In nearly every sport, sports writers, fans, athletes, all agree that sports evolve and so do their competitors, but boxing is the only sport where fans and experts alike say it's actually regressed? Going off the eye test I fully agree, but has it really and how is it measured?
Looking st the sport as a whole, I think it absolutely has. But if we are talking about the skill levels of the elites, then this is a more intriguing question. For example, if we take the top ten fighters of each decade, how do they fare against each other? I think modern day elites are on par with the golden age elites of the 50s - 80s, but we give the edge to the classic boxers because of greater competition. The YouTube channel Boxing Gems does breakdowns between era elites, and the modern fighters are competitive.
So, what's the theory behind it? Less people taking up boxing? The passing of great trainers who haven't passed their knowledge on? An actual difference in training methods? Less fights in a career? Not enough big fights?
Yes, but not in unexpected ways. The gloves are much bigger so parrying is less varied and so counters based on parrying have dried up. Feinting over the opening three rounds is too risky now, because if you lose 3 of the first 4 you're probably not going to win on points, there's no time. Static defence is far easier to work behind than a mobile defence now than they were in the 1940s. Skills have been streamlined with the rulechanges in the exact way you'd expect - we go the sport we legislated for. LaMotta's lame feint and Robinson's varied jab, they were worth more over 15 than 12 and if you used them today they'd be riskier. They'd be less effective skills.
In the vast majority of sports, improvements have been made through application of better technology, better financial support or incentives and the breaking of barriers raising the collective goal-line that the competitive field is aiming for. Nobody broke the 4 minute mile until Sir Roger Bannister and now it is a great feat but likely won't place you better than the top runners coming out of university sports programmes. Usain Bolt broke records that we thought would never been broken by the margins that he did and yet, biomechanical study demonstrates that Jesse Owens ran with a leg speed and stride that would have placed him within a stride or two of Usain on the same surface with the same spikes, starting blocks and same conditions. Hamilton and Schumacher stand head and shoulders in history at the top of the summit of F1 drivers but take away the improvements in aerodynamics of their respective cars and the technological advancements in driver assistance, would they have been any better than Senna, Mansell or Prost? Boxing is one of the weird things where in civilising the sport, in making it safer, making gloves safer, making the refs more protective, making fight camps longer, big money fights reducing activity down to 2 - 3 fights max per year, whereas yesterday's greats fought 10, 15, sometimes 20 times a year for a decade plus, the biggest evolutionary factor of skill development is removed from the average fighter. Yes, they have ample video to rely on and hone their craft but craft honed away from the furnace of true adversity is prone to fail when met with a fighter who genuinely brings skills, willpower and experience to the table that sporadic sparring or flashy padwork can't prepare you for. Inside fighting, feinting, drawing leads and countering as well as stylistic nuances have disappeared for the most part as many fighters resemble the standup European/British style stand up points scoring amateur boxing style. Proof that boxing has devolved in many ways is the way that fighters like Toney, Ward and B-Hop were often celebrated for demonstrating "old-school skills" that used to be common place that allowed them to overcome or completely shut down fighters that would have otherwise dominated other opponents in the same weight class. Add in some of the points Macca said already and the other query about the disappearance of multitude of trainers with direct lineage to an abundance of old school technical skill and psychological dark arts experience, as well as many potential athletes opting for MMA, basketball, NFL, football, rugby and other sports, it's clear to me that whilst boxing may have become more athletic in the modern sense, the sweet science is slowly souring.
In my view, at least from a North American perspective, the best potential athletes aren't going into boxing anymore. For a significant portion of the 20th century, boxing was one of the main sports where an athlete could become incredibly wealthy. Because of that, it attracted many of the best athletes. Since at least the 1980s, though, the top athletic talent has increasingly gone into the major team sports. Today, athletes can earn several times more in the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL than most star boxers, with far greater financial security.
One of the best posts I've read to a thread on '24. Great insight. When we see a genuinely great fight these days, which has everything, it really stands out, doesn't it. However, are these fights getting overhyped, because of the "science souring?" Were these quality fights more commonplace on the regular in yesteryear?
