The Decline of Boxing

"Don't back out now."
I'm not your educator that has to keep correcting your posts to sustain you just because you cry loudly.

We've been here before and I quickly tire of your back and forth when you can't even maintain context but I'll play along one more time ...

Reorganizing my statements and picking and choosing points to ignore or include is not going to fly or I should simply insist you answer every question posed first - like a student.

The focus upon the US was clearly out front in response to "Flea" who appeared to be drawing conclusions about the state of boxing, his prediction and assertions about the level of recognition of Kov and Golovkin WITHIN THE US, and the easy path to the "resurrection" of the sport of boxing WITHIN THE US. WTF do you think I would then focus upon?

I even opened the door to him by the tag line or caveat "if that is what you are suggesting" to see if I was perhaps reading more into his statements than he intended. He could then walk back his assertion(s) by saying something like "I meant large non-US fanbases".

The reasoning for that response is in those other posts.


Now, as to context ...

"If we focus upon the heavyweight division - a prior bastion of US success "

Where and when does this line appear? It appears AFTER speaking (posting) lengthily - in broad strokes - and generally about the US athletic environment. It was a logical movement from the broad to the narrow to begin some more specific comments using the heavyweight division - as an example. You recall this, now? Let's address the comment in context rather than having your panties bunched by something so innocuous. When US boxing was on a better footing - a better RELATIVE footing - US boxers were successful participants in the heavyweight division (i.e., exemplified by being champions with titles and fame). As the sport has declined within the US - due to less participation - it produces fewer great fighters, fewer laudable champions, wins fewer titles/belts, and there are less examples of FAMOUS US fighters - WITHIN THE US (and OUTSIDE as well). You get that? The inverse is thus "If we focus upon the heavyweight division - a current weak spot or lack of US success ....". Go back to my prior post if you need to get retracked again and discover something meaningful to express about this lead in.

Since you aim to reorder my comments to suit your point .. let's continue on ...

"The cultural shift away from boxing in the US has meant the talent pool is significantly lessened. Out of poor competition often comes less convincing champions. The decline of boxing has been the result."

You want to argue either point here? If there are less Americans participating in boxing what else does one conclude about the state of the US boxing talent pool? Got something to say? Say it. Don't ***** say it.

Is the US boxing environment better if less athletes are participating? Can the competition be better if few athletes are learning to box? Can it?

If there are fewer US participants what does that mean for the WORLD boxing talent pool? Is it better for the absence of the US? At this time in human history, does that make any sense to you? It might be different in some future era where the tides have shifted and other places on the globe have improved their standards of living and through that have been able to enhance the environment for their people but as it sits today, the US remains a compelling place/environment and its exclusion from ANYTHING is hardly discerning, a logical assertion, or believably advantageous. I don't care what the area is we might choose to discuss. Whether it be athletics, education, research and development, applied science, or efforts in developing knowledge or fundamental science. In every case, the US is joined to those efforts and the world could never be - AT THIS TIME - better off by their absence.

The same applies to athletics. There may come a time as unimaginable as it is today in which you can make a case for a world Olympics in anything without the United States and it could come to pass. That time hasn't arrived. If you can make the case - let's hear you do it.

We all know where and how the population of the globe is divided or apportioned. There is no doubt that China and India will only be even more significant in the future than they are today. The numbers are undeniable and the impact of these populations are economically substantive. There are opportunities for great change if one can look far enough out. Africa is booming in a relative sense. The Middle East, Indonesia, South America, etc., all have different potentialities that will affect the future.

But, I can't imagine you would take on the thesis that boxing has improved in the aggregate when one of the largest nations like the US, with its population size, its high standard of living (translating into larger numbers of "healthy" candidates for athletic endeavor), its economic success enabling youth to train and practice (rather than survive), the long history of athletic accomplishment, and ready immediate examples of athletic talent existing WITHIN THE US TODAY as having no impact upon the world's talent pool of boxers by its absence.

You follow more (sports) than just boxing. Right? You didn't chose to comment about many relevant things in my prior post(s). You can't separate out and exclude what you decide doesn't enhance your desire to "complain" or to craft a complaint. That is duplicitous.

Do you want to address the size, importance/significance, and enormous growth - in every metric - of collegiate sports in the US? Do you want to address its relation to the quality found in the professional ranks? If you have a cogent comeback for this next statement of mine which you found problematic, let's hear it:

"If decade after decade the best large-sized US athletes are performing at a consistent high level in three major professional sports then US boxing would be and should be no different."

SO? What do you want to say about this statement. Can you deny its validity or accuracy? Let's hear something.

"Stop with your nonsense. "Your" talent pool is strictly a US talent pool, ignoring the other 4 billion males on the planet."

