I'd say the 80's and 90s were the peak, but I'm referring just to how skilled boxers were overall, not how successful/viewed the sport was.
In my opinion it was from the late 30's through the mid 90's for the lower weights, but for the heavyweights I agree with you, though I would add 10 yrs through the mid 90's.
Moore is a good example. Boxing most certainly isn't better that it was in the 40's. We've got plenty of quite decent footage that shows us so. Louis, SRR, Ortiz, Pep, Charles, Burley and so so many others.
It started with knuckles, then 2 ou gloves, then 4 ou gloves, then 6 ou gloves, then 10 ou gloves, then 12 ou gloves. I think that is it.
A lion filmed with modern high production cameras looks more dangerous, faster, stronger, ferocious, and nimble than a lion filmed with a camera from 1905
My repeated response exactly "it's NOT the Boxers that sucked, it's the Film Footage and or Filming that sucked. when the Footage gets better, so too do the Fighters, 'funny that' isn't it... and YES, luckily there is Plenty of Old Footage that is good enough to prove it. also for ALL the Fighters we don't have footage of, just look at all their Top Opponents, the Reports about them in general, and the Reports about their fights at the Top, then reflect on that, along with the film footage of some of these Opponents, it becomes easy to see & understand how Good the Thousands of TOP Fighters with no film footage were too.
You're right, we've had these discussions many time before. But I must admit, that I enjoy them. Always entertaining and good for a laugh! Wannabe historians telling us, that boxing today sucks, that feinting/parrying is a lost art, that angles aren't used like in the old days, lost infighting skills, etc., etc. And if you fail to recognize this, it's because you're not knowledgeable enough to know what to look for, when watching the old-timers. Hilarious stuff!
If anything those small gloves they used to wear allowed for more techniques to be utilized. Nowadays with the big thumbless gloves with molded filling, they have less variation in catching, parrying punches.
I agree... by the late 30s/early 40s boxing had fully "evolved", with the emergence of fantastic fighters like Canzoneri, Louis, SRR, Pep, etc. I really don't see any clear skill-improvement since then.