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

I disagree, and STRONGER doesnt mean **** in boxing, unless you plan on having a push and clinch fest. Do that with Sugar Ray and get your kidneys and livers snatched anyway.

Hard punches comes mostly from technique... Look at Smokin Joe, he was a fairly little dude for a heavyweight(besides the hips, but i doubt he was squatting everyday and following ervery nutrition tip in the book...read his training book..).. But that left hook would rip your dome off.

 

Like I'm supposed to be intimidated by arguments of authority... :-( Sorry also for no being totally consumed by this board like some 14+ posts-a-day members are. Anyway, for the exercise...

You can measure boxer's performance by results and, to some extent, by their resumes. The exercise is increasingly difficult and subjective as the time gap between boxers widens. I can accept with some reservations a statement like "Aaron Pryor would beat PBF" because of the relative proximity of the two eras but I grow sceptical the more we go back in time. The wider the time gap, the more variables and few variables work in favour of older boxers.

Objective reasons for the scepticism include but is not limited to the evolution of sport performance, specifically in disciplines where performance is measured objectively (time, length, height, distance) and, to some extent, in team sports that require heavy protective gears like football and ice hockey.

Check the olympic standards established in the 50's for disciplines like track and field, speed skating, weightlifting, alpine and cross-country skiing, etc... and repeat the exercise for the 80's and the 2000's. All the standards went up, some in excess of 10%.

Ice hockey and football: 1970 players and earlier played with no hockey helmet, no or rudimentary face guards and paper thin pads. Hockey gloves offered the protection of winter gloves. Playing the game nowadays with such rudimentary equipment would be suicide. The total output of strength in hockey and football games is such these days that it's no longer possible to play using 1950 equipment without being injured.

The increase in performance didn't occur without reason: modern training, specifically dynamic strength training, plays the greater part.

To think that boxing's evolution "froze" in time while every other sport evolved is ludicrous.

I think that SRR is far better than PBF not because he would beat him in a fantasy match but because of the way he dominated is era and the stylistic innovation he brought to the ring. Put the two in the same context and, yeah, SRR by wide UD, possibly late KO.


Regarding your argument on trainers, or lack thereof, you'll have to explain that one because I really fail to see your point (or rather don't. If you have to get all antagonistic over stupid fantasy boxing matches, you can crawl back to your nostalgic rock alone).

Provided that there's such shortage it doesn't disqualify the science behind boxing training. Where I live there's a shortage of doctors, does it mean that medicine has regressed since the 50's when we had doctors in excess?

A shortage of trainer would moreover affect average to mediocre boxers, not the elite boxers we are discussing on this forum.

 

No, remember you are the one that is faking science here, not me. I am the guy taking you to task.

Wow, you didn't adress my question at all. In fact you didn't even attempt to.

Why don't you look back at the question I asked you? Its clear to me that you are a person who talks in intellectual banter but without much substance.

To remind you, you made the claim that there was no valid way to assert that past fighters were superior to modern ones. There was a lack of imperical data to do so, you argued.

Then I turned this statement back to you, and pointed out the fact that your arguement was self defeating in that it also meant that you couldn't argue the opposite (that modern fighters were superior).

You then tried to divert this by saying that they were not better, but were "better prepared and trained", to which I asked you to demonstrate that with the standard you were advocating of the "measurement of absolute value."

You said you would get back to me on that, but you haven't. Your post doesn't adress it at all. And in fact you know you can't do this. If you were honest, you would acknowledge this and stop wasting my time.

 

I should quote this at least 10 times for truth.

 

He loves to frame what he says in an intellectual way, but when you read between the lines there isn't much happening.

 

I remember asking you first to : "Show me evidence that sports performance have decreased over the years and given that you won't explain at least what makes boxing so different than every other sports where the theory applies, I'm waiting."

No response, obviously reluctant to do the exercise.

