Old Legends v Our Current Greats: what is the big debate??

I get what you're saying, i do. But watch Willie Pep, its not like watching Joe Gans or some primitive early-century great. Pep really was one of the most talented boxers ever, in the very top bracket.

He would beat Pac by my reckoning, im not being argumentative here, but i seriously think this would happen at 126

 

The old fighters have mystique abut them....there are alot of unkowns...

u know why that is............ because we have never seen them live!!

we take it from our "respected elders" that these guys were the B's and E's.

They were their heros. Todays fighters are mine....and I back the best of our generation to kick their ass.

Pac destroys Pep.

 

if you take any one great athlete from the past, let him be born in the present and benefit from today's training methods, that same "past" athlete would still perform only as great as compared to his current competition. In sports like running, his times would be phenomenally faster than when he was competing previously. But his performances against his current competitors would most likely be the same as was against his "old-time" competitors, provided they were of the same caliber. The athletes aren't born better as the years go by. But they are able to hone their skills in a much more scientific fashion than they used to.

But in a few sports like boxing or martial arts, where actual competition is crucial to level of improvement, it may indeed have diminished a bit. Could today's martial artists hope to compete with the guys of Okinawa who were using it to defend their lives against their oppressors at the turn of the century?

If today's fighter has twenty fights by his third year, how would he compare with fighters of the same caliber from the 1940's or 1950's who regularly had forty fights by then?

It's a no-brainer. And if you had the faintest inkling of what boxing skills really are, you would not have Pacquiao toppling Pep.

It's too bad you never saw guys like Robinson or Pep in their primes. At least you got to see Tyson, Jones, and Pacquiao at their best so you're not babbling on about how Klitschko, Dawson, Diaz, etc would have whipped them.

 

isnt it called football where u at. i remember i refered to futbol as soccer and my cousin shows up from nowhere and slaps me (hes from the UK and Gay!)

anyways past legends have a style of mystery because we just dont know. we dont know and only guess how our current fighters would fair against past fighters and their achievements. the whole fact of not knowing is interesting becuase we then have to do a A>B U A>C>B kinda thing (becuase ABC belts are BS) and that dosent fair well at all.

 

manny would beat pep with todays different training methods and technology professional athlethes are able to go beyond natural boundaries and excel in there profession, manny would dismantle pep

 

you got a point there pele at age 16 in 1958 won the world cup with brazil thats a incredibke feat, watching maradonna in 86 take apart england was incredible apart from the hand of god :twisted::twisted::twisted::twisted:. Messi is a gifted footballer aswell but he dosen't compare to pele or maradonna i'll even say the same for christiano ronaldo sure he was in amazing form for man utd this season but was he able to perform like that at euro 2008 ? no he wasn't

 

As regards Jesse Owens, in 1936 they had hand timing and cinder tracks with holes dug in the ground instead of blocks. With today's knowledge of nutrition & vitamins etc and the proper starting blocks and faster running tracks it is not unreasonable to assume Jesse Owens would have ran considerably faster. Carl Lewis of course was much more recent so he had virtually the same things as todays athletes.

When you compare you must compare like for like, so also maybe it is worth looking at the weights of yesteryears Heavys and maybe putting them in with Lightheavys or Cruisers if their weights were at that level. But to be honest it is ridiculous to assume today's fighters always win as in Boxing and every other sport there are good and bad periods. You could not say that Valery Borsov (1972) would have beaten Jesse Owens (1936) yet they won 100m golds 36 years apart, Owens would have won that without doubt.

The most recent Top Heavyweights such as lets say Lennox Lewis, beat alot of his era's top fighters. But to rate his greatness have a think of how some of his opponents may have matched up with say George Foreman's opponents or Ali's.

Would Phil Jackson have beaten Zora Folley or how would Justin Fortune match up with Henry Cooper or Sonny Liston and Donovan Razor Ruddock maybe Ray Mercer v Ron Lyle. Alot of the fighters from yesteryear would win these matchups. The 1970's was a deeper era at Heavyweight than 1990's or since so the quality faced was better than what many champions of today have faced.