I have already corrected your erroneous, confused diatribe. Of course I won't be ignoring the US talent pool when responding to "FLEA" about the state of the US athletic environment, its "history", and its relation to boxing and its future or, the potential "success" for non-Americans relocating to the US or any US athletes that are boxing. If you have an "explanation" or thesis for something make your case. Wailing isn't going to get it done.

So, does boxing thrive and improve from the absence of American athletes? Does that make any SENSE? Does that conform to YOUR life experiences to date?

It would not be necessary for me to place the US on a pedestal just as you shouldn't be so "sensitive" to their accomplishments to search for a complaint that is not warranted. The facts and history are what they are. If you believe the US talent pool - which IS a pool consisting of people from nearly EVERY SINGLE EUROPEAN nation, containing a large AFRICAN ancestry, a large SOUTH and CENTRAL AMERICAN population (that even predates European-Americans), and a growing number of people from Asia and the Middle East, etc. is inconsequential then you are ignorant of history and sport history most specifically.

It is the size (not the world's largest but in the combination of every important metric including the geography, population, economic significance and role, and obviously the standard of living available and necessary to allow athletes to be well fed, well conditioned, and able to perform), the numbers, and the composition of young people available for athletic competition that results in our major sport's consistency and high quality level (resulting in or a product of its cultural position and connection or relation to education and opportunity).

(cont'd)

 

(Cont'd)

The "decline of boxing" is the title of this thread. That decline is a result of not having such adequate participation and competition. I have no qualms about stating the conditions within the US or the developments that have contributed to this attribution of a decline.

If you want to defend the WORLD's boxing talent pool then you will have to provide examples of a vibrant sport and high end athletic ability. I think you will struggle mightily to provide a list that I would find impressive. But, give it your best shot. Let's start with the following topics: HEAVYWEIGHTS, CRUISERWEIGHTS, LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS.

[FONT=&quot]Why would I need to? Is it not enough to recognize that if there are genetic advantages or disadvantages or strengths or weaknesses or identifiable traits - better or worse - for a particular athletic endeavor within different "ethnicities" that a population with arguably the greatest diversity could provide the best proving ground for the widest physiological range of athletic interaction and competitive development?
[/FONT]

I have lived in Asia for seven years ('90 - '97). I have traveled like a tourist across South America, much if not most of Asia, and Europe. North America is home. I think my passport has been more than adequately active for one lifetime.

What I sense is a rather significant inferiority complex against the US from you. Why is that? Too many fourths and fifths? Or a political distaste for its geopolitical activities? Not everyone in America loves America or agrees with many aspects of its society. But this is about athletics, athletic talent, and demonstrated facts. I can't say something to make you more comfortable when it is not the truth.

No one is trying to sell YOU on the NFL or NBA. Why so sensitive? An American athlete is not going to paint the picture you want to hear - because he doesn't believe it to be true. It is as simple and direct as that. As I said to you in another post, if you are in a race and four guys run 9.8 and you run 10.1 I don't want to watch you run. I would rather there be a fifth guy who can potentially run 9.8 in the race in your spot. Did being uncompetitive in your races provide that special dislike for the NBA's demographic? That dig is because you keep reverting to the same type of thing or the all too regular jab in your posts.

Let's return to boxing specifically ... and there is nothing more high profile than HEAVYWEIGHT champ.

Klitschko didn't fail to generate a buzz within the US because of his nationality. He didn't fail to capture the country's heart because of his skin color. He failed because of his unexceptional performances against absolutely horrific competition. It doesn't matter that there were poor athletes in prior eras. It doesn't matter that prior champions fought bums or runs of bums. He is measured and evaluated by WHAT EXISTS ON THIS PLANET AT THIS TIME. You receive little credit for beating dismal athletes. You receive little credit for beating smaller athletes. And, you don't receive credit from America's youth for beating dismal out of shape athletes from America either. I said previously, I don't think a 6'6" 245 super heavyweight is going to be a logical matchup for a 6'0" 180 pound champion from the past. But, if Wlad was truly exceptional and extraordinary it would be apparent. That so many believe he is not should give you pause. Not everyone could possibly be motivated by nationalism, or racism, or whatever you deem their agenda. We are merely telling you what we see and how we see it.

The extension of all of this is that Wlad - just as an example - would either be better if there were great American large-sized athletes in the sport - because he would have to improve or would improve by the increase in actual competition (athletes after all learn from other athletes just like in any area or endeavor of life) or he would be retired. The problem with your "perspective" and discourse is that there are simply few to no examples of impressive talent in the division. I know why the US representatives are bad. What is YOUR explanation for why all of the thriving (i.e, non-American) bastions of athletic talent have such mediocre representatives in the weight class? Why is the athletic depth in other sports far greater and consistent - decade after decade after decade? I think it safe to conclude that there must be something to what exists in US athletics and the contribution to boxing worldwide that is absent out of this significant talent pool. Perhaps someday there will be other pools that are equally important and/or more important. That day has not yet arrived.

