Kinda just a random thought: Isn't it interesting that Holyfield and Tyson were the last two great American heavyweights, and were both much smaller than all the dominant guys Lewis and onwards? Is America is late to the SHW party, or what? In fact, Jess Willard is the only American SHW champion in history. Wilder might change that, but who knows.
The reason anybody with decent athletic ability in America is immediately scouted by college's for American Football, Basketball and offered scholarships . Especially the ones who will be over 6ft and 90kgs plus. In East Europe there favourite sport is soccer but size is not a major consideration like gridiron , basketball. They do scout for basketball but because boxing has a excellent program like in Ukraine they are able to attract larger athletes who would usually end up in gridiron .Boxing is also a way out of hardship. Becoming a champion boxer requires a lot of sacrifices and requires a long apprenticeship with no guarantee and at least a scholarship gives a athlete a education and if successful the money can be huge.
They did the same in the 70's, 80's and 90's yet the USA had no problem producing quality heavyweights then. These millennial types are a softer group.
I have to agree with this. Even the lighter fighters are all trying to be FMJ, taking hit and not get hit too literally. Also there aren't as many gyms in the inner cities like there used to be.
1. A change in sociodemographics. The part of the population that is working class/poor has decreased which has led to a relative decrease in the amount of practitioners. EDIT: On closer thought, this process actually more or less stopped in the late 60's, early 70's, so I doesn't compute fully with American HW's still being dominant in the early 90's. 2. Pro boxing has spread to new parts of the world, most notably the former Soviet bloc, increasing the global competition. What is surprising is that England has flourished in the HW division during this time. But both this and the long absence of US champions might also be down partly to random chance. It's comparable to the English premier league going from having a team in the CL final every year but one 2005-2012 and not one since, only one team even reaching the semis during the last 4 years. Sure, the prem has declined somewhat relatively but not that dramatically. This extreme contrast must be down partly to pure chance. I think it's somewhat the same with American going from being totally dominant up to the mid 90's and then completely disappearing from the lineage of champions'.
I dont see this eastern European 'dominance' that people speak of? You had the Klits, who were outstanding, the rest were so so. Valuev, Ibragimov, Chagaev were nothing special and no different to the guys they were feasting on. The only outstanding eastern European fighters in my opinion have been the Klits, Kovalev, Golovkin and Lomachenko, the rest were nothing special and have simply filled in the void left by the lack of quality American fighters, which has drastically dropped. You can literally just about scrape together and maybe find one dominant American fighter in every division. Whereas prior to that, there were plenty.
Wladmir Pretty much ruled the heavyweight division unchallenged for a decade.. That's pretty dominant. But it wasn't pretty.
The irony is that only a few top-end talents have gotten the opportunity and pro support to show their stuff. I agree that eastern European "dominance" is overplayed, not because the top-end guys aren't good- but because so much talent still falls through the cracks. The pro infrastructure still sucks in most of the world. Eastern Europe/Eurasia included. Even a very good talent like Lebedev had to flat out retire for a few years early on in his career because he couldn't sustain himself boxing. A lot of world class guys from that region don't go pro at all, or if they do, it's the WSB. U.S. promoters and networks are still reluctant to invest heavily in them. As such, there's a lot of talent from Eastern Europe/Eurasia that never sees the light of day professionally. And for the ones that do, it's hard to get the push other guys get. That a guy like GGG got that kind of support here and is pretty popular is pretty much unheard of, and he's still not a huge star. That's just to put it in perspective. We're still only a few years removed from situations like Pirog getting blackballed for wrecking Jacobs' hype instead of getting a push himself.
Yeah, Wilder could change that, but his obvious lack of ambition makes it unlikely. I think another poster said it well, other sports soak up alot of the top flight talent away from boxing, which is no longer as lucrative in America as the other sports.
Wilder who has carefully selected nontop ten opponents for his title defenses. The opponents were guys who lost a few times and didn't punch hard enough to have much of a punchers chance. Wilder won but was what I call " exposed " a few times in the victory. Povetkin and Ibragimov would flatten him. In fact Ibragimov I think did KO him in an amateur match. Post Wlad's prime, the only one with world class potential is Joshua, and I'm not sure if he'd beat Povetkin.
