Is Boxing the only sport....

It is economic and scientific (nutritional) progress...

Many NBA players are huge today, but give me Bill Russell for my pick-up game before any of them...

Lennox had five fights in a row where his weight was in the 220s. What do his losses to McCall & Rahman along with his struggle against Vitali have in common? They were at the time the highest weights of his career...

 

Boxers being better in the days of Robinson makes sense to me. They fought so often. Boxers nowadays are, on average, more athletic, but they should be, as they prepare for months to peak on one day.

I think if you take a well-conditioned guy like Wladimir Klitschko and make him fight as often as was par for the course in those days and he'd be hard-pressed to be as successful.

And then there's the George Foreman comeback -- lot's of smoke and mirrors, but still a landmark in the history of the sport and proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that twenty years does not change as much as people think it might. Foreman was sloppy and a shoddy technician in any era -- but we saw how well he did.

Many of my friends have pointed out that if Ali stood in the corner vs Tyson as he did against Frazier he would get killed in a matter of minutes -- and I'm not convinced.

Also throwbacks like Joe Calzaghe --stamina, determination, ad******g mid-fight, pressure. I think if you film Calzaghe and his arm-punches in black and white without close-ups and you don't really see what exactly he is doing, he'd look worse than Greb in that sparring footage. The subtle feints, the in-and-out, the fact that between five pitter-patter punches, there is one loaded bullet, and one of the pitter-patter punches had the explicit use of blinding the opponent or concentrate his defense on a specific point. It's not technique -- but it is craft.

When McGrain posted the close-up material of Liston vs Patterson I saw many things I hadn't before.

Well, it's always an interesting discussion -- but I'm not sure why it's really relevant. People want to say their current heroes are the best of all-time I suppose -- but does it diminish Marvin Hagler that Monzon came before him? Should I have more respect for Hagler if Monzon had been a carpenter instead of a boxer?

Men should be judged on their own merits. Comparisons are fun and games, but should not be used to discredit the accomplishments of other men unfairly.

 

no it isn't the only sport. cycling also. i know in america it ain't a big thing maybe since lance armstrong won the tour de france 7 times it lived up a little but overhere in europe it is a big sport. and the oldtime champs are also regarded better then the modern champs. probably cause in the old times it was more heroic. the roads where not as good as today and not as safe sometimes when they cycled in the mountains and they went downhill with a speed of 80 km an hour they fell into a caynon and some died. in cycling the greatest champs (most people believe) come from the 1950ties untill the late 1970ties. and just like boxing those guys had magnifcent nicknames. like fredrico bahamontes who was called : the eagle of toledo. or eddy merckx who was called : the cannibal or bernard hinault aka : the badger. also cause in the old days the distances where longer and the challenges where harder. same as boxing it has become saver (less rounds and so on) so also less heroic
and even soccer has it if you ask someone who the greatest soccerplayers of al time are.. mostly people say : pele, cruiff, best, beckenbauer, puskas, eusebio..all gus from the 50ties 60ties and 70ties. only exception is maradona (alltough his glorydays where in the 80ties)

 

Track and Field Athletics was strictly amateur back in the days of Jesse Owens, and even into the 1970s and 80s. Even the full-time state-sponsored "amateurs" of the Socialist Bloc countries weren't being invested in like modern professionals until maybe the 1960s and 70s.
The old athletes of the 1930s and 1940s were mostly part-timers and were amateurs in the truest sense. They made no money from the sport and were forbidden from doing so. Therefore, they were fanatical hobbyists at best.

Boxing, on the other hand, or "Prizefighting" as it is also called, was so blatantly professional that it's development and progress compared to that of Track & Field athletics is a stark contrast.
The earliest champions had patrons and backers. Purse money and promotional syndicates (often "sporting clubs" of wealthy "gentleman") were involved in this sport from the onset of the Queensberry rules, AND further back than that. Gamblers had a massive interest in the game. Champions and challengers were motivated by money, shrewdly so and ruthlessly so, and the best ones had sparring partners, entourages, trainers, training camps.
Just as now, of course, many boxers back then earned a living through other jobs too, but the boxing was never a part-time "hobby". It was a serious business for the serious boxer and it had its own ecomony, people and groups of people who had an interest in these men becoming fighting machines.

