Myth: Boxing is the only sport where 30s era athletes handily beat modern fighters

i personaly ike to view it in a more mythical sence. Like doing Pound for pound.Manny is greater than Kitchko, even though Klitchko beats Manny, because you are sying if they were the same size.

If you put robinson from the 50's in the ring with Mayweather now. Mayweather could win. As everything has evolved, training methods, access to information etc..

However i view it more mythical and take evolved training into account.

So if robinson was born into this era, had this level of training etc. then he'd whip mayweather. That might be the wrong way to do it, but that's how i do it

 

i think some very good points have been made on both sides here and argued intelligently, a novel and rare thing when its comes to a topic of this nature. I tend to come down on the side of the modern fighters in this argument. Although i do think that points made to the contrary regarding the relative lack of truly skilled and knowledgeable trainers have some validity. Also as one poster stated it is important to keep an open mind as regards the evolution of sports and it may not be fair to apply the same principles right across the board. In a sport like boxing where there are such a huge number of variables involved it is much harder to have these type of arguments. For example its hard to measure toughness, grit and heart in any accurate way and if you believe that modern fighters are so far ahead of those from bygone eras you would still have to concede that an overmatched past fighter could still pull through despite a gulf in class if he possessed these intangibles in many cases and vice versa. We see it all the time superior athletes and boxers beaten with sheer will. However i do think that it would be an uphill battle for the fighters of years past in the majority of cases as the advantages in overall athleticism and strength would likely overwhelm.

 

the question is, if you really think nutrition and training techniques have improved greatly during this time... when you compare old fighters to new fighters, do you give the old fighters the benefit of the superior aspects of this era?

If we were to have a fantasy match between fighters from different eras, and level the playing field... wouldn't that mean that the old time fighters should have access to modern nutrition and training techniques as well? that way, skill is the only determining factor when it comes to a "who is better" discussion.

 

a great example though is George Forman. A monster in his prime, gets Ko'd by mohammed Ali.

A fat late 40's version is able to give Evander holyfield all sorts of trouble. And an Old holyfield gave lewis all he could handle in the 2nd fight.

 

Every sport does not have a lineal progress upward, all sports have peaks and valleys. I would pic the 80's celtic or lakers led by bird ad magic over this current crop of teams. also at the same time in hockey there was greztky and super mario in hockey.

I would argue that while today's athletes are bigger, stronger, and faster (I would not say smarter because ring iq is different from book smarts) does not mean better. Also, the more scientific training approach is not necessarily better either, A lot of old school trainers are no longer in the game. The end result is the fight game is slowly regressing because of the gap left behind.

 

These are interesting comparisons but i wonder if we could look at it this way. Even though these versions of the aforementioned great fighters were past there peaks in a physical sense their knowledge of the game, of themselves as fighters, their experience and their skills would have made them difficult to beat as long as they werent completely shot physically. I mean alot of people believe that floyd was past his physical peak when he arrived at his peak as a fighter. Now im not saying that these guys were better at this point but they may have done certain things better. The most obvious example of somebody like this of course is bernard hopkins who uses such factors to great effect despite the fact he is not the athlete he was.

 

You're not letting this go aren't you?

 

Doesn't have to be negative or derogatory.

 

But one could just as easily say that Hopkins and Foreman's abilities to use their experience to win at such ages is an indictment of the skill level of their younger opponents.

 

I think it depends how far back you go.
I mean foreman spanned 2 Eras. He was not out of his depth against the 90s heavyweights. You also have to remeber that Heavyweight's of the 30s were barely Cruiser weights now and that Heavyweights now are 'Super heavyweights' I don't know the statistcis, but I would guess that even the average man must be 3 or 4 inches taller now than in the 30s?

 

It seems you completely missed what the first point was intended to illustrate, not that either era was superior, or that past prime fighters always win; but simply that this evidence proves to an extent that boxing has not evolved physically to a point where 70's HW's couldn't compete today. It's that simple.

Why is point 2 poor reasoning?? Explain why it's inconceiveable Johnson would have ran hard through the line to shave another .1 of a second off the World Record?

That point wasn't meant to say athletes are not bigger, faster or stronger these days, any fool can see that. But in a sport that's regulated by weight the effects are minimal if not totally moot. As stated, a 147lb man is a 147lb man regardless of what year it is!

