The evolution of boxing

A lot of good dialogue on this thread.

 

You do not need to choose an athletic profession. Many people at that time period saw it fit to become something else rather than a boxer, since you have to be number 1 if you wanted to make any meaningful money.

 

i kind of see what you are saying but my point was that the increase in worldwide talent pool is offset by the increase in the sports that that pool is divided between.

lots of people see fit to become something other than a pro sportsman today too, for the same reasons as then (no pension, no assured career, average earnings ect ). how many people with the athletic ability to be a pro sportsman who do something else is completely unknown for any era, but the people who do try to make money by athletics clearly have many more choices today.

 

that's true, but imo the total number of boxers relates much better to the average boxer being better now than in 1900 rather than the best guys being better.

you're right there were less pro's in 1900, but that is not the peak of boxing participation(in the traditional countries), the numbers for people doing boxing training would have risen dramatically up till the 40's, then risen more slowly after a post war boom that brought the ussr in in a big way(to am competition, which leads through to the pro eastern euro fighters since it fell).

the (world) population has almost doubled since the 70's, but the standard of boxing hasn't visibly increased that much despite the added help of globalisation.

if your argument is used to say boxers on average are better today than 115 years ago then i would agree, but if it's used to say the best guys are bound to be better then i would disagree.

 

Great fights make great fighters. Regardless of the total numbers participating world wide it has to be the professional infrastructures that is responsible for developing all time potential.

Professional boxing had a lot more layers of competition that has gone now. Amateur boxing still has novice level, open class, international circuits. Professional Boxing on the whole does not.

Without the layers of competition at each level in pro boxing you could have a hundred million people participating in professional boxing and it would only be a select few of highly financed prospects making it through with manufactured records. The competition is only at one level.

Until profesionals go back to having 10 well matched fights a year (where it is acceptable for decent fighters to lose three of those annual fights) you won't develop the same kind of seasoning throughout the levels that pro boxing once had in its real 1930-1960s peak.

You used to have losers who could win fights that fought more often. There was a level for all boxers to be overall more successful and more competitive. The "opponents" were better. Competition stiffer throughout the ranks.

Without the small clubs a promoter only has to put on one competative fight on the card and use a circuit of traveling part time professional losers against green manufactured local winners for the rest of the bill. That's been going on for a lot of years.

Regardless of numbers participating, Fighters evolve potential under that system and are as good as they need to be for that system.

 

More boxers now ???? WRONG

 

This may sound silly to you but who on earth is Eddie Mercyx ??? I dunno who he is but I seriously doubt he was as dominant in his sport as Don Bradman was to his in a 20 career... The DON has no peers.... he is #1 in his sport and daylight 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and 6th.

If this guy can't beat the guys today then he sure ain't no Bradman, if Bradman was around today he would still be the #1 and no one would come close to his 99.94 batting average. No cricketer today is even a pimple on the DON's azz

 

This post is incorrect on many fronts... Burt Bienstock was around a lot longer than you have been, he knows from experience. THERE IS NOT MOTRE BOXERS TODAY, PERIOD. Yes the world has many more people ANY MANY MORE SPORTS even in the fighting game... now the fighting game has potential boxers choosing MMA or Muay Thai, or basketball, NFL, rugby league, cricket, soccer, union, ice hockey, golf, tennis, yep there are more rugby league players than ever before, more cricketers (hell there are a billion Indians in the world, not many of them are boxers.). Why box when you can get filthy rich just by playing baseball or golf ? I know for a FACT that in my country, Australia there is less than %10 per cent as many boxers now as there was in the 40's... stats prove this, every Aussie boy learned some boxing, HE HAD TO JUST TO KEEP HIS TEETH, we were more capable of violence. America had many more pros.... so before you just make a broad statement, why not look into the official records like how many professional middleweights were there in 1950 and how many now, we had over 350 professional welterweights in Australia, now we have less than 20.//// TWENTY.... Boxing was so much bigger then, back then the most famous man in sport was ALWAYS the world heavyweight champ, now the average man on the street can't usually name who holds that honour..the Lennox Lewis's and Klitchkos are virtually unknowns compared to the Louis's and Marciano's.

 

In the 1940's a young healthy and fit young man used to scoff at boxers saying stuff like "what sort of idiot would do a sport where you get your head punched in ?", One bloke replied to this scoffing one day and Tommy replied thus, "Ummmmm how much money did you say you get ?", when given the answer the young man asked his mate where and when can he get a fight, he was introduced to a trainer and a week or two later Tommy Burns II was in the ring getting paid two whole weeks wages for just 4 rounds. He later became the Aussie Welterweight Champion and later retired with quite a lot of money without ever having to leave Australia and he did very well after boxing as well because not only could he really fight he was a smart guy, try doing that in Australia these days without having to reach a world title shot.

