with my opinion is you can never stop learning and I'm sure we're gonna see new talent bringing new ideas to the table in the future. For the most part I think we peaked in Ali's golden era.

 

You can’t fight just like Mike Tyson by looking at his films. That’s why.

 

Willard Vs Dempsey is what happens when a desperate power puncher fights a shot reluctant boxer.

Putting your body and leverage into punches was figured out in the ealy 1700's.

And the idea people fighting far much longer fights could possibly be stiffer is preposterous.