This type of thread is as old as the hills but something I read yesterday made me think about it again. "Some of the men who won gold medals in swimming at the 1960 Rome Olympics (where Cassius Clay won his gold medal) wouldn't have qualified for the women's finals at the 2004 Athens games." Has boxing moved forward over time like other sports or are fighters like Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Ray Robinson etc superior to todays champions?
It's hard to judge. Training methods have become so scientific and so specialized that all the physical advantages go to the modern fighter. You can only judge according to their contemporaries.
the old fighters were alot tougher, smaller gloves, more rounds.today fighters have all the new toys to train with and all that good stuff.but i bet not to many of then fight for 15rds. there are only a few fighters to this day i consider a throw back fighter, or a fighter that could fight back then.theres 3 ww's that could fight in any era and kick ass.but this could be argued back and forth until the end of time. i still perfer the new over the old in some cases, it really just depends on the fighters we are talking about. ww of today vs the ww of the 80's, who you got your money on ?
I would say it's progressed since the Robinson era but really, since the fab four it's not progressed in the slightest. We had Leonard, Duran, Hearns, Hagler all fighting each other, late 80's had Tyson on scene smashing the **** out of everyone in the first couple of rounds... we had some great fighters back then. I would say now that it's got worse and these current fighters would all be schooled. They lack the heart past fighters had. I would fancy Chavez over any lightweight, Leonard over any welterweight, Hagler/Hearns over any middleweight and Tyson over any heavyweight today!
Some things have changed for the worse, some for the better. Depending on what you mean by "old" i don't really see any significant difference. The very best of now are just as good as the very best of the 40's. However, I think there are fewer really good fighters today than at that time. Just a question of talent pool.
And the people in the sport need to work out why this is the case, the case that there are not as many good fighters as there has been in the past. We are really low on quality this generation. Maybe Pacman, Floyd and Mosley are the only decent shouts at welter, two of them being natural at 130 - 140 and the other being nearly 40 years old. At lightweight again its an old man dominating it. Khan is one of hottest prospects in boxing, but has a glass chin and no skill.
Tyson is more a new fighter than an old. Besides, you can hardly use Tyson as an example of a throwback fighter with 'heart' can you? On the subject of older fighters having more heart, Arreola showed heart against VK- didn't stop him getting a shellacking did it?
I do believe i've been saying the same thing for a number of years before you joined the board, chum :yep
Well, if he has no skill then hes a poor prospect? Anyway, he has plenty of natural talent, you can't move that quickly and throw that many punches in a second, without having any skill. And I think theres a lot more people then Khan, theres all the young US fighters, plus the 4 "Golden boys" of the UK, Degale, Frankie and so on. I think people are just not opening there eyes enough, I don't think its lack of talent or anything like that, I just think people don't appreciate what they see, I mean like Floyd, call him what you want, but you have to admit he does have loads of talent, but people these days are too busy with the hating and fan boy crap to really take notice.
Personally, I think that when people say that old school fighers were superior to today's, its just nostalgia or something. Most of yester-year's A level fighters would get destroyed by today's B level guys. Training, science, nutrition, etc. have all drastically improved so much. For instance, I remember reading somewhere that today's chicken have like 1/2 the fat and 2x the protein compared to 50 years, ago! (That was not a Floyd joke)
Is it fair to say that if Joe Louis (for example) were fighting today with the benefit of modern conditioning/training etc he would be world champion yet if we went back in a time machine and brought the old Louis forward he would get hammered?
