Hear me out for a minute: Floyd would beat Sugar Ray Robinson

Floyd would lose at welterweight. Plain and simple. Floyd is the man at lightweight though.

 

Duran/Whitaker are the men at lightweight, wouldn't be struggling with a sub-elite fighter like Castillo.

 

I'm not a boxing historian so I'm asking these questions out of ignorance but, watching SRR highlights show him as a very fast heavy handed brawler throwing wild looping hooks against people who aren't really fighting back. Obviously this isn't the whole story so I ask what made him so great? And why in all these mythical matchups does he trounce everyone yet he lost 19 times? Why did he lose those fights? Was he out of his weight range or old or what? I could just go and look at boxrec but I'd like something more than a statistical analysis.

 

hmmm good point

 

Floyd would be the man at every weight class he's entered ... throughout the history of boxing ... Floyd is a one of a kind fighter ... i'm pretty sure he's learned from the old school boxers ... but with his new school athleticism, agility, and illusiveness ... it'll be hard pressed to find a fighter that could beat him.

His defensive style ... he's not concerned about getting the knockout ... he's cool with going the distance ...

The old school guys were good at what they did but it wasn't as good as what PBF does. You think about it ... there were different types of fighters back then ... there were more relentless guys ... guys that took more risks and were fighting just alot just to get paid.

I think that SRR can transition to this era - but taking today's Floyd and yesterday's SRR - Floyd would beat him ... he would be too hard to hit.

Those guys back in the day - though many were defensive ... its more apparent now than back then. Floyd would put a strong emphasis on not getting hit and mixing up his attack against Robinson ... Robinson has never seen a fighter who lands effective punches and doesn't just go in there trying to take his head off.

 

atsch atsch

 

Don't bother. The guy thinks that when Mosley moved up, he skipped 140 to avoid Floyd.

He thought Gomez was going to beat Cotto and he scored the Oscar-Forbes fight 115-113.

 

Agreed.

 

Ban.

 

Robinson beat Willie Pep in the amateurs, and opponents like Kid Gavilan were exactly the kind of fighter who lands effective punches without trying to take your head off. So were Sammy Angott and Marty Servo, as well as Tommy Bell. Robinson's been in there with and beaten multi-dimensional fighters before who had more than one way to beat you, but Mayweather's never been in there with anyone close to Robinson's level.

 

I recently started a thread along those lines which was shot down by two of the self-appointed experts, the said experts unable to support the blanket statements they bombard this board with. Said discussion resumed on another thread: same attitude of denial, only this time the detractors made the effort to raise a few points.

There's improvement in every spheres of human activity: track & field records, to cite one discipline where performances are measured in absolute values, are surpassed regularly. The biggest jump in terms of training and nutrition science occured in the early 70's.

Boxing is no different with the result that the total output of dynamic strenght and resistance in a boxing match was higher in the 70/80's than it was in the 40/50's and even more so today. Evolution...

In contrast, evolution is sometimes counterbalanced by another phenomenon known as "emulation", which I described (and which was labelled ludicrous by the same "experts"). The ambition to equal or surpass others must have been very strong in the days of Duran, Hearns, SRL and Hagler, everyone pushing everyone else toward higher standards of competition. (side note: as good as it appears now, the WW division would be pushed to higher levels if PBF would accept his role of leadership by taking on the best WW's, Cotto being the top contender, that being said...)

Conversely, the current HW division being dominated by Eastern-European boxers might indicate that the phenomenon is strong in East-Europe whereas it wouldn't be elsewhere, specifically among U.S. HWs who currently have no role model to look up to.

We can make a case of comparing 80's boxers with those of today given that both generations are not all that far off from each other in terms of training and nutrition science and because of the high level of competition that existed 25 to 30 years ago.

I admire the fighters of the 40/50's - a lot. But comparing them to today's boxers is just plain silly. There's not enough of that emulation phenomena to make up for the evolution in sports performance.

 

What you once again fail to realize is that the talent pool for boxing is nowhere NEAR as big as it used to be, what with all the top athletes going to other sports. Boxing in recent years has barely registered as mainstream. Your points have ALL been discussed, so your little comment about us being unable to back up our statements is ******ed. You're wrong here. You think that boxing will continue to evolve until fighters are 8 feet tall, have 3 arms, and can do back flip punches. Sorry, but there's a clear peak to every sport, especially one that has been dwindling as has boxing in comparison to previous generations.

 

You can always count on SweetPea!!!

 

Ok, its official. You are more delusional than even bigtime 9.

 

First off: "******" yourself.

Now that we're even on the insults level, I would invite you to revisit my post from which you conveniently choose to ignore the comment I made on emulation (and the example of the 80's version of the WW division) which couterbalances evolution in sports performances.

Also distorting my statement about evolution: never said that it followed steadily any sort of progressive curve. It progresses but it also fluctuates. I also said on the other thread that the biggest evolution in boxing in terms of technique happened in the days of SRR and mainly thanks to him (the reason why I view him as the all-time best).

Boxing having reached a peak in the 50's is a blanket statement unless we can measure in absolute values performances in boxing.

Only indicators are: (1) watch the evolution in disciplines that are measured in time, lenght, height, etc...; (2) analyze the correlations between disciplines (example: what's the % increase in performance during a given period and what type of training contributed most to said increase)...

Statements like: Gavilan was better than Cotto mean just about nothing given the time gap between the two.

Also, what's your interest in a sport that peaked long time ago, as per your claim, and is currently in regression?