Heavyweights & age through the era's

Actually, very high turnover points to a LARGE talent pool, not a small one.

Most ultra-dominant champions are big fish in small ponds. That's true throughout boxing history, it's true in other combat sports (kickboxing, MMA, wrestling, etc.), and it's often true in non-combat sports as well. People like Donald Dinnie track & field, John L. Sullivan in boxing, and Joe Lewis in (American) kickboxing couldn't have towered over the competition in larger talent pools.

 

It seems very common-sense to me. It not only accords with history, but makes statistical sense.

There are only a limited number of people with the potential to be great athletes. The smaller the talent pool, the fewer of those super-talented guys will enter the sport. And if you don't have many talented people, the one or two guys who ARE talented will completely clobber everybody else.

Think back to high school gym class. A couple natural athletes probably dominated everybody else. Why? Because they were the best in the school -- a small talent pool. Put them up against the best players from OTHER schools, and it's a lot more even.

I agree that we're living in a pretty good era, and Wlad deserves credit for dominating it.

I do not think that the conclusion you're drawing from his reign (single athlete dominance = good era) is accurate, though.

 

Personally, I think that single-champion dominance is a sign of a slightly weaker era, but it's not much of a difference. There's always a chance that you'll get a once-in-a-lifetime champion who dominates a strong era anyway.

(This stance hurts Wlad's standing and Joe Louis's equally, incidentally.)

It's not quite meaningless, because "14 lineal champions" still means that they were well-regarded in their own era.

If I said, "Wlad beat 13 RING #1 contenders", you'd be pretty impressed. Even if his era was weak, it would still say something about his abilities that he faced the absolute best of his era repeatedly and didn't lose.

 

A lot of good points brought up by all sides of this debate but I think this question boils down to a few factors. One is the fact that fighters don't fight as often as they used to, especially because they don't have to. If you're worth tens of millions of dollars ala Mayweather etc..there is no real financial need to risk injury on a regular basis. You're not fighting to put food on the table or pay a late heating bill to keep the apartment warm in the winter. Maybe to buy a new private plane....or yacht. Another is the shortened number of rounds...I liken it to the shortened number of innings pitchers pitch today. Why? To save thier arms and extend thier careers...and earning ability. There's alot of money to be made after all...why burn out earlier than you have to? Especially if you're Cy Young material. PED use was mentioned and it's also a good point. The stuff works and athletes know it...even if it's dangerous to them they'll take them to get that edge and keep them in the money. Modern medicine and surgical techniques also help to extend an athlete's career today. Years ago a detached retina or an ACL tear or a torn rotator cuff could end a career. Today they can be repaired and rather quickly too. I'm not ready to say that HW's are so much better today...or athletes in general for that matter. It's a different age and difficult to compare today to yesterday. Make todays athlete go back 50-100 yrs and they wouldn't be the same....nor would they be as successful in thier late 30's and beyond.

 

Fair enough. You're right that lineal champs don't get a punch-repelling forcefield after getting their belt.

On the other hand, if "14 lineal champs" were defeated in one of the lower weight classes, that is pretty impressive. More impressive than anything a fighter can accomplish today because of boxing politics. The old weight divisions usually included two or more modern divisions. (e.g. welterweight took the modern 140's and the 147's). And there was only one belt per division.

Take Henry Armstrong, for instance.

Armstrong won lineal titles in three traditional weight divisions simultaneously. Featherweight, lightweight, welterweight. While massively outweighed. That's the equivalent of SIX weight divisions today. (Pretend that the talent pools were of equal size for a moment, just for the sake of argument). And each of those have four belts today.

For somebody to equal Armstrong's dominance today, he'd have to hold 24 belts simultaneously. (6 weight divisions * 4 belts). It's impossible because of politics, yes. It's also impossible because that's a MASSIVE talent pool to tower over.

And in this case, the smaller average height and weight back then actually works in Armstrong's favor. There were more small people then, so his competition was stiffer. At least, numbers-wise.

 

Ive come to realize Elroy just hates former great fighters and uses the Klitschkos and modern fighters to trash and mock them.

He's in general claiming Louis never fought a guy like Ross Purrity and loses to everybody Wlad ever fought , most of the time by first round ko.

A guy like that has no love for this sport.

 

Don't know how this dominant champion proves a weak era theory could be proven.

For example, if Joe Louis never existed, they might have been quite a few champions from 1937 to 1949, possibly seven or eight, but why would Louis not being around make the era stronger? It clearly doesn't.

I don't believe in weak eras. It is obvious heavyweights have gotten bigger today but that hardly means an average sized heavyweight for the era he lives in (heavyweight always being the unlimited division) found less competition in fifty or sixty or seventy or ninety years ago than today.

 

"Marciano and Dempsey wasn't going to wear himself out fighting like-sized guys that the bigger super-heavies of today encounter when they fight guys their own size."

Actually, the modern super-heavyweights have been champions at an older age. Marciano and Dempsey retired at 32. It might be a better advantage being bigger than your opponents, regardless of the relative size.

If this theory is correct, lighter weights should last longer than the heavier weights, consistently. Have they?

 

This is a point I tried to make on another post - the fact remains that there were FAR more licensed boxers along with training facilities and able trainers in the old days. Thousands more boxers, if my understanding is correct. Therefore, it should follow (in theory at the very least) that the talent pool for boxing contenders was actually greater than today. Now, I do not know the situation in other countries - have no idea if there were neighborhood boxing clubs, PALs, CYOs, YMCAs, YMHAs, or the equivalent in every city. But I imagine that there had to be plenty. Again, on that basis the talent pool and - by logical extension - the level of boxing talent had to have been every bit as good if not better then than what we have today.