Is there another sport where a consensus of experts thinks the players 50 years ago..

However, college football was second only to baseball until the late 1960's. The NFL only passed the college game about that time or a little later. And we are to believe that the college game was not taking guys out of the gyms in the 50's, 60's and 70's when it was absolutely huge?

Also, please note that it's a very big world out there, and most of it doesn't know what the NFL is and/or could care less about it. The NBA is only slightly more relevant. Boxing is still casting a net over a wide pool of talent, only that talent is located elsewhere.

Lastly, if anything is taking fighters out of the game in the US, it is MMA. This sport, or confluence of sports, is absolutely taking over where I live part of the time in the US. There gyms EVERYWHERE in the broke sections of town. Meanwhile, boxing is only taught in conjuction with aikido and wrestling and jui-jistsu to the end of being a better MMA athlete. There is only one dedicated boxing gym left in the area.

 

Is that really true? There are beltholders today who make basic errors and lack some of the most elementary skills. You rarely saw that in the old time champions.

 

Not that i agree with the other poster, but have I have seen many an ol' timey lacking basic skills, though still being effective.

 

1. "It's a very big world out there"

Yes, but your point was about the NFL and NBA and their impact on boxing. They do effect American boxing. The loss of American talent in the lighter divisions after 1950 or so was negated by the influx of talent from East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Eastern Europe is currently doing the same in the heavier divisions.

The issue of the level of world boxing is separate from the issue of American boxing. American boxing is nothing like what it used to be.

2. "MMA"

This might be true, but I am talking about the long term decline in American boxing which began to be noticable at least in the fifties. It is also possible that the MMA is not killing boxing, but that boxing is dying and the MMA is just filling the void.

3. "College football"

Well, the word is college. What percentage of young men were going to college prior to 1950? What percentage of black young men who were not accepted in many private and even state colleges? And how many boxers of that era were college-educated? College football was a popular sport but its players did not represent a wide base of the population.

4. There is a subtle distinction in saying that a man who could be heavyweight champion is playing in the NFL and saying that the NFL is stealing talent from boxing. If a potentially great boxer is in the NFL, the young man would probably never give much consideration to being a boxer. If he couldn't pass muster in the NFL, his fall back position would most likely not include boxing. After all, he has a college degree.

 

You basically go into boxing when you have fewer options.

All those Jewish guys that fought at the lighter-weights back in the day, today would be bankers because they could afford to go to school and would have a better opportunity today. Many stories, funny stories, with Jewish fighters back then that had to change their name to make sure their parents didn't find out. Although when they did, the fighter would show them how much they were making and they tended to be encouraged to keep it up. However, there was also the idea of get your money and get out quick.

It was down to money; the need for money.

Football and Basketball, even Soccer, baseball, etc. at this point is much more alluring than boxing because even if you can't make the Pro level, you can still get scholarships to go to college based on your athletic ability and some academic. So you aren't good enough for Pros, so what, you have a degree.


In boxing, forget it...Huge Risk. And I remember hearing from some athletes that were in both boxing and Football for example, that Boxing took up a lot more time and that it was more of a way of life.

Risk vs. Reward. And it all comes down to opportunity/options.

The People that are in boxing today, at least in the States, and that is both trainers and fighters, don't compare overall to the vast pool of people back in the day, which also goes along with the amount of gyms they had back then compared to now.

Just a different world today in the States.

There were some good documentaries that were on ESPN classics a while back about "Irish boxers" "Italian Boxers" Jewish Boxers" "Black Boxers" "Latin Boxers" in America"

Times were tough. Tough still today but I would say tougher.
New immigrants, First born, Second born generation Americans that were more separated by neighborhoods, some intermixed...lots of street-fights and so on.
If a kid got beat up, it would be wise to take him to a boxing gym to learn how to defend himself. Today, you call a lawyer.
Also kids are more likely to use a gun today than their fists.
Overall I'm saying.

 

Good points. If we are talking American boxing, yes, there is a decline. But it's not as though the NFL wasn't huge in the 1980's and 90's when Holy, Bowe, Moorer, Tyson, Witherspoon, Holmes, Tucker, Tubbs and Dokes were on the roost. The NFL and integrated college football were enormous in those decades. The culprit is not the NFL "stealing" talent. It's the dissolution of the amateur system along with...

MMA, I'm not kidding you. I live right on a socio-economic divide neighborhood wise between middle class whites and poor white trash/southeast asians/eastern euros. Starting a few blocks away there begin a succession of more MMA gyms than I can even count. It seems a new one opens every month. Fighters are different than football players. The kids who are born fighters are keeping these places open. I see them everyday with their Couture, Silva, Rampage Jackson Affliction t-shirts. Those are their heros. Boxing is forgotten to them, or merely a component to their athletic endeavors.

