Good point Edward Morbius. Aside from the US, boxing has pretty much died in France whereas in the early 20th Century and up until the middle it was booming.
Two questions: How many of these fights are between women? Women boxing might be a fair argument for boxing's enduring popularity, but distorts when comparing numbers to the old male only era. And can you explain why top fighters have so relatively few fights? when there are supposedly so many fighters? Here are the total fights listed on boxrec for their 17 recognized champions as of now-- 66-41-25-35-31-44-47-29-24-34-65-19-22-46-41-7-36 only two have had more than 50 fights. In fairness, these are mid-career totals, so they will rise, but how many do you expect to reach 100 fights? For comparision, I looked the total fights of all the champions in the six traditional top weights in the 1950's & 1960's (heavy, light heavy, middle, welter, light, feather) from the Ring Record Book (which might vary slightly from boxrec but is much easier to use to find info), and the following had more than 100 listed fights Ezzard Charles, Joey Maxim, Archie Moore, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson, Bobo Olson, Joey Giardello, Emile Griffith, Carlos Monzon, Kid Gavilan, Ike Williams, Jimmy Carter, Lauro Salas, Paddy DeMarco, Joe Brown, Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, Jose Legra I think all this raises questions. If your stats are accurate, are all these "pro" fights as they would have been understood in the old days, or are these numbers padded with what amounts to tough man competitions. If there are all these fighters out there, why don't the top men fight more often?
"'your' talent pool is strictly a US talent pool, ignoring the other 4 billion males on the planet" Yes, but America was pretty important during the 20th century. Looking at the records, it seems to me that the heavyweight championship was held by non-Americans for only 8 out of the 100 years. One might argue Sam Langford was also the best out there for a few years, but at the least 80 to 85% of the time the best out there was an American. And the Americans were still critical into recent years. Lewis, Wlad, and Vitali have lost between them seven fights. Five of those losses were to Americans. Of the five Klitschko losses, three were to Americans. Say what you want about the Europeans other than the Klitschkos--how many of them have defeated a Klitschko or even given one of them a tough fight? As competition is always a closed shop--you can only fight what is out there--it is impossible to actually tell if a dominant champion is great or only the tallest midget, whether now or in the past. The bottom line is that taking the USA off the table in the 20th century would have totally altered boxing history. Taking the USA off the table may well be doing the same for the 21st century.
Actually, I'd say the biggest story in those stats is the way that the "golden age" 60s-70s era actually corresponded to a precipitous DECLINE in boxing activity. Especially when you consider that 20s, 30s, and 40s records are less well documented than those of the 60s-70s. It flies in the face of boxing history orthodoxy over the last 30 years or so. Makes you wonder how much of the mystique came from frequent competition, televised color fights, big personalities like Ali (who controlled the division for an abnormally long time), and nostalgic Baby Boomer memories rather than actual boxing ability. Perhaps the critics back in the 60s who claimed that boxing wasn't what it once was were right after all. (Though the influx of boxers during the Depression might not have represented an ideal talent pool either.)
I'm sure, these numbers include the women who engage in pro boxing today. I have no idea, how big a percentage of the bouts that take place today, are fights between women... but I doubt there are so many, that they completely distort the picture. No, I don't believe tough man fights are included in BoxRec's stats. 'Can you explain why top fighters have so relatively few fights?' Well, they obviously don't fight as often as they used to decades ago! Today most boxers don't make it past 50-60 fights - while half a century ago a 100-fight career wasn't unusual. And if we go back even further, to the 20s and 30s, you saw lots of boxers with 150-200 career fights... and quite a few with even more than that! But of course you already know that, as this is common knowledge... so it shouldn't surprise anyone, that boxers have fewer fights today than 50 (or more) years ago.
Since I am in high time of my money making business I will address your issues in part and parcel '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.' What exactly does this mean? I can give you examples of high end athletic ability from all over the globe. Please, test me on this topic. I await.
I think that what happened is pretty obvious; television killed off the small Club in American boxing. Ask burt- back in the boxing there were tons of arenas putting on fights all the time. TV killed that in the same say that it killed the minor league in baseball. No one wanted to go see an inferior product when they could have the best of the best broadcast right into their living room. Having said that I will argue that the idea that we can tell the quality of boxing simply by how many fights were put on seems dubious. The 1960s and '70's were chock full of fighters from all over the world succeeding. You had Latin American champions coming into their own and you had Asia becoming a force. America cut the schaff but the wheat was there combined with a burgeoning worldwide scene. Anyway I'm sure that there is a better way to examine the quality of boxing and for all I know the middle part of the century might turn out to be the weakest link. But I don't think so.
And if there was a more established amateur program in Western Africa and/or if the Soviet Union fighters were able to go pro and/or if China gave a **** about Western boxing, the heavyweight championship lineage would look drastically different.
