If Today's Fighters Are So Much Better......

I always felt constantly fighting made the fighters from the past have better skills.
Guys likr SRR and Pep had insane records and were extremely skilled.
Also the competition was way tougher as there was a lot more interest im boxing compared to nowadays where a lot of potential boxers pick up different sports.
They were also way tougher, coming up hard and being hungrier.
Nowadays its easier to get rich for boxers.

Nowadays boxers are just better athletes due to modern training and medicine.
But I even think the older fighters had better endurance.
Guy like Marciano or even Hagler decades later put in so much work they could be throw a shitload of punches like it was round 3.

 

The sport has evolved from its roots, but it doesn’t keep evolving, and today’s best fighters aren’t the best fighters of all time.

There’s a number of divisions today that aren’t as good as what they were 20-40 years ago. And not just in terms of depth, but in terms of ability. There’s fighters today who weren’t as skilled as fighters from years ago.

Regarding Pele, that’s completely ignorant. Yes, he’d be playing against better defenders, but he’d be playing in better footwear, on better pitches, with a lighter ball and with more protection from the referees.

He’d still have the same skill set. The same close control and balance. The same dribbling ability. The same technique.

He’d be even better than he was. As long as he was supremely fit and he lived the life and was 100% professional, he’d do fine.

Saying that he’d not score 2 goals in a season is absolutely ridiculous. That’s just a stupid thing to say.

What about Best and Maradona?

If they still all had the same level of ability, they’d all still find success in the modern era.

The biggest issue would be their level of professionalism and their dedication.

 

Another silly post.

Why would Ali get battered today?

PEDS are of benefit, but fights are determined on ability and how they match up stylistically on the night.

 

I agree with what you're saying about Ali being 'unbelievable' were he boxing today and benefitting from PEDs etc. I'll concede physical disadvantages would probably make it hard (but not impossible imho) for him to compete today, minus the time machine argument.

But why haven't skills (noticeably) evolved from the Ali era in the same way as training and sports medicine? I can't see they definitively have.

Linear progression is a convenient and easily-digestible model when applied to the evolution of a sport like boxing but I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that. I think overall the sport has evolved on a gradual upward gradient but this does not account for outliers.

Yes, someone can dig out 50-year-old clips on YouTube and argue the case: 'see, they'd get battered!'. But what about a 30-year-old clip of Lennox Lewis? The starting point of his career is closer in time to the back end of Ali's era than Fury's but no-one's ruling him out of competing with and beating today's best, or arguing he massively evolved between 1989 and 2003 to such an extent he defied an otherwise watertight methodology.

When's the cut-off point on the timeline for demarcating boxing evolution? And when chosen, why then? Lewis can't be just explained by PEDs surely? And in some form or other PEDs have been a factor in sport since the 50s I believe, and massively so in the 70s, specifically athletics. They didn't just appear in the 90s.

Above, someone referenced football and unfavourably compared Pele with Messi. Reasonable. But what about Messi and Maradona? As much as we might like it to be, this is not a simple conundrum.

Essentially the 'mean' boxer is probably better now than the 70s but assessing outliers - and it's they we remember and debate - is less straightforward...

 

What FastSmith said is ridiculous.


Ali with PEDS today = unbelievable

Ali without PEDS today = he’d get battered


It’s just ridiculous.

Of course PEDS can benefit a fighter. But obviously not by that amount.


Ali would do just fine today.

He would win fights on his great skills and mobility.

To say that he couldn’t compete, or that he’d barely be able to compete, is just complete ignorance.

 

There goes a man who thinks Errol Spence Jr. beats Ray Leonard.

Your rationale is prosaic, lazy, dimwitted and unobservant and YDKSAB. Deleting your account and developing a crack habit would be a better use of your time.

I'm loathe to issue such a contemptuous reply, but, being the 56,678,846th sap to regurgitate the above drivel since the dawn of online boxing discussion, you earned it.