 

Boxing is less popular Now than ever I think. It's not a prime sport as it was in the 70's.

 

I have noticed amongst some people that when asked how far back can you go to find fighters who can compete now, a lot of them make the cut-off around the time we started to get colour television.

That is truly naive.

 

So if they were living in the same era, who would be better ?

 

This gets brought up a good bit, and I always answer it the same way - we can all verify that track times have gotten lower over the years. In fact, Jesse Owen's Olympic-winning 100 yard time is matched by high-school students every year. Would Jesse Owens, therefore, be only a High School varsity-level sprinter in 2011?

You tell me. Jesse Owens ran in leather shoes with metal spikes on the soles. He ran on a cinder track, and he had to dig his own starting divot when he took his mark.

Given these fairly significant changes in track conditions, is it really fair to compare track records from the 1930s to those of today? Clearly Owens was saddled with inferior shoes compared to today's ultralight models. His track surface certainly wasn't as uniform or resilient as modern composite tracks. Having a firmly-fixed tailor made starting block rather than a self-dug divot should be worth several fractions of a second as well.

With all of the myriad advances we've had in terms of equipment for sprinting, the most basic of all sports, the actual gains have been surprisingly small - the following official times are for the 100 meter race:

First under 10.5: 10.4 Charles Paddock USA 1921
(For comparison, Owens ran a 10.2 in 1936)
First under 10.00: 9.95 Jim Hines 1968
First under 9.95: 9.93 Calvin Smith USA 1983
First under 9.90: 9.86 Carl Lewis 1991
First under 9.80: 9.79 Maurice Greene USA 1999

With all of the numerous technological advances in running shoes, superior track surfaces, and a pharmacopia of performance-enhancing compounds (the spectre of which hangs over nearly every elite sprinter of the past 25 years) we're looking at about a 6% gain in speed since 1921. Far easier, in my mind, to attribute these small increases in speed to superior equipment, more accurate timers and the miracles of pharmacology than to any natural evolutionary pressure towards faster humans.
I don’t know much about tennis – not qualified to talk about that example but on Chess you are dead wrong and that is easily shown by several examples. Oh and By the way the Fourth World Chess Champion’s name is Alexander Alekhine. The Mikhail you are likely thinking of is Mikhail Tal who is also a very poor choice to compare because he is still generally considered the greatest tactician who ever lived. Both The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games (Burgess, Nunn & Emms 2004) and Modern Chess Brilliancies (Evans 1970) include more games by Tal than any other player.
Rating systems are prone to inflation over time read about it here
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5608
The most accurate way of evaluation players across time is Chessmetrics developed by Jeff Sonas. Sonas uses Chessmetrics to evaluate historical annual performance ratings and comes to the conclusion that Kasparov was dominant for the most years, followed closely by Karpov and Lasker. Alekhine is fourth ALL TIME
If you know anything at all about chess you want to know - What would Bobby say? “A popularly held theory about Paul Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) is that if he returned to the chess world today and played our best contemporary players, he would come out the loser. Nothing is further from the truth. In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today” ... - Bobby Fischer

Even so, all this is completely irrelevant to boxing however because it is not a sport where results depend purely on athletic ability. I mean how many world class track runners have there been with a waistline like James Toney? The fact that a man who was a former middleweight can eat himself into a world class contender at Heavyweight in the modern age tells you all you need to know about what improvements in sports science have done for boxing. Absolutely nothing.
So we are left with skill that is the major determining factor. I and any unbiased observer can see clearly enough that boxing skill is not on the rise in general and hasn’t been since the 1960’s. Quite the opposite in fact. Many divisions in boxing today must acknowledge they are in a weak era in the sport. Boxing is losing ground to MMA in fan base and will die out as a major sport unless changes are made. I propose a return to the original EIGHT +1 weight classes with Cruiser inserted between 175 and 200. A return to ONE governing body with ONE world champ in each weight class. An across the board testing program for drugs and steroids and a LIFETIME ban for the FIRST offense. A mandatory title defense against the number one challenger with a fixed 60/40 split every six months.
A “Same Hour” weigh-in so welters don enter the ring north of 160 for crying out loud.