 

I intended to finish out the rest of your post but frankly I don't deign to give this any more time than I just did.

Where I'm at US markets open in an hour and five minutes and I must go.

The qualities required for combat are not original, unique, and uncommon and the numbers sufficient to provide for a competitive and active landscape would easily be available out of nearly 70 million male American youths under 34 years of age if there were either subsidies, scholarships, or guarantees of a livelihood or a thriving sport.

By extension the absence of other choices would alter the current environment immediately. America has not produced worse athletes and lousy heavyweights because that is all the talent pool holds. It has produced a weak field with the occasional exception because of a long trend which took hold in the '50s and 60's (as stated in the very first post).

I don't agree with your ending assertions either.


I know that won't surprise you.


Cheers, in any case.

 

***

 

The bolded part is significant. Athleticism AND a certain type of personality are both helpful to succeed in boxing. Personality traits are more important, but size, strength, speed, power, stamina, and what-have-you will often decide matters between two boxers with the right mental makeup for the sport.

Football, basketball, and other sports are already filled with people who have the requisite athleticism. Thousands of them. A fraction of those WILL have the right personality -- in fact, I bet those people will exist at higher rates in professional or high-level amateur sports than in the general population.

 

Fair enough points, except remember there was WWII with the champions in the service and not defending. Robinson, Charles, and Moore would eventually become the champion, not one of several champions. Williams and Burley slipped back after the war, as did Bivins.

Today, of course, these men would be champions earlier, as there are several championships and each would probably be able to pick off one.

 

A couple issues that we should probably consider separately rather than as one question:

First, a sport can drain talent from another even if the two have little in common. To some extent, all sports are in competition with each other for young men's time. (And with less healthy activities, like video games or eating fast food while watching movies.)

Second, we should distinguish the end products of years of boxing training starting at a young age (Ali, Tyson, etc.) -- who generally can't play other sports well -- from those athletes' potential abilities in other sports if they'd gone for different sports from the outset.

Third, you don't need to be good enough to go pro in another sport for that sport to distract you from boxing. A Tyson who committed himself to football at age 12 would have given several years of his life to a sport other than boxing -- which would have reduced his chances to pursue boxing later on, after he realized that he'd never be big enough to go pro. This realization can come at different stages of your athletic career; some find out in HS, some in college. That's already a big chunk of an athlete's life that he HASN'T dedicated to boxing.

On that note, guys like Foreman, Lewis, and Klitschko -- all great champions in the last 50 years -- probably DID have the physical makeup to succeed in other sports, at least at the high school or early college levels. Marciano obviously did. So did Sullivan, Corbett, Jeffries out of the old timers, and I'm sure more bedsides. And that's enough to distract them long enough from boxing to reduce their options. Many of the contenders, I'm sure, also could have competed as high school or college athletes.

Finally, I don't think that it's dispositive to point out that boxing training doesn't transfer to other sports. Almost EVERY sport only transfers to a limited extent. Stamina from running doesn't carry over that well to cycling. Table tennis and real tennis don't carry over too well. Even kickboxers and boxers seldom excel at each other's sports, and they're both combat sports. But there's an athletic "base" that younger athletes have that allows them to do reasonably well in multiple sports before specializing, and more talented kids with better athletic "bases" are generally able to perform better at specialized training once the latter starts. (See, eg, the Eastern European sports model.)

In other words, general athleticism does exist, but it doesn't get you high-end performance without specialized training that doesn't carry over. Under the current system, most of those generally athletic kids are going into sports other than boxing, where they will end up specializing in non-boxing sports.

So I'm willing to answer "yes" to Seamus's earlier rhetorical question: boxing DID drain talent away from other sports back in the day, though the proportions are hard to determine. Back when boxing was one of the few professional options for (generally tougher, meaner, and more desperate) young men, I would absolutely have expected more of them to pursue it than other options -- even though more of them would have failed because of an improper mindset, relative to other sports.

 

"there are a lot more fights today than back in the 50s, 60s and 70s--worldwide!"

Really hard to actually believe this.

I looked up the listed fights at boxrec for the top ten heavyweights--here are the listed # of fights

66, 29, 21, 26, 20, 24, 19, 22, 32, 20

Wlad with 66 has had more than twice as many fights as anyone else. The only other heavyweight with even 30 fights under his belt is Wilder.