Boxing was a century in front of Track & Field in terms of professionalism, and that has to be acknowledged before we say anything more on the subject of progress.

 

Even so I find many of the early track and field stars as impresive as those today because of the length of time and advances in sports science that it took for their records to be beaten.

 

Technique has largely deteriated, but what Classic forum fans dont want to admit is physical ability on average has increased massively in 70 years.

 

They were impressive athletes. Absolutely.

 

Two interesting statistics.

Charles Paddock broke the record for the 100 meter sprint in 1921 by a masive 0.2 seconds. This is the biggest margin it was ever broken by.

Jesse Owens record stood for an incredible 20 years.

These could be held up as measures of athletic achievment as much as the overall times for the sprint.

 

I am not really knowledgeable of the billiards world, but Lindrum is probably the most astonishing sportsmen ever in terms of being ahead of his piers. according to a website I just wrote, he broke 57 world records , none of which have ever been broken by anyone except himself! His world record break is over 4000. I am not sure how much ahead of the field this places him, but according to my quick internet skills, there is a break by Joe Davis which was 2501 which was in 1907. Interestingly, i also saw a supposed World Record break by some modern player - Peter Gilchrist - It was 1346. I am not sure what the real modern world record is, but either way, it seems that billiards is one sport where the modern boys coudl nt compete with Lindrum. Incidentally, like old boxers, Lindrums training was phenomenal and almost certainly will never be seen again. ONe of the amazing things about him is that he was a natural right hander, but had to play left handed due to an accident on his right index finger! Now even the hardest modern evolution theorist has to find it hard to deny Walter Lindrum.

I agree with the point, but i am not so certain of the effect on the two examples you picked. Under old rules, Vlad would have learned to clinch and wrestle and wear down. I think he could have taken his time a little bit more. I think he would like the extra rounds and the emphasis on the clinch, particularly if his opponents were smaller.

Likewise, Jeffries despite his style could still hit, and could still dominate opponents. In fact, over 12 rounds, and with a 10 pt must system, i think that he might have still been very hard to beat. I think he would be a contender under any rules. I think it is a very good point though.

I am not as certain that it is nutrition that is the advance. Leaving aside the Steroid argument, i think there are two things that have added to the natural bulkup argument. Firstly, because there are less and less fights being taken, fighters tend to train hard for a fight, stop training and fighting balloon up, then have to train down. As opposed to older days when fighters stayed in shape. With a guy like say Hopkins, he could have easily become the same size as Toney by now, or Byrd or others but he is always in shape. I think that one reason for this is that fighters dont stay in as good a shape as they used to. And when they do, they seem to concentrate more on weight lifting and power than any other feature.

Secondly, i think that modern fast foods is another factor. These never really existed in the old days. I am not sure whether these things can really be seen as nutritional advances. I know that some fighters do still go off fast food when they train for fights, but when not in training camps, it would seem that most seem to break for fast foods quite a bit. It is only natural nowadays, and i think that while it may help put on weight, it is hardly an advantage.

I think that the height comparisons are probably more relevant. Lewis is not much bigger than Willard or Carnera. Foreman, Ali and holmes are about the same size as Jeffries. Tyson is listed as shorter than Dempsey. If the modern fighters ran as much as the older fighters (and weight lifted like older fighters) then i think weights would still be comparable. It seems to be a common thread that the weakest eras have the biggest champions. Maybe this is why our current crop is considered so bad?

One thing is for sure, this idea of big skilled superheavys and evolution of the sport was not a common view in the not too distant past when light heavy spinks was our champion, or where the relatively speaking small Iron Mike Tyson was champ. In fact, it probably only really started when the Cruiserweight Evander Holyfield struggled with the size of Riddick Bowe and when Lennox Lewis emerged as the champ of the 90s.

 

No they couldn't given if Paddock raced Bolt he would be 10metres behind him

Jesse Owens 100m record was equaled 5years later, back then you had to beat a record by 0.1 of a second, which is harder, now you only have to break it by 0.01 of second

 

:good

 

I read the other day that average height has increased by 4 inches since 1900, Jack Johnson was considered a 'Giant' at 6'1, today he's small by heavyweight standards

 

While Johnson was considered a giant next to the average man in the street he was not exceptionaly tall for a heavyweight even then.

Most of the early light heavyweight champions were around 6' 0''