Yes in some cases it would be ridiculous to match past Heavyweight champs with more recent but in many cases the fighters of the past at many weights, would have a 50% or better chance of winning.

 

As a long time fight film collector who has viewed thousands of fights I can honestly say that the old timers were better fighters overall than their modern counterparts. One of the most prominent reasons for this decline in ability and fundamentals is the lack of truly great trainers around today. I cannot begin to count the amount of times I have seen incompetent corner men telling their fighters to either do the wrong thing in between rounds or not even instruct them but rather tell them to go out there and beat the other guy without telling their fighter what he has been doing wrong in the ring and what he has to do to correct his mistakes.​

So that is one major reason as to why the sport has regressed in my opinion, and sadly it seems like it is going to stay that way for some time to come if not forever. Another major reason why todays fighters are lesser fighters than their counterparts of yesteryear is this ridiculous obssession with keeping a young prospect undefeated leading up to a title shot. Billy Conn once said if you ain`t got some losses on your record than you ain`t been fighting anyone with a pulse, and this statement rings very true although there are exceptions of course. But how is a fighter supposed to learn his trade thoroughly and correct his flaws as a fighter is he is put in against opposition that cannot challenge them to excel let alone present a challenge? ​

A loss or two or three shouldn`t spell the end of a fighter be it a prospect or contender, they should rather serve as learning experiences and be treated as such but instead they are considered disasters which to me is absurd. And what is worse is that so many prospects today are rushed into title fights after only 20-25 fights, and this mainly against opposition that were not going to present them any kind of serious test or challenge. So the end result is we end up having title holders with several glaring flaws in their style which go uncorrected due to them not having learned anything on the way up. Guys like Archie Moore and Joey Giardello for example had to wait years and years for the oppostunity to fight for the titles they so coveted, and when they finally ended up winning them they were already on the downhill slope of their careers. But with that said, the experience they gained from fighting often against a myriad of different styles and fighters allowed them to learn their trade fully. ​

Sure, they lost some fights along the way, but they fought so often against such a large crop of talented fighters that this was inevitable. Lets see how a Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao would do if forced to fight a dozen times a year or more against quality foes... there`d be some losses there no matter how good they are due to the sheer volume of fights which takes a toll on the human body no matter how good you are. The volume and frequency of so many fights plays a big part in influencing a fighters skill and capabilitys, and to say otherwise is foolish. Another reason why I think todays fighters are inferior as a whole is due to the mega purses that are available to them if they reach a certain plateau of popularity. Today, cherry picking is in vogue due to the potential big purses. Now, I am not against fighters making as much money as they can, but the negative consequences of this cherry picking is that it equates to far fewer fights competitive or otherwise.​

Todays top fighters don`t have to fight as often, so they sit on the sidelines gaining ring rust while waiting for a big fight to materialize. Back in the day even the top guys kept fighting and often, and they made sure to engage in non-title fights to stay sharp and in fighting shape so that theyn wouldn`t enter the ring rusty when ti came time to fight a legitimate challenger. Today you do not see that because of the potential risk in upsetting the apple cart, which is something that only hurts a fighter in the long run. Someone like Fernando Vargas for example fought few fights but several megafights and was used up early as a result. ​

Now compare that to someone like Freddie Pendleton or Kirino Garcia... both of these men had several losses on the way up due to being put in there against tough opposition, but the experience they gained proved invaluable in the long run and made them better fighters and they kept getting better as their careers progressed until the end came. Todays fighters for the most part cannot and will not be as good as their counterparts from the past for all the reasons I outlined above, because as long as this obssession with staying undefeated persists it will prevent fighters from learning their trade properly and fullfilling their potential. ​

This long post is not meant to put down todays fighters as a whole, because there are some very good fighters around who would have been competitive in any era. But as a long time fight film collector who has watched literallt thousands of fights both old and modern I can honestly say that from having watched and compared many of the old time greats to modern ones it is clear as day that there is a significant gap in overall talent and ability as well as a knowledge of the fundamentals of the sport. ​