Modern Vs Old fighters.

You can have the the diet and medical advantages you want, but if you don't fight anybody good you will never reach your potential and most of todays guys would rather stick hot pokers in their eyes than fight somebody who can actually fight.

 

Yep it is obvious just watching these guys that they can barely go 12, and we ain't talkin hard rounds either! Oldtimers could go 15 at a higher pace, with a higher activity level & they generally moved around more. They fought much more brutal & vicious fights.

Oldtimers were HUNGRY for the title, at a time when being the champ MEANT something. Now, there's 17 or 18 divisions with 3 or 4 'champions' in each? That is a disgrace to true boxing champions of the past, and now championship belts mean nothing.

 

What!? And ruin my imposing 24-0 record that I meticulously built over the last 12 years by fighting twice a year against any stiff my manager could dig up? Not a chance, baby.

 

I wasn't talking about punch output, but rather that the oldtimers look busier, and the fights seem to be at a higher tempo. This is all my opinion, of course.

 

Well said, Flash. I think that sums it up nicely.

 

Then the old timer hits them on the chin, and none of it matters any more.

 

There have been loads of fights between moderns, where the intensity and tempo can compare to the busiest fights from "back in the day".

How about Morales - Barrera, Vázquez - Márquez, Bradley - Provodnikov, Corrales - Castillo, Ward - Gatti... just to name a few of the most obvious ones.

Sure, we can find modern stinkers as well - but, generally speaking, I don think modern fights take a back seat to the old ones, if we're talking tempo and "busyness".

For example, I'd like someone to point me in the direction of old fights that beat this one, if we're discussing tempo, heart, intensity and all-out effort:
2006 Mahyar Monshipour vs Somsak Sithchatchawal FIGHT OF THE YEAR - YouTube

 

That goes back to the difference in glove size. In the old days your first line of defense was movement- you moved in and out of range. Now, you put your hands up.

 

Ali vs Frazier I (15 rounds)
Frazier - 285/508
Ali - 257/707

Ali vs Frazier II (12 Rounds)
Frazier - 172/406
Ali - 181/720

Ali vs Frazier III (14 Rounds)
Frazier - 327/600
Ali - 353/768

In comparision, to somewhat similar style clash in recent years:
Fury vs Chisora I (12 rounds)
Fury - 295/775
Chisora - 115/312


Or:

LaMotta vs Robinson VI (13 Rounds)
Robinson - 394/940
LaMotta - 286/722

... here those 2 fights I thought might be somewhat comparable:
Spence vs Porter (12 Rounds) (Welterweights, but probably similar to weight to LaMotta and Robinson in the ring)
Spence - 221/745
Porter - 172/744

Golovkin vs Canelo II (Here middleweights too)
Golovkin - 234/879
Canelo - 202/622

*Source is compubox site.

Edit: It's not really to back up any claim, just thought it will be interesting and worth adding to overall discussion.

 

There’s film of Marvin Hart?

 

The greatest fighters on film are before the modern era prove me otherwise. You can’t show me one LHW as skilled as Moore without going backwards from the modern era, show me a light weight as good as Roberto Duran? How about a HW as textbook pretty as Joe Louis? The fighters today are an abstract idea of the ones from yesteryear.

 

Well...Archie Moore was never in the talk for the best fighter of his era. Ezzard Charles and Charley Burley and Eddie Booker saw to that when he was young. All the film that we have of Archie is from age 36-50.
Canelo has been in the conversation for best fighter of his era for almost a decade.
Yet the difference in skill is so wide that it is ridiculous. That says a lot about something.

 

Duran was very old school. Who made him? Freddie Brown, and he started teaching boxing right after Ray Arcel and Ray started before WW1.

 

Archie Moore fought into the 60s from memory but he belongs to an older era. I think Duran is the same in that he belongs to the 70s if you wanted to say he belongs to the 80s I wouldn’t fight you.

It think the “modern era” started in the late 80s-90s when things really went down hill, the light has been extinguished since the early 2000s easy. We have a few exceptional guys here and there but they wouldn’t be exceptional stand outs at there real weights in the past in my opinion.

Imagine if Canelo or Bivol had to swim the shark waters of say the Moore, Johnson and Charles mincer? Could Inoue take on someone like Duran? The list is endless with examples.