This is the flipside of some of the discussions I've had with @janitor and @Kamikaze. We often talk about the value of globalized boxing. But I think there's still something to be said for societies where boxing is so widespread that they punch above their weight in producing good fighters. The Irish Travellers are a good example. Wiki gives a max population of 350,000 of them, which is about a third the size of Cribb's London. But they appear to have an ingrained boxing culture, and in the modern period, they've produced a WBO champion, a lineal heavyweight champ, and multiple regional / British / Commonwealth champions. So small-but-enthusiastic boxing communities might provide a corrective in some of the era vs era discussions. If you can prove that your era of choice was one.
So you can account for whether an era in global boxing was good or not based on whether Irish Travelers were successful because their interest is assumed to be always high and their population is very small as a percent of the global community no matter what year it is? That's ****ing brilliant!
As I have said in our previous debates, it doesn't take a large population to produce a large talent pool, or a large talent pool to produce an outstanding talent. What I will say however, is that the people from the Traveling Community who are elite talents, seem to elect to compete in mainstream boxing. Why wouldn't you if you could?
No, although that's actually a pretty funny approach. My point was a lot more boring. I simply meant that if a population of 350k like the Travellers can consistently produce high level fighters against today's globalized talent field, then we shouldn't be surprised if other small populations of the past (say, 1880s Boston) could do it.
But maybe you should? Unfortunately though, with the historical chaos in Ireland, it's possible there was a lot of variation in how many were available for professional athletics!
