Modern Vs Old fighters.

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.

 

Or Robinson.

Altho' Duran I guess you could argue was at the cusp of the "modern" era, depending on how long you stretch it.

 

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.

 

I'm speaking from the training standpoint, since we have his biography saying he was injected with stuff before Viruet. (Which admittedly did not help him, per his account.)

 

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.

 

There’s a number of top level guys today, especially at HW, who enter the ring in less than top shape.

They don’t enter the ring in the best possible shape that they could be in.

I’ve seen a fair few fights over the years where the fighters have gassed before the latter stages of a fight, even in fights which weren’t fought at a high pace.

Many fighters today wouldn’t be able to fight 15 rounds as they currently are.

Again, the assumption by many people, is that everything modern = better.

The TS has said that modern guys are generally WAY fitter.

I don’t see that.

That is just an assumption based on nothing.

I’ve watched a lot of fights over the years, and I would say that generally, the older guys were fitter due to their circumstances.

 

"Injecting people with stuff" is not new. I have seen that for many years. In the gyms on the border with Mexico, the older trainers are always going across and you see a lot of guys in the back corner of the gym getting shot up. Does it work or does somebody just think it does? There is a lot of stuff in boxing that works like that.

 

Interesting. I guess the question is whether it was genuinely steroids (possible given the era), and indicates something more habitual, or just a one-time placebo to make him think he'd gotten a dose of super-serum. So to speak.

EDIT: Either way, it's suggestive about the willingness of an elite professional from that era to inject what he thought was a PED. Which I guess is obvious enough (given the stakes), but so many posters are unwilling to believe an old school professional would do it...

 

In my opinion- and this doesn't apply to heavyweights- there is a sacrifice made in order to gain a weight and size advantage come fight night.
From the studies that I have read, the process of losing a lot of weight and then rehydrating comes with a loss of performance- generally around 10 or 12 percent. But, today, that is acceptable for the weight advantage. And it works that way because, when name fighters or fighters with "potential" are involved, one guy is preparing for the fight. The other guy is walking around at 137, for example, so that he is ready to fight on call. So he gets in the ring at 137- if you weighed 137 you will not rehydrate to 150- but the prospect has cut down to 135 and will be 150 in the ring.

 

In my opinion, the only limit on what guys were willing to be shot up with to improve performance was the available products to shoot up.

 

How about boxing's "Golden Age", the busy 1920s - would you say, that boxers back then, ON AVERAGE, were fitter than today?

 

that being true, is not the same reality though of much biggermen fighting down 1 & 2 Divisions with 3, 4, 5 months to do so... they are bigger men, in a division they have No Business in... the Whole modern game is a lie.

it's not about 175 lb man losing power to fight at 160, No, the comparisons are Today vs Yesteryear...

the 160lb fighter back then, was typically 5' 10" or less, weighing 155 - 170 roughly, they were Not - 6'2" walking around at eitherside of 200lbs and then with 4 months or more to cut weight, they claim to be 160lb 'middleweights'...

in the Past, not only would'nt they have done that, they would'nt even dream of such possibilities, 6'2" inch, 200lb men were typically HW's and at best L-HW cum HWs.

that's what people are saying here.