Lost arts in boxing

Things like this I don’t see it today. I don’t agree that boxing skill is better now than in decades past. I see very many well conditioned men, but the skills isn’t better

 

If I knew this, I would not be working right now. My suspicion is that we have largely arrived.

 

I’m not sure about this.
Heavyweight Usyk, great sure but he’s 39
Light heavy Bivol 35, beaten by 39 year old, Benavidez
Middle Lara 42, Adames
Welter Rolando and Ryan
Lightweight…?
Feather Figueroa
really it’s half old men and half champs that are really not that great, how many great welters would we favour over Garcia or Romero ? Or middles vs Lara? Theres Inoue as well, but overall the quality is pretty poor/old. Most of them would certainly not be champions in most eras

 

Usyk would be champion in any era. As would Inoue and Crawford.

 

So is boxing forever improving except for right now?

 

This isn't really true tho. Crawford and Inoue would have to fight at 160+ & 126+ in a lot of eras and there are champions at those weights which they definitely don't beat. In the late 70s/early 80s, Inoue would have to beat Salvador Sanchez or Euesbio Pedroza at best and Alexis Arguello and Roberto Duran at worst and that's just not happening. Same with Crawford, he'd have to beat Hagler or Monzon.

 

At least you concede on Usyk lol

The whole premise doesn’t really work though. You’re artificially moving fighters up multiple weight classes and then saying they wouldn’t beat naturally bigger guys, that’s true for almost any fighter ever.

Inoue has never fought at featherweight, and Crawford only fought 2 fights at middleweight. Judging them based on fights at 126+ or 160+ doesn’t say anything about how good they are.

If you keep them in their actual weight ranges, they absolutely have the skill level to compete with champions from any era. Same way past greats wouldn’t be expected to jump divisions and beat naturally bigger modern fighters either.

 

Tomorrow will tell. If we expand the geographic (and thus genetic diversity of) recruitment of talent it will improve more. As far as technique, the engagement of better and better athletes will influence technique in that truly exceptional athletes (Ali, Jones, Jr., Fury) often get away with techniques that are not aligned with the current textbooks, so often based on what lesser athletes are capable of.

 

Debatable for any of them. Isn’t Crawford retired for a start? Usyk would (probably) lose to Louis, Ali, Frazier, Forman, Lewis, Holmes.. he has a 50% chance or less against any of them.
Inoue had troubles with a 36 year old Donaire.

and that’s two champions, the rest are bums who would be splatted by contenders in most eras, besides champions

 

He would beat all of them try again.

Ali had trouble with a LHW gatekeeper.

 

Of course you have to move them realistically otherwise it’s a mismatch with weigh ins.
If (retired) Crawford is your golden goose that proves the evolution of boxing then tell me what his best weight class is and I’ll tell you 15 fighters that beat him that weight class.

There’s a reason old men dominate so much now. The reason is that there are very few fighters with skills approaching previous eras where the fighters fought so much more often and the ones that are skilled can dominate in to their late 30s when this was almost unheard of in the last 100 years outside of a handful of names (Archie Moore, old Duran, etc)

 

Best all of them? Well you’re the first person to ever say that

 

But before day before weigh ins, Inoue would have always been a featherweight. Crawford would have started at no lower than 154. There is no way they could have cut as much weight as they did and fought 6 hours later, no way on this planet.

 

But that has always been the case.

 

Yep and Inoue would lose to Arguello, Marcel, Pep, Saddler, Armstrong, Pedroza, Jofre.
No matter how many modern drugs he pumps himself with. He’s still one of the better champions of the weak modern era