In most sports the current guys are better than previous eras, why would boxing be any different?

not true they throw more punches in 12 then the old timers did in 15. look it up.

 

I know that 1920s and before fighters were more defensively minded, and were real practitioners of the sweet science.

They were more stationary with their feet, but used upper body movements and head movements to dodge punches and counter. That was boxing back then.

Nonetheless, defense is also scored in boxing, and if fighters today throw more punches, doesn't that mean that they will be open more often for counters? And as they tire because they are more offensive minded wouldn't these old timers capitalize? Of course.

 

Is there any reason to believe, that today's boxers wouldn't be able to go 15 rounds - if they had to? It would require a slight change of pace in fights over that distance, but of course they could adjust, if necessary. I don't believe that ability mysteriously died out in the late 80s, along with the 15 rounds championship distance.

Could today's boxers fight with same day weigh-ins? That's a weird question. Can anyone imagine, that if we reverted back to same day weigh-ins, that would be the end of boxing - because boxers would find that impossible to do? Of course not!

Would today's boxers be able to win world titles if there were fewer divisions and fewer belts? Of course there would be some that won world titles - though naturally not as many as today. I would have thought, this is pretty obvious!

 

"Better sports science, the athletes are faster, bigger, have better nutrition and other things."

This content is protected

This thread never fails to get more insightful every time it's made.



Excuse my weariness, OP.

 

Wladimir would be bashed up by countless heavys over the years.

on balance, off balance Larry Holmes would jab his head off

 

Dude foot movement is the sweet science with good foot movement you can throw a lot of punches without getting it. With infighting that is impossible.

 

Yeah how can one assume that these are all valid points since boxing is this chosen unique sport where all rules that apply for other sports dont apply.

 

Yeah in the us. But guess what boxing is a global sport. In ex soviet countrys, mexico and britain it is very popular which is a population bigger then the us.

 

This is just so american. Marveling in a nostalgic past.

 

That's not even true of all sports. It's definitely not true for boxing. You need to take a look at the relative depth of the talent pool at various points and then make apples to apples comparisons. You need to know how many players there were in the past to compare to now, and you need to know how experienced they were ie how frequently they played to hone their skills.

This content is protected

In other sports where the competitive level and depth of talent has risen, it is because the population playing the sport rose and it has never been more popular. That is not the case in boxing. Although, as the graph shows we are now at one of the highest points in the history of the game. However, we are not at the era when there were either the most players or the most fights.

Besides that, even though the general competitive average of the game may have risen, this does not effect outliers. Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson from the 80s would still be complete physical freaks and stand out from the average. Taking them as individual examples instead of general ones, it's not immediately apparent that Lebron James and Anthony Joshua are superior in any way.

 

I said in the first paragraph that the best of any era have the talent to be good in any era

The thread question is why is perceived that athletes in all other sports crush their competition from the past but many boxing fans think boxing is different where the fighters of the past are superior or can hold their own

I pointed out the differences in conditions not to say its impossible for todays guys to compete in those conditions. More so that the sport in a lot of ways has changed that makes it tougher to come to the conclusion that modern athletes are superior there for modern boxers are light years ahead of the boxers from previous generations

 

Well, that depends... Of course, there is sufficient evidence that heavyweights from Lennox's era were a step-above boxers preceding Mike Tyson's era in general. Boxers became taller, rangier, physically stronger, more powerful and etc. However, the progression has been negligible from Lewis's era until now.

Of course, it'd be a fallacy to assume infinite linear progression ad-infinitum. amelioration isn't always linear. At some-point, we are going to have to accept the possibility of athletes reaching a plateau where they stop progressing for proceeding generations, if not for ever.

This is all a case by case. It's not merely a case of "NEWER IS ALWAYS BETTER" as that would be a fallacy named 'appeal to novelty'. There exists sufficient evidence of athletes of past eras being better in various different sports than their more recent counterparts. For example, the high-jump record is still yet to be broken, which was set in the 90's. Usain Bolt's record is still yet to be overtaken by any 'MODERN' sprinter. I can keep going on and on, but two examples should hopefully suffice.

 

I agree with what you say here.

I have many times said, that I believe boxing was more or less fully "developed" by the 1940s - and that I see no significant skill/ability improvement over the past 80 years or so. I certainly don't believe today's boxers are "light years ahead" of previous generations (unless you go way back to around the turn of the last century - then there really IS a huge difference, imo).

What I object to, are these strange claims that boxing has been going downhill fast over the past couple of decades because fewer and fewer take up the sport, that today's boxers would be too soft to "hang" with the old-timers, that they wouldn't be able to go 15 rounds, that real skills have evaporated into thin air because there no longer are trainers to teach the finer points of the game, etc. etc. All nonsense, of course (imo).

 

First of a lot of the people on here talk about guys like frazier and foreman, ali Patterson all the time when talking about the old greates and then they always talk about talent pool.

of course boxing has developed just look at lomachenko, usyk, wilder or fury.

Fury: a 6‘9 260 lbs giant switch hitting.
Wilder: pulling of that slick mayweather pull counter at 6,7 against luis oritz in the 10th round against ortiz. No hw at that height ever did that before
Usyk: ridiculous high work rate with perfect in and out footmovement and that slick circle step to right is something you didnt see in the 40s or 50s.
And please dont post some lame old shiit from the past that show how some guys to doese moves when its not the same or half the speed.

 

FWIW, the men's long jump is a classic example of an event where there's been very limited improvement over time. Even [correctly] dismissing Bob Beamon's 1968 mark as a total freak, it doesn't seem that there's been any real improvement over the past 40 yrs.

I think, as far as US athletes go, the narrative is probably that young fast guys who excel in track & field mostly play ['American'] football too, they're now doing a lot more weightlifting & eating more, getting a lot bigger [because this is the way in which football has gone], which is broadly helpful for sprinting up to a point but broadly unhelpful for jumping, for which you have to strike a very delicate balance between lightness & speed/power.

[urgh, I don't think I know how to upload images]

https://i.ibb.co/TgpXH3J/LJchart.jpg

This content is protected