Maybe I didn't phrase this question properly, and if so, I'll try to be a little clearer. There seems to be a great gap between the number of fights the individual fighters had in the old days compared to the number of fights individual fighters have today. They really don't compare. Just off the top of my head I picked some of the old non-American fighters I remember seeing in TV bouts back in the fifties whom I figured (correctly) would have had at least 100 career fights= Peter Mueller (Germany), Charles Humez (France), Duilio Loi (Italy), Yvon Durelle (Canada), Flash Elorde (Philippines), Jorge Fernandez (Argentina), Isaac Logart (Cuba), Gaspar Ortega (Mexico) As you can see, it didn't need to be American fighters to total 100 fights, and if you scan their records on boxrec one sees opponents from all over the world who had 70, 80, 90, or 100 or more fights in mid-career. two thoughts 1---the high individual bouts seem totally at odds with the stats you quote that there are more bouts being staged today. One possibility is that the stats you quote are just wrong. 2---if the stats are correct, then who exactly are all these folks having all these fights? They are clearly not the top men in the world. My guess would be that there are a lot of dilettante boxers out there. *I don't have any idea the percentage of female versus male fights, but of the 17 male champions on boxrec, 2 have had more than 50 fights, and 11 more than 30. Of the 15 female champions listed, 1 has had 50 fights, and 7 more than 30. The gap is not huge.
I actually find this to be an improvement at the top level. Fighters have more time to prepare for individual opponents and generally do not arrived in damaged condition or compromised by too busy a schedule. The public gets a better product... or at least the potential ofr the best possible product.
But you have to compete to stay sharp in any sport. The timing goes off if you lay off for even a short time. We will probably disagree, but I don't see why fighting once or twice a year is better than fighting six to eight times a year. That would be enough time between fights for the body to rest and recover, unless you took a fierce beating. Certainly most of the heavyweights today are not very active. Wlad has been, with 66 fights at 38 years of age, but Povetkin has had only 29 fights up to 35, Stiverne only 26 fights up to 36 Jennings 19 fights up to 30 Solis 22 fights up to 34 Taper 13 fights up to 32 Browne 22 fights up to 35 I don't think these men are having enough fights to keep at the top of their game, and in some cases are still rather inexperienced fighters even though they are past their best athletic years. *Your point-of-view also seems to imply one doesn't learn more by actually fighting and being tested by tough opposition.
So rather than concede the point that there were many times more pro fights in the 1920s to the 1950s than there are today S, you come up with the silly notion that the "public gets a better product today because a fighter like a Mayweather fights once or twice a year, and arrives in better condition for a bout, thus the public watches a better product"...Well sir, you haven't seen for example a Ray Robinson, kid Gavilan, Willie Pep. Ike Williams, Sandy Saddler, Beau Jack, Archie Moore, Tony Canzoneri, etc all who had well over 100 bouts in their illustrious careers giving us great moments of skilled boxing thrills not seen today from boxers fighting a few times a year if that much. The fact is the fighters those days averaged 10-20 fights a year against keener opposition in 100s of boxing arenas scattered all over the USA, and Britain...In Britain for example A Ted Kid Lewis and Jackie Kid Berg had a total of 439 recorded bouts giving thrills to their audiences and were in tip top shape for their fights...Why a FMM would have to fight Eighty more years at his 2 bouts a year pace to reach 200 bouts...We can all have our own opinions as to who would beat who, but the cold truth is the facts are the facts...
"The public gets a better product." Well, certainly the European public was turned on by Wlad Klitschko against Kubrat Pulev, and the fight I'm sure was a big success at the box office, but I just watched it and also watched and compared it to the Patterson-Harris fight in 1958. I thought the old fight more interesting. Harris was overmatched, but seemed to have much more on the ball than Pulev. Interestingly, the 25 year old Harris had more fights under his belt--23--than the 33 year old Pulev did--20. He certainly gave a better account of himself. One thing, though. Champions in the old days usually didn't fight all that often. It was the contenders who fought much more often and so were relatively experienced while still young enough to be at their athletic peaks.
Yes (as we all know, from years of browsing through Ring Record Books and later BoxRec) there is indeed a huge gap in individual numbers, when you compare the top boxers of today with those from many years ago. But what has that got to do with the number of fights worldwide? Are you saying, that if the top men of 50 years ago had more fights than they do today - then there must also have been more fights back then? And that the fewer total fights that make up a career today, is the result of fewer fights/fighters now? Really?? You don't think, there may be other reasons, why today's top boxers have so few fights?... ... such as much higher purses (you don't have to fight every month or so to get bread on the table), champions and top contenders sitting on their fat ***es waiting for the next million dollar purse to drop into their laps - instead of going out there and actually box more than once or twice a year, rivalling promotors/networks preventing fights from happening, etc. There are lots of reasons, why boxers don't fight as often today... but I don't think, scarcity of possible opponents is one of them! As for women boxers... as you say, the gap in number of fights between the best female and male boxers isn't huge. However, the gap in number of boxers is. The women make up only approx. 5% of all boxers - but you're right, that should be taken into consideration! So we should probably knock off about 5% of the fights listed by BoxRec today, if we want to make a proper comparison with earlier eras. Not that it will make much difference - even if reduced by 5 %, BoxRec's database will still show approx. twice as many fights, on an annual basis, as back in the 60s and 70s.
Well, I focused on the stats claiming there is so many more fights today than in the old days--seems odd considering how few top fighters actually have the same number of fights. Your point that the 1960's and 1970's might actually have seen a decline overall from the late 1930's through the early 1950's might actually be a good one. Prior to the mid-1930's the color line held competition back in the US. When it fell, I think the US entered its most competitive era because of the massive influx of black talent coupled with the impact of severe economic hard times on the total talent pool. The impact of a rising standard of living, TV, and the demise of the local clubs, really began to bite in the mid fifties. I think there is a few years lag for the impact of an infusion of talent or for a diminishment of talent to be noticed--as it takes a few years for new talent to reach main event status.