What are your thoughts on the modern trainers compared in later years to the likes of a Cus D'amato, Charlie Goldman, Angelo Dundee(RIP), Eddie Futch, Jack Blackburn etc
A lot of them stink. It seems like a lot of the old great trainers took a lot of their secrets to the grave. I think that inside fighting from top to bottom is starting to become a lost art. Like Mayweather who isn't even an inside fighter gets the better of most "pressure" fighters today anyway because he has an actual functional understanding. Look at Toney making heavies like Peter and Rahman look like idiots. You see a lot more clinching as a result because people don't know what to do. Anyway just my two cents.
Straying a bit from the top level being referred to here but I think that at the grassroots level at least in England the trainers need to let the kids get on with the fighting a bit more than they do - I think to some extent they hold them back too much and the teaching methods can be a little restricted and pigeon holed just toward amateur style which makes for unrealised ability sometimes - my thoughts on why Amir Khan has spluttered a little to be honest - trainers at grass roots should be trying to blend a bit more of the pro fight game methods and techniques in at an earlier age to give kids a more overall rounded style and depth to what they do in the ring - being over protective can be detrimental - but aswell as that probably there are certain areas where the knowledge has become watered down but probably in other areas improvements have been made - there are still some tremendous fighters around (some of the best in history) so they've had good teachers
I've noticed from experience and heard people comment on a focus on conditioning, at least here in the US. Conditioning is the fuel necessary to make a car run, however polished that car may or may not be, but it shouldn't be the number one focus of a gym, IMO. I'd say great trainers are still out there, but maybe not as plentiful, and perhaps this trend I'm speaking about comes from an influx of new fitness-educated trainers who, while they hold valuable knowledge, may focus on the wrong things. Obviously at the top level, there are many who received the knowledge of yesterday's talents. Richardson, Roach, Beristain, Garcia, Roger and Floyd Mayweather Sr., and even Virgil Hunter-those are all good/great trainers that clearly have an educated sense of the basics and proper tactics.
Yea there seems to be too much emphasis on fitness, a lot of blokes who have no experience with boxing becoming experts coz they hold a sports science degree and get in with a big name. How many people confuse boxersize classes with actual boxing training? Guys like Arcel, Brown, Futch, Dundee were fight trainers. But I've heard some horor stories about trainers of the past. How they ****ed fighters. Every era has it's good & bad. Today's best are great but there are a lot of imposters around.
You still have great trainers. The biggest issue, as far as I can see in my own experience, is we now have an influx of horrible ones. Freddie Roach is terrific. Manny Steward is terrific. On the tier down from that, you have guys like Birmingham and Calzaghe who are very, very good. I had very positive experiences with Buddy McGirt, who knows his stuff. But, at amateur and pro shows alike, I see SO many more hacks in the corner than I do in the ring. Boxing fans should not get up off their ass one day and open a gym. I've met three amateur trainers who did just that, and no surprise, their fighters are just shy of incompetent.
My opinion a top notch trainer no matter what time period they are from should. Teach and help the boxer master the fundamentals. Make sure the boxer is in fighting shape, fitness is important. Alow the boxer to devlope their own style. Boxing can be high stress and being mentaly sharp and comfortable is just as important as the physcial in boxing. Devlope the mental game. Teach dirty tricks. I'm not saying that fighting dirty is ok, but that it happens and a boxer should be aware. Wh dosent hold, punch in the clinch or elbow their foe? Even the cleanest of boxers arn't squeeky clean. Have a game plan for each bout. Be able to make adjustments mid fight, if the game plan is not working. Know what to say to the boxer in the cornor between rounds. Rather it's stragity or encourging words at the right time. To care about the boxer. To know when he's had enough and be willing to look like stopping a fight was your call, saving the boxer from embaresment and ridacule.
Today’s (as of five years ago) boxing trainers who have real knowledge are very few and far between. Most have no clue whatsoever. Back in the 70’s when you walked around gyms in NY or Philadelphia as I did you could hear the knowledge being taught. Defense, Offense, feints, counters, blocking, footwork etc. The gyms overflowed to the basics of boxing skill being taught. Flash forward to the 90’s and up until I stopped frequenting these gyms five or so years ago and there has been a gradual deterioration of boxing knowledge. It’s as if street people have taken over looking to make a buck. Fighters a emplored to throw that hook but no one is teaching HOW to throw that hook properly. So you see mostly these crazy swings, wide arcing left punches. This is just one example. Sure you will find in every gym someone with a level of knowledge but it’s not at any level as it used to be. Night and day.
In which specific gyms are you claiming that the quality of training went downhill so badly that trainers no longer teach fighters how to throw hooks properly? Doesn’t match my experience dabbling in various boxing gyms over the years at all and I don’t buy it. Unless you want to start naming names...
And I’d bet there are many, many trainers just as knowledgeable and adept as them who just haven’t become household names because they haven’t had the fortune of working with world champions. And I don’t buy the romanticized image of the trainers of yesteryear that gets taken for granted around here either. I’m sure there were plenty of trainers back in the day who weren’t particularly astute about boxing or good at teaching it.
Well-known old-timers had trained hundreds or thousands of boxers who never achieved anything significant. Ray Arcel, if I recall correctly, was in the corner (and thus had trained, I suppose) of 14 of Joe Louis' opponents.
Someone claimed in an earlier post that the knowledge of guys like Arcel and Futch died with them... How can that be when they trained so many fighters? Did those fighters all suddenly suffer from amnesia when Futch et al passed away? Did the films of their fighters vanish? That makes no sense at all. Of course their knowledge has been passed on. That doesn't mean that those who received are as well equipped to teach it, but it didn't just went up and vanished.