And another thing, it's cheaper to go to these gyms than it is to play football any longer. The fees at middle and high schools are astronomic, hundreds of dollars a season. And those programs require (nominally) attendance and grades in school. The MMA gyms are open all the time and the few guys I know of who run them are looking for talent and willing to support it.

On flip side, the Eastern Euro's have moved into the heavier ranks much like the Central/South American and increasingly the Asians did in the lighter ranks. However, most of these Euro's are products of systems that are themselves in collapse or have collapsed. Remember, the Klitschkos were born into the Soviet system and even after the fall of Communism were able to take advantage of the remnants of the state athletic system. From what I have heard (and perhaps some can correct me) that system has disintegrated.

Interesting stuff. I don't think anyone has all the answers but it is not as simplistic as the NFL and certainly not the NBA (have you seen those guys fight?) stealing talent.

 

Good, interesting discussion.

May I say that, in boxing, the guy on top is called a "world" champion.

Also, it was here I do believe I read a comment some years back that has stuck with me:
if top guys in other sports were going to be fighters, they would be fighters.

The universal boxing talent pool has historically benefited from interest in different communities, be they the Irish, the Jews, the Blacks, the Asians, the Latinos, the Eastern Europeans. But, still, it has always been the best fighters at heart who have risen to the top and upheld the sport. And so, boxing has soldiered on.

For clarity, may I be redundant: truly, in a worldwide sense, the undisputed world champion in any category is the best in the world at that time.

The fact that American boxing gyms are closing like Midwest steel mills in the '80s is terrible, but not the end of the sport: I can attest to a surging interest in boxing at all levels of society here in Mexico, with free-TV boxing programs simultaneously broadcast on the two largest national networks every Saturday night. Correspondingly, the boxing gyms on the other side of the tracks are busy with activity and local Saturday afternoon amateur cards are eagerly attended by children and grandmothers alike.

In a sense, if Johnny shows interest in becoming a boxer and Daddy discourages him and instead successfully steers him toward football, it can be said Johnny would have never been a boxer, never became one, so all speculation about "what ifs" is fun, but ultimately irrelevant.

On a personal note, because of my white-collar occupation, age and outwardly-shown temperament, it is most surprising to my friends, relatives and acquaintances that I will seek out and hit boxing gyms. Why do I do it? Simply because I want to.

If a young guy has dynamite in his fists, and is at the crossroads of deciding what to do with his life, if he is meant to be a fighter, he, like George Foreman, like Mike Tyson, will get the connections and find it in himself to persevere to the title!

 

Circumstances still matter.

Without Big George going away, he may have never found Doc. He may have never found Boxing.

Without Tyson going away, he may have never found Bobby. He may have never found interest in boxing. And when he finally got to D'Amato, like he said..

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Of course circumstances matter. In fact, they help define.

My point is, the world on the whole still has a sizable enough population segment (read down-and-out and out-of-options) to keep boxing alive
and relatively well, through the ebb and flow of time, even if it isn't American heavyweights that are soaking in the limelight.

But, you can lead a horse to water but not make him drink!

In the end, it was young Tyson on his own who fell in love with those scratchy, flickering, old-time fighters. And he begot a dream, a dream that could only be accomplished in the prize ring. And he did it.

It takes a special breed to be a fighter. Even more special to be a champion. This is why I love the sport, its myriad imperfections notwithstanding.

May I quote Ali: "Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something deep inside --a desire, a dream and a vision. They have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill."

And Tyson: "You can come from a middle-class background and be a real good boxer. But you have to know struggle to be the champ."

I personally don't shed many tears for what could have been with Shaq as heavyweight champion! Again, Tyson: "It wasn't meant to be!"

The sport, as everything, is evolving, but, worldwide, I dare say, far from dead.

P.S.: I'll remember you if I ever come across "Far and Away"!

 

They seemed to manage alright.

 

Think about Boxing like you would any martial art.

Would the kung fu masters of ancient china whup the asses of the bullshido ***** dojos of today? You bet your ass.

 

Absolutely.

Bernard Hopkins once mentioned how as long as their is a ghetto, there will be boxing.


"Far and Away":

Boxing is a minor detail in the movie but the "fight" and "heart" is all the way through. The want to get something even though the risks are high and so on. You look at what your options are and take the risks in order to get somewhere. Some have it, some seem like they don't.
Options, Circumstances, has a role in life. But yes, it comes down to the person. His character took the risk.



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_xccxLZIGY[/ame]

 

Fencing.

 

Jousting.

 

Thats true Sir Lancelot would destroy the balsa lanced frauds that call themselves Knights now a days .