Serious thoughts on this Harry Greb shadow boxing video?

I think if you watch the full length film with Harry sparring he looks pretty good. I don't know why all the need to denigrate old timers? Sure they had different styles of boxing and training and in many ways there have been huge improvements in many areas of today's game but I doubt many current fighters have Greb's guts, experience and courage and they certainly lack his vast ring experience fighting every type of style imaginable. His style may not please us as much aesthetically but it sure was effective! It is far from a given that modern fighters would flourish fighting in those days, I suspect they would face as many hurdles as an old timer put into today's ring.

I should also add that I doubt anyone would laughed at Harry while training, he doesn't look like someone to be messed with

 

Nobody will convince me that boxing has moved on and is superior now than from when those fighters were active.
No way.

 

I recognize that there are differences, but I have always pushed back against the asumption that fighters from later eras were superior.

 

Conversely you can walk into any boxing gym and see novices look amazing shadowboxing only to be beaten from pillar to post in sparring

 

I will even go a step further and state that I am not at all sure that runners today are even superior. Before someone quotes times to me, I have seen all that. I am still not convinced that equipment and track conditions do not play a BIG part in those faster times. I do not want to turn this thread from boxing to other sports. I will just say I have my reasons why I doubt this professed huge progress in many sports.

 

That's true. Athletes like Jesse Owens ran on cinder tracks, which is a track only used for horse racing nowadays. Experts have estimated that the difference between running cinders vs a synthetic track is about 1.5% to 2%. Just the track alone would shave about 0.2 of a second off of his time, bringing his personal best down to a flat 10 seconds.

 

There is also an argument to be had that the amateur athletics rules of the early 20th century simply stopped the best talent from getting to the top.

 

The force of personality! Their discussions are about whether Tyson could beat Fury, Usyk, Joshua, never whether, say, Lewis could (and definitely not whether Louis or Ali could).

 

You're fixating on Heavyweights with an eventual eye to everything Ali, obviously. An open division which is a vastly different debate to boxing as a whole. I still remember loads of us chuckling at Corbett and co vs the likes of Ali and Holmes, even back then.

Back to boxing overall tho, where would you see the improvements from the 40's, some 75 years ago? Again, improvements should be obvious via that amount of time passage even if they was just trickling.

 

Aye…the idea than a prime Ali (height and weight) is going to be dominant in modern day heavyweight boxing, just won’t happen, and I’ve said this for at least 20 years. It’s not that they can’t “beat” the best, they may, but fighting much bigger guys time after time after time would take too much out of them. I’d love Usyk to beat Fury, I think he has the skillset to go close but i don’t think for a minute that Uysk is going to be a dominant heavyweight champ that cleans out the division over a number of years.

 

I think overall boxing is more comparable “then and now” to most sports due to its limitations, such as weight class obviously (apart from heavies) , how fundamentally basic it is (fistfighting wearing the same ounce gloves) and the fact that boxers were so much fitter than many sportsmen 75 years ago. Compare say, a tennis player or footballer (soccer) player to their modern day equivalent and the fitness levels are miles apart, but no so much with boxers, which at least make the debate thought provoking and lively.

 

Very true CT, a lot of sport is like this though. I remember a few years ago a Manchester Utd footballer was asked to compare their winning team to the same club from the 1960s, he said “we’d win 10-0” , cue a lot of outrage. I remember thinking 1. He was right but 2. It sounded a bit uncalled for and he didn’t come out of it very well. I always remember Tyson saying (about Larry) “if he was at his best I wouldn’t stand a chance” and, while I don’t believe he meant it, it was a nice thing to say. So I think sportsmen (or women) are often reluctant to disparage older generations, especially those they’ve learnt from, and when they do, they often come across as a massive arsehole.

 

My sister does the “your life depends on it” ultimatum for loads of sports comparisons , including boxing, and I usually say the same.

 

Definitely.

 

Absolutely, but your improvement theory lay in a thread on Harry Greb and was a blanket statement. Going to Heavyweights murkies the water as it's an open division in which guys have been getting bigger. All other weights are a better overall barometer as they are governed by weight and it's orange and oranges. There's always going to be plenty going for bigger is better.

The way i mean is that in your opinion Ali and co are overrated on the forum vs big modern heavyweights. You think they've been bypassed. You can't go at it head on for obvious reasons so you are nipping away vaguely at the sides in the hope of making a little headway.

Ali and Patterson is like comparing the Grand Canyon to a crack in the bedroom wall. The worm has turned on Marciano as more and more users got onboard the train, particularly newer posters of whom many went with the flow. A lot of younger newer users are also very partial to the whole size thing. Johnson's era is far enough back and battled differently enough for it to be fair to opine boxing has passed him by. I personally never thought his style/skills would carry over to far into the future. I doubt the majority of the forum would have been plugging him over too many ATG's forward of his time.

Yes but the lower divisions show us boxing has, if anything, devolved in many ways despite all this new science etc

Rehydration is a different matter altogether and simply born out of the change in rules. It's just a change in weigh in strategy.

Where can we see all the advantages, in the ring, that all this athletic training and sports science has allowed? There's still a plethora of boxers running around without a big punch. I can't see any lighting the arena's up with more speed than the likes of SRR, SRL and co. Stamina certainly hasn't improved, to say the least. Even in the big boys I've seen Wilder gassed after sitting back all fight and then going hard for a minute or two. In the third Fury match he moved a bit and was busier than usual and started to tire in no time and he's one of the only lean ones.

There's no way on earth skills have improved. Flash24 has given his reasons why countless times now and IMO he absolutely nails it. You don't get better at something without practising it plenty, for starters. I also take heed of the claims there is no-where near the amount of skilled trainers getting around like there was many decades prior.