If we look at all the champions, in the six major divisions (heavy, light heavy, middle, welter, light, feather) which were in existence in the 1950's, we get

66, 25, 31, 47, 24, 65

Now the champions in the 1950's often had more than 100 fights,

fifties champion Sandy Saddler who retired at 31 had 163 fights,
Kid Gavilan who retired at 32 had 143 fights.

My question is if there are so many more fights, why don't the major fighters have anywhere near the same amount of fights?

The evidence points to there being more fighters and fights back in the old days.

 

I think the key is how the twig is bent.

Which sport will the youngster be turned toward when he can still develop?

The best an-logy I can think of is a tiger cub born and grown to adulthood in a zoo. What happens if it is put into the wild? I think it would most likely be an inefficient hunter and starve rather quickly.

What if the same cub was born in the wild. Well, it would become the king of the jungle.

Somewhat the same with humans, I think. It is having the right environment in the first place. Today there are so many other and better options to boxing and a kid with ambition and athletic talents is naturally directed to them. So yes, I think they might well be potential heavyweight champions in the NFL or NBA.

One argument made by some here is that many boxers "dreamed" of other sports but failed at them and then turned to boxing. But this is a two-edged sword. It actually implies that boxing only gets the second-rate athletes who aren't up to the other sports. Why the first-rate athletes would fail at boxing is not so clear.

In the old days in the US, the only big money sport other than boxing open to a poor kid was baseball, a sport more defined by skills than athleticism. A poor throwing arm or ordinary eyesight could knock an otherwise gifted athlete out of the running. Football was a college-based sport at a time few could afford college. Basketball was hardly on the map. The expanding impact of the NBA and the NFL since the sixties I think has definitely effected the talent pool in the heavier divisions within the US.

 

Right on EM ! To imply that there are as much boxing bouts in the USA today as there were in the 1920s to 1950s is not in line with the facts! There were about 5-7 times the amount of pro fighters in the 1920s to the 1940s in America as there are today.
There were the same amount of boxing arena's in those days as there are today...The average amount of fights a champion had in the days were over 100 bouts and for example, in the 1930s and 1940s in MSG there were THREE boxing rings going at the same time at the NY Golden Gloves Finals, so popular was boxing in those days...Some poster claims that more people see their
favorite fighters today on PPV television than in the 1940s...
It may be true, but I doubt it, but in ANY CASE, what has this to do with today's fighters on tv ala Floyd Mayweather etc, fighting
as often as a SRR, a Kid Gavilan, Archie Moore etc, because he
appears once or twice a year on pay tv ? Does that make him a better fighter because he makes a ton of money once a year or so on tv ? Ray Robinson fought 20 times a year many times thereabouts. Kid Gavilan averaged 15 bouts a year often, by
fighting in dozens of fight arena's each year where thousand of fans all over the USA saw Robby and him...My contention is that pay tv might be better for more fans today,but has nada to do with boxers fighting more often in their prime years. And I contend the larger pool of pro fighters fighting each other more often, should bring a better crop of champions at the top. Logic dictates that...

 

Omission corrected. I meant to post there were 5-7 times the amount of boxing arena's scattered through the USA as their were pro fighters in the 1920 to 1940s...

 

H, you express yourself so damn well...I'm jealous...:hi:

 

These are the number of pro fights, that can be found in BoxRec's database (updated on October 23, 2014), decade by decade:

1850 2
1860 15
1870 339
1880 4607
1890 16503
1900 41984
1910 94008
1920 269461
1930 287746
1940 202824
1950 156486
1960 105133
1970 104888
1980 130861
1990 141126
2000 185882
2010 107123

This shows (not surprisingly!) that the 20s and 30s saw the most activity, followed by a steady drop in numbers until the 60s and 70 - after which the number of fights started to increase again. On October 23, a couple of months short of the halfway mark of this decade, we've already had more fights than during each of the (entire) 60s and 70s decades!

http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=101907&start=50

 

With the caveat that the further you go back, the fewer fights were recorded.

Oddly enough, though, the "decline in the 1960s/70s" narrative makes sense when you consider how long Ali hung on against multiple generations of heavies.

 

Of course, technology allows more folks to see the great fighters on TV today. My guess is that more saw the old champions live.

Another underlying premise of some of these arguments is that boxing is much more a world sport than it was in the old days, but this underrates the popularity of boxing worldwide going way back.
Yes, Eastern Europe didn't have pro-boxing (for the most part) because of government hostility, but the rest of Europe, North and South America, Africa, Australia, and several countries in East Asia were hotbeds of boxing. If you look through the old Ring's, places like Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Bombay, Singapore, Port Mosby, etc., were often staging boxing matches.

Boxing has spread a bit in recent years, but I also think it has lost popularity in some of its old strongholds.