Great trainers and their alleged disappearance from the sport

The funding for Olympic Boxing is not like it use to be . Boxing is
no longer a glamour sport and in fact with so much corruption
there is doubt it will be survive much longer. You have to give kid's
something to strive for and that Gold Medal no longer has the
lustre it once had.

 

I personally feel that too many amateur matches can burn guys out I have seen it I always felt that Donald Curry's long amateur career is why he just became hot and cold

 

The number one thing for a boxers first amateur fight is to get over the fear/anxiety etc of being in a ring it can be surreal....Greynotsoold can speak on this as well he has been in this sport for over 40 yrs in various gyms as have others....it depends on what gym they come from, their coach, talent and comfort in front of a crowd....most fighters at that level are basic for my experience but I have seen guys who are so comfortable in the ring they would look like seasoned fighters.....It also depends on the gym they come from if they have a boxing team most fighters will have the same style

I threw jabs and right crosses my first 3 months shuffling back and forth side to side slide in slide out hands up bring your hand back to your cheek etc...I was so numb when I got in the ring I did exactly what I was trained to do but standing in front of a crowd was scary. trust in your training like someone else here said you should have thrown combos, jabs and moved so much in the gym that even if you get hurt your body will take over and do what it was trained to do its a primitive thing.....go fight and have fun

 

I have to agree and to add to it the UFC and others are the new black so to speak I teach much of the same stuff as I trained in Muay Thai and Catch Wrestling/BJJ later....I have said this about other things as well the world is much smaller now with social media...people weren't stupid in the old days they just did not have all the information available to them hence a simpler time....now over saturation of information is an entire subject in its own the youtube experts have given every youngster with a cell phone the answer to everything. There is a good chance your corrupt doings is being recorded in some way or form and available for public consumption. This brings me to what I argue about the turn of the century fights the control of who were the best contenders for a title were better controlled the public depended on either being able to watch every fight or depend on sports writers....

 

I think you look across the ring and the other guy looks bigger and more muscular but when the bout begins and you land something the tension/fear leaves you.A mate of mine used to throw up before his first few fights but settled down quite quickly once he was actually boxing.

 

I look at this as a difference between guys that are great teachers and guys that are trainers/conditioners. Being from Philadelphia we had many of both at one time. I'll try my best to explain.
When Spinks fought Ali he had George Benton and Sam Solomon in his corner. Now George was a great teacher. Solomon was a trainer/conditioner who thought he was on George's level but he wasn't.
I'm of the opinion that there is more trainer/conditioners today than there are great teachers. I could be wrong but that's the way I c it.

 

In my opinion... it starts with an understanding of technique and how important it is; an attention to detail with an understanding that, while you want perfect, there is a time to accept close enough. Most important is the ability to communicate what you know in such a way that the student can learn it.

 

Not true there are some who did but most started out fighting as pros....yes there were alot of fighters with amateur fights like Louis, SRR and others. Not until the late 60's were there beginning to be more fighters with strong amateur pedigrees becoming prominent and IMO the 76 team with SRL, Howard Davis, the Spinks bros and Tate did being a successful amateur begin to take over much of the thinking of boxing I guess my question is what you consider old......getting to the fights cost money and in the older days pre and post depression survival was more important....I trained in a gym of a sparring partner of red top davis who had 90 pro fights and 0 amateur he was always talking crap about the amateur fighters because in his day you had just enough to learn the basics then you turned pro the attitude of his generation was you learned your craft in the ring and sparring with better guys. If I had to pinpoint 1 guy who brought amateur pedigree to importance was SRL he was a goldmine out of the Olympics 7UP commercials the shoe tassles the commercialization of boxing I think a light bulb came on that fighters could learn to fight at a high level as an amateur with no pro penalty and if they could make it to the Olympics and win.....their marketability goes through the roof hence the 84 team.

 

When I was in Oklahoma City I ran into an interesting little kid. He was 10, but looked younger as he was short. His father brought him and he sparred every one of the kids in the gym, he must've boxed a dozen rounds. At first I was busy and not paying attention but when I saw that he was taking it easy on the other kids I started watching.

He had the Floyd Junior style down. Shoulder rolling right hands, hook and pivot out, all of it. In talking to his father I learned that he had nearly 50 fights, and he was basically self taught. No trainer could/would teach him to fight like Floyd so he did it himself by watching videos on YouTube.

