"He fought in a bad era"

Very often eras are seen as weak when there's an overly dominant champion. Louis, Marciano, Holmes and Wlad (to pic some names out of a hat) were all seen as dominating weak eras. On the other hand, the 70's were seen as strong because the title was swapping hands often. I'm not sure I quite buy that.

 

And the 80s heavyweights had both - two dominant champions and titles swapping hands often (for the non-Holmes owned belts). The 80s heavyweights are a good example because talent wise, there were plenty of good contenders but a lot of wasted potential due to drugs, bad management and lack of discipline. Was it a weak era? Yes, because fighters didn't fulfill their potential (except Holmes and Tyson... for a while).

 

That sums up the 80's imho.

It could have been much stronger than it was - and there were good fighters around make no mistake.

 

One hard to argue with sign an era is bad, is if way past it guys from a previous era can compete.

Then again the 90's are considered one of the strongest for HW boxing, and you have Foreman and Holmes doing pretty well.

 

I think 40s on boxing science hasn’t evolved all that much. Better training methods cough PEDs cough not withstanding. Use of weights in the later years. I think the biggest factor to me is how much of a percentage of a population partakes in boxing. Nowadays in the US very few boxing gyms are around and the back alley trainers don’t know much from a technical standpoint or aren’t very good teachers of the sport. Parents don’t let there kids take part in it like they used to. So now the talent pool is thinning out and you see the results. Someone else made a good point earlier. If you can’t makw a living off boxing it’s a part time job but for a very few. Leaving many great athletes to lean towards other sports. Other then that human evolution has not occurred over the last 150 years. But certain eras have more people to choose from and when you have that big of a pool you usually have a better product.

 

Fighters in thongs are a reliable indicator of a bad era.

 

You mean like today, where we have a huge worldwide pool to draw from?

 

I would say globally more people boxed 30 years ago then today. But we will never know really.

 

30 years ago would be 1988... and for that year you'll find (as of April 9, 2017) 12.533 fights, worldwide, in BoxRec's database. Below we have the numbers from 1988 to 2016 (the last year we have the numbers from BoxRec):

1988 12533
1989 13338
1990 13739
1991 12982
1992 13517
1993 14498
1994 13861
1995 14350

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1996 14357
1997 15175
1998 14368
1999 15431
2000 15273
2002 17104
2003 17251
2004 18486
2005 19632
2006 20163
2007 20734
2008 20674
2009 20999
2010 21209
2011 22753
2012 22685
2013 23396
2014 22515
2015 25090
2016 26873

Seems to me, that there are a lot more fights today than 30 years ago. If we assume, that boxers aren't more active (more fights per year) today than 30 years ago - then there must be a lot more active boxers today.

With all the new countries that have embraced pro boxing since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, this shouldn't surprise anyone.

 

Well put!

 

Thank you didn’t know this. But in 88 they also probably didn’t keep as good of records. Everything is digital now and data easily accessible. If that’s wrong let me know. I don’t mind saying I’m wrong. I’m sure in 88 poorer countries kept little to no records of bouts.

 

"Eras" are not a ring-fenced period of time inhabited by a limited number of fighters. There is fluidity across not just time, but also weight divisions. The same fighter over the course of his career may compete against fighters across several decades, and multiple weight divisions. This gives a better basis for comparison than just the eye test. Ray Robinson for example fought guys who were world ranked in the 30s like Zivic and Angott, right through to 60s middleweight champs like Giardello and Downes. Using the Kevin Bacon degrees of separation approach, you can cover quite a lot of ground.

There will always be a subjective element, and a lot of the time the label is used to further an agenda. Picking an example of a "weak" era, 168 around the turn of the millenium was fertile ground for fighters who in a lot of eras would not have been relevance. The WBC champions in sequence were Glenn Catley who was unaccomplished at 160 before getting a 168 title shot as a late sub, Dingaan Thobela, who had peaked nearly a decade earlier at 135, Davey Hilton, who also was several divisions and a decade past his prime, and Eric Lucas, who had previously lost to every world class fighter he faced. Fighters who were not that great in other divisions and time periods were able to win titles.

In the early 90s, 168 at one point had Jones, Toney, Benn, Eubank, McClellan and Nunn. Fighters who won multiple world titles outside of that division, and collectively beat a host of world class fighters and proved how good they were outside of fighting each other.

 

If we look at BoxRec's DECADE numbers, we get a clearer picture of the development over time:

1850s 2
1860s 18
1870s 340
1880s 4,652
1890s 21,950
1900s 59,591
1910s 108,737
1920s 313,313
1930s 350,542
1940s 223,981
1950s 161,834
1960s 107,208
1970s 108,264
1980s 132,609
1990s 142,391
2000s 186,502
2010s 191,569 (probably around 240,000 by the end of the decade)

This is as of Jan 1, 2018... which means, that we don't have the numbers for the last 2 years of this decade. So the 240,000 is my own rough estimate for the full decade.

As can be seen from the above, there are not a lot of fights in BoxRec's database from the last half of the 19th century. How many they are missing (not recorded) from those early days, is anybody's guess.

But once into the 20th century, we see a rapid increase in activity until it reaches amazing numbers in the 20s and 30s - by far the most "busy" decades until this day. Again, I would assume that back then, a larger percentage of the total fights went unrecorded than is the case today. So the difference between then and now may be even greater, that the numbers indicate.

Now if we assume that, as time goes by, the numbers get more and more reliable - then it's clear, that there must have been a very REAL decline in activity after WW2. This decline apparently reached a low-point during the 60s and 70s - after which it seems, boxing has made somewhat of a comeback, when it comes to worldwide activity.

Based on these numbers, I don't think there are fewer active boxers today than 30 years ago.