Overrating Past Greats?

Simple boxers in thr past were

Better conditioned

More well rounded

And fought more frequently

 

:good

 

This makes the most sense. HOWEVER, I think people are overrate fighters from a long time ago sometimes.

 

Cerebral lobotomy couldnt pick a more self incriminating name than sugar ray gay.

 

I don't think boxers now are better or worse than boxers 40 years ago. People talk about Leonard or Hagler or whoever dominating and being great. Had they been around today dominating, people would say the same thing they say about Golovkin, "he's in a weak division". When in reality, he just makes them look weak.

It's all relative and the sooner you guys learn about relativity, the better.

 

I agree with you to some degree. I don't see as many guys as before bring a more complete set of skills with natural talent mixed in. I see solid fighters but having some sort of technical deficiency or lack of toughness

 

Seriously, if Leonard and Hagler are your examples of overrated past greats, then you have no idea what you are watching. Those guys were beasts in any era and ATGs.

 

Here's my take on this. Past fighters fought a lot more rounds, gained championship belts when there weren't that many belts to pass around, fought a hell of a lot more frequently, fought much siffer competition because belts weren't that easy to win and won multiple division championships when there were less divisions. Take for example Roberto Duran and compare his accomplishments, given the conditions, to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Now that is a perfect example of why I think fighter's of past eras were greater.

 

You just mentioned Duran. The op is using an alt to make it look like he's making an unbiased well thought out argument. His other alt he went off on a tangent bashing fighters of previous era's and the main fighter in question was Duran. He's always trying to suggest in subtle and subversive ways that Mayweather is the best of all time and no one including past greats can hold a candle to him. He really is a sad human being

 

If you can find a modern fight where an ATG fights an ATG, watch it and then go back and watch ATGs from the 1910-1940 eras fight each other.

I don't know about you, but I notice VASTLY superior defensive skills in the old-timers. You figure, they fought pretty much biweekly with little MMA gloves and fought EVERYBODY. They had to have great self-preservation skills to do that, and the fact that they regularly fought other great fighters helped improve their skills at an exponential rate compared to today when fighters share the ring with an ATG once or twice in their career if they're lucky.

Plus these guys were at the top of a VAST talent pool. Everybody boxed back then. It was a college and high school sport at times.

Plus they fought more fights and longer fights. They simply put in more rounds, more frequently, and against better competition.

I've pointed it out before...Harry Greb had more fights in a year than Mayweather has had in his whole career, and he has more fights against Hall of Famers than Mayweather has fights. Iron sharpens iron and all that.

 

I believe it was created by old sports pundits and 'experts' who were from previous eras. It's natural to look to the past with rose tinted specs, especially if it was the era you remember most fondly.

You'd expect a proper expert to be unbiased but this is hardly ever the case, old farts love Ali's era, just like in Ali's era there were no doubt old farts saying Marciano would have wiped the floor with Ali.

 

You can say that again.

 

I don't doubt this is somewhat true. on the other hand i am 29 and got into older fighters purely by how good some of them look on youtube, and that was all i did for about 3 years until i started reading stuff about the time i signed up to use the classic forum.

there were **** looking fighters in all eras no doubt, particularly pre 40's, but there are today as well.

I know about other sports history as well because it is part of my job now, boxing is one of only 2 sports where you could pull some guys out of ww2 era or before and they could compete(obviously with someone who weighs the same on fight night rather than from the same division). examples - willie pep, srr and barney ross.
I don't say that lightly, for most sports i wouldn't say that of anyone pre 80's. Pele would take time to adapt to the tactics and pace of modern soccer, eddie merckx would plain embarrass himself with his tactics(even with modern drugs), jim clarke wouldn't be able to start a modern sports car, let alone f1.