 

he was a cyclist and i stand by calling him one of the most dominant sportsmen ever. bradman is also worthy of that title and was the greatest batsman ever, but perhaps would also have to be a great bowler to compare to mercx in terms of dominating a sport. bradman was also a lot longer ago, i used mercx because he was in a decade i was mentioning.

Not being able to beat the guys today is an effect of how that sport has evolved and absolutley not a negative on mercx, or any legend from any sport, which is the point i was trying to make about the evolution of sport. it's not a comment on talent but that some combat sports are the only sports a guy from the 70's could step out of the time machine and compete straight away begs the question of how far back you can take that.

i don't know that much about cricket, especially the evolution, i just watched some bradman clips and the pitch and lack of protection seem like the main differences, i don't know about any major rule changes since then, maybe you could make the argument that bradman would be able to step out of the time machine and compete today, i'd be interested to hear it.

 

Cite your belief then. The world population is vastly greater, boxing has opened up to markets it never new before.

Even in the US alone. Its possible the US alone has few boxers than before, but even then, it has a larger talent pool. For instance, take Deontay Wilder. Whatever his flaws (and I'm not a fan) he's a top contender belt holder, he's an athletic giant with massive power. He was urged to go into boxing because of his abilities and inclination toward fighting. Even if less Americans are actually in boxing now, the talent of those participating is almost certainly better, because the most athletic get directed into it, and there are more super athletic Americans out there now.

 

Its right and you just don't want to deal with it. Cite these "statistics" you claim prove it. And do it for the whole world, not just Australia and US. And do it for amateurs, not just pros. The cream rises to the top. And for that reason, even if there are fewer boxers in some countries, its still a much greater talent pool from which they are drawing.

 

And for that matter, why don't you get numbers on level of participation in absolutely EVERY quantifiably objective sport? I'm sure there are many such sports where the participation levels have progressed much worse over time than in boxing. And yet in EVERY SINGLE ONE of them, the records have been broken over the last 30 years. In EVERY SINGLE ONE of them, they have seen the participation of larger and or more athletic participants than they used to. That has been seen in boxing as well. Do you really have any conception of how irrational it is to say despite 1. Every sport with quantifiable results have gotten better and 2. The participants are marked by size increases, which are also present in HW boxing, that boxing is somehow a special flower that is not similarly seeing an increase in effectiveness? Jeez! I'll let you make nonsensical arguments that ignore the core facts and carry on in lala land.

 

Thanks mate, I didn't know anything about Mercyx. Eddie is a cyclist, and it is a pure athletic sport, bikes are faster, training is better and like sprinting or swimming it is against the clock, all these sports get faster, boxing is not that simple.

As for how far we can take the time machine thing, I think fighters from the fifties would only struggle in the sense that they now have to win inside 12 rounds... that is a huge difference, I was around when this change happened and have seen the effects first hand. It has changed boxing in a negative way I think, and so do many in that it favours the guy who we find less exciting, the guy who back pedals and does not engage so knock out artists will struggle today and the guys even further back to the 1910's would really have to struggle, this goes both ways our fighters today going back to 1910 are NOT going to succeed, they will fell like they are suddenly amongst gladiators willing to fight to the death and that would take a whole new physcological makeup and this would probably be similar to most sports.................. Now we can use Bradman as an example, here is a guy who you said so yourself has very little protection, this actually means he was in serious danger of maybe death if his reflexes were not up to facing that one 90 mph ball aimed at his head, a modern batsman would be mightily intimidated by having no helmet. I saw the great Dennis Lillee and the fastest bowler to ever live, Jeff Thomson bowling to England and the West Indies batsmen with no helmets and let me tell you this, every batsman that went out to face Thommo was as ashen faced as Spinks was before the Tyson fight. The great Viv Richards would vomit before going out to bat, yet Bradman handled bowlers of near Top pace, maybe as fast as Lillee who was scary fast but not as quick as Thommo, Bradman would find todays bowlers no faster (we have the ability to tell how fast bowlers deliver the ball) and with the added protection he probably averages 112.94 instead of 99.94 (99.94 is so incredible that to me Bradman must have been an alien)

There have been changes to cricket but very few rule changes, in fact I think they brought in the LBW rule just to curb Bradmans run scoring (but it didn't)..... what has changed is that batting conditions are like three times better than Bradmans day which means he would find todays condition a paradise indeed, he had so much more to contend with, The English never covered their wickets at the end of a days play so if it rained overnight the spin bowlers would be diabolical to work out. Bradman is simply Bradman, he defies science, logic, everything, cricket will never find one like him in a thousand years.