Has boxing technique evolved since the 1930?

Abe Simon = Mariusz Wach.

 

If we are talking boxing technique and strategy, I don’t think much of what 1930s boxers did can be classed as obsolete today. In that respect boxing was still the modern era. So I don’t think you can say technically anything is out of date. Just effective or non effective. And even that can be overcome with strategy. I have a hunch that an old technique or style can still be applied to fit any strategy in another era.

I think it’s more to do with being able to apply what a fighter needs to do under the conditions he’s fighting.

Perhaps the era before this, the pioneering earliest glove era it was more of a different sport and some evolution developed but to fight back into that era perhaps in order to be successful in those conditions one might be forced to revert to those methods anyway? Not so much the 1930s. They were already very advanced gloved fighters who could control pace to meet what they wanted to do.

 

It's kind of silly to look for a trend in the numbers, when the numbers are biased due to the records being less complete the further you go back. The commisions send in the modern records, and the managers all want to make sure their fighter has none missing, whereas the old ones need to be found in an old newspaper, which have to be notable and often miss part or all of the undercard, or a record book, which often only include key fighters.

 

You goddamn right it has changed. Only a fool thinks otherwise. I was there man.

 

No, nothing can be proved either way.

The reason I'm doing this, is because we hear about this shrinking talent pool all the time! Posters who argue, as if it's an indisputable fact, that boxing interest is in a downward spiral, with the number of active boxers becoming smaller and smaller.

I just want to challenge this notion, as I don't think it is fact-based. If someone reads "The Arc of Boxing" and comes away with the belief, that boxing is dying because of the ever-shrinking talent pool... well, I don't just buy into that. I want to find out for myself, if there's any truth to this. And I honestly can't find anything that proves this to be the case beyond dispute.

But what do you think… do you find it likely, that the number of active boxers, worldwide, has gone nowhere but down over the past few decades?

 

I think that's fair. It doesn't seem we really have the info to assess it.

 

Thanks - that's all I wanted to hear!

 

This is a very good post.

To say that the way fighter A does things is more "evolved" than fighter B from the past, it implies fighter A does things that are without question better than the other. Not only that, but fighter B's techniques, training methods, etc would all have to be either obsolete or not as effective as modern contemporaries.

You cant have it both ways. In the example you gave, Tysons head slipping and body/head combinations have not been surpassed at hw. To call it obsolete a modern guy would have to have an even better more effective way of doing the same things.

 

You're really close, but I can't resist a minor nitpick -not because it really matters to your point or anyone else's but just because someone might find it interesting or simply like to know:

Strictly speaking, evolution is any heritable change in a population that accrues over multiple generations. These changes are often adaptive, but some are simply the result of random genetic drift and not driven by any particular selection pressure, and some are just indirect byproducts of changes that are adaptive ("spandrels").

 

I have often wondered, why today's boxers are so much better than the oldtimers - and now it turns out, that we can thank random genetic changes for that. I just KNEW, there had to be some simple explanation!

 

If so then it's potentially revealing that Simon was considered a top 5 heavyweight for two years in a row (by Ring, anyway), while Wach never cracked the top ten.

 

I guess Simon probably achieved more, to be fair.
I've only seen him against Joe Louis too, so I might be selling him short.

 

Biggest change over the last 15 or 20 years is that most fighters today are scared to get hit and don't know how to fight on the inside. I suppose that's a result of the mounting evidence over the last 30 or 40 years of brain damage to boxers and also probably just a symptom of the fear based health and safety culture we're living in now.

 

Very good point.

You can only call something obsolete if a modern guy did something old school (as good as an old school fighter could it) only for it to completely work against him. A modern fighter would have to literally out do Muhammad Ali -and fail every time, for the dancing style to become totally obsolete.

 

I dont think its a fear of brain damage. The side effects of sports trauma is well documented and public for several decades now. Its definitely modern culture. Guys are scared of being embarrased and turned into a meme with this era of camera phones. Many men are punks nowadays in general they would sooner get a group of people or a gun then have a 1v1 fight and that mentality carries over into combat sports sometimes. You have a lot of front runners who cant handle the pressure when it counts and a lot of ducking.