Talent is not time specific, there are only conditions that allow talent to emerge, such conditions vary with time. To that extent, my views are pretty similar to yours and the Sweet Pea guy. I explained how I think it works through the notion of emulation.

I answered your question more than once, you just fail to understand. How I assessed that boxers are better prepared nowadays is self-evident given that olympic standards have steadily improved through time. The olympic analogy serves to show with empirical data that, generally speaking, sport performance improve with time. Main reason: better training and I would add "longer periods of training" between fights (speaking of boxing).

Can you say without smiling that boxing trainers have not benefited from the advances in sport training? Seriously.

Take the Birkenstocks off, you're so ****ing defensive over that past **** you must be Mathusalem.

 

Two against one. Midgets wrestlers in a handicap match. BTW prime Sky lo-lo and Little Beaver are better than the Undertaker.

 

Whitaker v. Gavilan, who wins?

I let you two fight over that one. :rofl

 

Very close fight. Whitaker holds the outside advantage, Gavilan was the bigger, more natural WW, whereas Whitaker was at his best at LW. Gavilan was extremely versatile, and while Pea's outside work and defense would do him well, I assume Gavilan's workrate on the inside and ability to adapt may carry the day. I'd take it to be similar to Gavilan's fight with Billy Graham. Very close affair, depending on how you score.

 

Sigh. :roll:

Let me explain how this works. I never made this claim. Do you understand that asking me to argue a point I never made isn't the way it works, not in science and not on a boxing forum?

Ok I am interested here. Please expand. Show me this data.

And I assume you are talking about boxers, of course if you aren't than this arguement doesn't hold water being you keep calling for empirical evidence.

This wasn't your arguement. Your arguement was that fighters recieved better training now. Am I to have it that you only said this because of advances in sports training? If so, this gets fairly slippery, given that the Mayweather Sr. has his fighters run in combat boots, Beristain is known as strictly an old school trainer, etc.

Do you mean Malthusian? Of course, this has nothing to do with anything.

 

Pbf Ko 1

 

Double sigh :roll::roll:

Sure you did, by invariably claiming that boxers from the past would beat today's boxers.

What are you talking about? You are allegedly trained in methodology of science and yet fail to understand the concept of analogy? I never claimed that there exists exact measures of performance in boxing ... oh ****, this is gonna be long, triple sight :roll::roll::roll:... What I said is that there's an evolution in sports in general and that the evolution is better measured in disciplines like track and field.

Also said that if sport performance in general increase (proof: olympic gold medal performances) the probability are high that athletic performances in boxing followed the trend. That's a truism.

Seriously. Elite boxers nowadays have crews of trainers and experts in conditioning taking care of them, sport dietitians and psychologists and whatnot...

Boxers in the 70's would do deep leg press, now they've shorten the amplitude of the movement to stimulate the fast twitch muscles and hype metabolism (when the boxer needs to make the weight). Fast twich muscles contribute to muscle explosiveness. In other words, it contributes to improve reaction time. That's an improvement.

The benefits of plyometrics are also well documented and is used widely in boxing gyms nowadays. A form of plyometrics existed in the 50's but never pushed to the level of sophistication reached today. Another improvement.

Examples are legion.

Another factor is the period of training between fights was considerably shorter in the old days. SRR and the likes would fight up to twice a month, sometimes three times; that's not a lot of time to get prepared.

 

Do you realize how ridiculous this statement is? I said one older boxer, SRR, would beat one modern fighter in Mayweather.

You acting like this is a blanket statement really degrades your credibility.

This doesn't make sense. Science is science, analogies are analogies.

This is getting slippery for you. You said that you could prove that boxers are better trained now, remember? I asked you to prove it and you gave me olympic statistics (or rather said they existed) as a measurement. Now that you can't provid anything of note, its an analogy that you were seeking. :roll:

Remember when you said you would get back with me to give me the proof? Well analogies aren't proof.

 

Whatever. It's like talking to a shower curtain. :hi:

 

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