At HW it looks like boxing has regressed cause everyone's much fatter. The boxers that do the best on "the eye test" are skinny. Boxing mostly evolved in it's 2nd and 3rd generations as you went from former bare knucklers who started fighting as adults to people who grew up as fans and had formal training. That's the big jump. After that there's not much to evolve. It's a sport where people punch each other in the face. As of this date most weight classes are awful but that's just a phase following several decades of excellence. Boxings challenges are mostly politics and structure. The main reason a lot of weight classes are terrible is these last few years seemingly all the best medium sized fighters are at 154. A division whose lineal champion hasn't fought since the pandemic. Not the actual training or fighting.
Fighters don’t fight as often and talent pools aren’t as deep. The Mayweather effect caused modern fighters to do more to preserve their undefeated record which meant taking less risk, less challenges, and trying to scalp a marquee name on the way down. American football is not easy to compare across eras. Quarterbacks in the days of Montana, Elway and Marino didn’t heave nearly as much protection in the league as they do in the modern era. If you looked at Tom Brady wrong you got a flag, in Namath’s era he was chopped at the knees, clotheslined, took direct hits to the head, dog collar tackled, etc.
My friends, the beginning of regression...is regression. But the END of regression...is the beginning of progress. The very tail end.
Yes, apparatus and conditions otherwise have changed a lot over time and have had their own stand alone effects - that’s before even examining how fighters have or haven’t evolved in their own right in terms of conditioning, technique etc. Those two attributes are strongly tethered to the “as and when” required attributes of a changing sport at any rate. You wouldn’t necessarily compare a sprinter to a distance runner but given the changes in boxing over many years, it seems we do exactly that in a number of instances. I’ve yet to see an as technically sound puncher at HW as Joe Louis. People might try to piece meal perceived flaws in Louis’ game over a number of fights - fights that Louis still won, as it so happened. What isn’t often factored is Louis’ frequency of fighting and longevity. Louis was economical over the long haul - he wisely preserved himself and wasn’t always putting out his absolute best every time. That approach worked for the most part but sometimes it backfired. The proof in the pudding were Louis’ vastly improved performances in rematches when Louis shelved his steady as you go, 9-5 job approach and duly upped the ante. As such, I think that many of the warts that some perceive in Louis’ game are highly misleading/disproportionate. Sure, Galento gave 9 to 5 Joe a little bit of a fright - but Joe ultimately still destroyed The Fat Man like no one else had done. Joe was fighting Galento and did exactly what he had to do to beat one Tony Galento. Against a different opponent of greater perceived threat, Joe naturally does it differently and better. So, pulling Louis out of the context of a given fight that he still won in order to highlight an alleged fatal flaw isn’t necessarily the practical, hypothetical exercise that it is often played off as. Ali has been the subject of the same overweighted scrutiny. Cooper KDs a young, clowning Ali fighting to prediction and instantly, every fighter with a decent left hook has a high chance of doing same. Ali’s career didn’t unpack thusly, he was only dropped once thereafter by an ATG Frazier left hook in the 15th round no less of an already overall brutal battle. Just 3 fights back in after his exile. In the so called mod. era I think Louis, exactly as he was, would do extremely well. But then I also think Joe may well input some tweaks into his game for a possible, more ideal fit into the mod. game. I might not even call those possible tweaks evolvements per se, rather, it would simply be Joe “customising” himself better to the mod. game and requirements - including ways to better combat the pervading clinching practiced by SHWs looking to exert their greater size advantage directly - a tactic that has nothing to do with evolved skills - and a very irksome tactic to say the least, imo.
The abbreviated distance you mentioned is a crucial factor,another is the much shorter careers, in many cases men are pushed into title shots before they have really mastered the art.Another factor is the fixation on a clean sheet,so risks in evenly matched men are not so readily taken.
In the last 10 years many fans feel the NBA is not what it out was. There are few big men that play inside, post play is extinct, mid range game just a 3 point shooting game. They no longer call traveling and practically let player run with the ball. Defense? Forget about it
Factors like career length, number of fights, how many rounds, fitness, all play their part, but that doesn't fully explain the supposed boxing skill regression that many agree has taken place.