Where there's will, there's a way, I guess.

 

Results

 

I agree with this. Was watching the "champ' G.Russell a few days ago, He hit Diaz with a 6 or 7 punch combo, every punch landed on Diaz's arms and gloves. No variations to his attacks, almost robot like for the entire fight. Meanwhile Diaz never flowed his defense to his offense. Meaning he waited until Russell stopped his attack then he attacked. Both fighters had very little upper body movement, very few angles used, both fighters became very predictable as the fight went on. Yet their world class fighters / championship caliber in today's game. It's the reason Lomancheko defeated the same G. Russell convincingly. Russell was just as fast as Lomo, but what Lomo was able to do because of being well taught is vary his attacks, change his punching angles, use a plethora of different punches at the RIGHT time . His offense flowed with his defense, very few times during that fight he was not in position to immediately counter Russell's attacks. Very few fighters in today's game is capable of doing that. And its the main reason so many who watch Lomo today think he's the best ever. But 30 yrs ago and earlier almost every very good/great fighter was doing what Lomo is doing today. The fundamentals are not taught and drilled in to fighters today until it's instinctive. It's the difference and reason why Ali vs Frazier can go 15 "pits of hell" Rds and still have proper technique in that 15th rd. And why guys like Wilder and Joshua look sloppy after 5 rds with below average competition. Maybe because the game has become so commercialized and watered down with so many different world titles and it's so much easier to become a world champ, or because of the inherit dangers of the sport ,trainers today are not pushing fighters the way hard old school trainers did in yrs past. Off topic a little but along the same vein is in Karate, and other Asian martial arts. Black belts are practically given away today . I've seen 10 yr olds running around with Black Belts today. That was unheard of 30-40 yrs ago. Even if a student was a prodigy doing Kata's he/she still had be able to show that they could really defend themselves . And the only way that could be shown is actual combat in the Dojo against other trained Deshi or students. And that was done at 15 yrs and older when the student has developed the physical skills and mental toughness to actually demonstrate his/her ability to earn a Black Belt. Today it seems there giving them away.

 

Yes there are others who had good amateur backgrounds but it is not even close to the 70's-now of amateur pedigreed fighters stepping into the ring. The 100 amateur fight phenom was not a normal thing in the old days.....amateur boxing and catch wrestling later Judo were added to military training programs as self defense training and in Officer academies it was mandatory....an interesting sidenote is Japan post Samurai era building their military prior to WW2 knew that Japanese men lacked aggression so they brought western boxers in to have them do it they had nothing like there. You are confusing a few people in the old days with amateur fight experience with how much more extensive it became most people in the old days if they fought amateur only did it normally until they started a career rarely did they turn pro. I am not sure how old you are but I disagree that SRL rode on Ali's coat tails he was his own phenom yes similarities and he borrowed some pageantry in the ring...SRL was marketable all by himself.

I can name quite a few who fought amateur in the early years but it was nothing like it became. And there was not marketing of top amateurs like there is now and was in 76 fighters were marketed because the sport had gone mainstream thanks to Ali IMO. Now a trainer wants to train develop and market a fighter the amateurs is the way without penalty of losing an 0. Every major tournament from regional to worlds since amateur boxing gained bigger popularity has the top trainers, managers, investors at fights to watch prospects they can develop into a fan friendly world class pro style...in the old days it was not common to have anyone but local managers at the matches looking for talent.

Amateur boxing prior to the USA-ABF and PAL was no different than professional fights in fact the bloodiest most brutal matches I ever saw in boxing were at the local level amateur and shitty local promoters....safety was not considered for a fighter......I myself can barely remember some of my own matches once at 14 yrs old I fought a 18 yr old Golden Gloves Champion who I had seen wreck several fighters once we started the fight I was in and out of consciousness I remember the ref stopping the fight once to clean up the blood on the tarp...yes tarp not canvas and coming to in the middle of me pinning the guy in the corner throwing punches. Being a vet of the lesser era of safety I can guarantee that extensive amateur careers in earlier times saw as many punch drunk amateurs then as I saw in my time and once a fighter is that damaged their is not much of a future in the pros though commissions in those days didn't protect fighters then. Even in the early 20th people knew that there was little money to be made from a damaged fighter.

 

Not Patterson? He was the first in a line of five HW champions that had won Olympic Gold as amateurs.