Fighters getting over the hill at a young age

I think its a combination of all the issues you described. By and large i'd say that if your a come forward pressure fighter who realises on on work rate and toughness ala hatton or katsidis or gatti you will burn out faster due to the amount of shots you take and the ammount of effort you exspend. A guy like margarito is of course hard as nails and can still take a punch but is now looking vulnerable to cuts and if he goes on fighting is going to be getting stopped liked that more and more. Margarito will be become a name on prospects records and at some point he'll either retire or learn when to give up.
Also if you depend on a particular physical attribute like speed or reflexes or power then at some point there will come a point in your career when that doesnt work anymore. Either due to slowing down through age or coming up against better opposition. So for example if your fighting limited fighters in your home country it might be easy to build up a 25 and 0 record with 22 stopages and then when you go up against a better class of international fighter who doesnt fall over you find you have'nt developed the neccesary skills because you've been knocking guys out inside three rounds.

 

I'm not sure about how the comparison with the fighters of the past works out to be honest. Its easy to trot out the line about boxers today not being as hungry but i'd imagine guys coming from south/central america, asia or eastern europe are pretty hungry. Do fighter now earn more money RELATIVELY speaking than fighters in the past ?

 

A generation or to ago if you couldent hack it, chin wise, they new earlier, it was tougher in the gyms etc, them horsehair gloves' the padding moved from the knuckle! it was survival of the fittest, ie, take them same men back to roman times, stick some armour on em sheild sword etc, march em 100 mile , they'd be lucky to make 30 mile, nevermind fight when they get there. Men are mentaly and physicly weaker now than a roman with basic feed, flat leather sandles, etc etc.

 

Men are physically weaker now? bollocks.

 

I have a theory that weight cutting can take your longevity away.

People might be 'measurably stronger' and faster nowadays due to modern strength and conditioning (not sold 100% on that but for the sake of a hypothesis) but film and ring records show us that the fighters of yesteryear were more suited for battle.

Fighting just isn't measurable in terms of evolution like say, sprinting IMO.

 

teddy atlas says "a fighters age is measure not in years but in punches taken" and its one of the few things he says that is right

 

I will add that you must take every fighter on a case-by-case basis IMO. Even when there is a consensus method on an era not everyone responds the same way, we should not be too broad in our assessment of modern day fighters.

 

Top post, agree with the weight cutting theory.

 

I dunno, its always gotta be taken individually. Some boxers who have lots of wars will burn out quickly but some can go on and on. I mean look at Duran, he'd had 91 fights when he fought Barkley yet he was awesome in that fight and able to go toe to toe with a younger, bigger and less shop worn boxer.

I think it comes down to a series of different factors ranging from style, training, mentality, lifestyle, ring-ware (how many fights not attire) and physicality.

 

Good post Chatty, there are exceptions to the rule both positive and negative in every era. Not everyone in the ol' days was a Henry Armstrong, Archie Moore or Sam Langford!

 

Weight cutting is an obvious example of something that can shorten a fighter's career.

Back in the day (sorry) when fighters used to fight more often, they wouldn't always fight the best guy every fight, or every other fight, there'd more often not be a bus driver or two in between big fights, quite often the likes of Robinson would go on a drinking and shagging tour and have a dozen fights over (say) three months, only a % of them against anyone good.

These days it's all geared towards peaking on one particular night, which might be six months or longer after the previous ''peak'', so fighters can spend significant periods out of the gym when they could be working on skills and keeping weight down.

If you look at the top three fighters in the world (JMM, Floyd, Pac), they're all past their best, and despite sometimes having longer than usual layoffs look sharp from the first bell, and Pac in particular has improved a lot since he stopped weight cutting.

Let's be honest, a skilled natural welter (Floyd) ought to be able to beat a lesser skilled weight cutter, in fact he has many times, as have the others mentioned.

To me, weight cutters rely on one attribute (or sometimes two) to actually win fights, but are regularly exposed/beaten when meeting an opponent that can take this away from. Margarito is one of the few weight cutters that has had any significant longevity at the top level - despite losing a few.... he relied on his chin to win many of those, sick *******.

Look at other weight cutters in recent times - Hatton, Williams and others - all went down the slippery road at a pace. No co-incidence if you ask me.

 

yeah cutting massive amounts of weight like chavez jr or rios can't be good for you.tough gym sparring also can ruin fighters for example this is one of the factors in terry norris and toneys case

 

Shane Mosley would be the best choice for ****ing himself over with gym wars. Toney's gluttony was clearly the biggest factor in his downfall. His defensive ability would've taken the edge of what should've killed him over the years

 

roachs said all toney did was spar for training didn't even like to hit the pads.