I am curious to know what the stats are on heavyweight champs throughout the 20th century and how many southpaws they faced(to included John L Sullivan even though he fell on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries). Southpaws were avoided like the plague way more than now by fighter management decades ago. Many left handed fighters were encouraged to box orthodox starting out because of this known fact. Modern heavyweight title holders have many more lefties on their resumes(such as the Klitschkos) then past champions. How many lefties did say Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Jack Dempsey, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes or Jack Johnson face? Lennox Lewis for example never faced a southpaw in a professional fight(thought he did admit to facing them in sparring)
Both Kltishcko's have wins over top ten lefties. Wald in particular...Chagaev, Byrd, Thompson, and Ibrahim.
I think that this is one area where the modern fighters would definitely score against the old timers. Back in the day, southpaws were few, far between, and the techniques for dealing with them were not as refined. Throw a top modern southpaw into the 1930s and he would run riot for a while.
This is very true, few trainers knew the proper tactics to deal with lefties or even the best ways to maximize the advantages that lefties held. Many fighters had to learn in a fight what worked and what didn't. Switch hitting for confusion factor was practically unheard of(both from right handed to left handed and vice-versa) Lefties seemed more prevalent in the lower weight classes than in the heavies but were still treated like lepers.
I often think of George Chip in this context. On paper he has one of the best resumes of any middleweight champion. Yet he got knocked out by a light hitting southpaw underdog in one of the biggest upsets of all time (like Tyson Douglas big). He didn't even know that the guy was a southpaw going into the fight! Food for thought.
In modern times, theobvious are Michael Moorer beat Holyfield and was KOd by Foreman Byrd beat Vitali and Evander and was KOd Wlad Sanders beat Wlad but lost to Vitali
