The evolution of boxing

More, per above

 

Fair enough, nothing personal. I'll leave off now, I've said everything I've had to say on it.

 

best thing i could find is registered bouts on boxrec 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

doesn't really clear anything up but the rise from 70's to now is noteworthy.

 

These numbers are as of Oct. 23 last year, and this decade the annual number of fights registered by BoxRec is (on average, so far!) approx. 22,000. So for this decade we could end up with around 220,000 pro bouts.

However, to make a proper comparison with earlier eras, we must take into account, that these numbers today include female boxers! As of January 1st this year, BoxRec listed 18,161 male and 1097 female boxers who had been active (at least 1 fight) during 2014. This means, that slightly less than 6% of all active, boxers are female. So the annual number of MALE fights is probably just over 20,000 this decade.

Now what we should also take into consideration, is the fact (I think, we can all agree on this!) that decades ago, boxers were much more active than today. But exactly how much more? This is of course difficult to say with any degree of certainty, but here is what I did...

...I took The Ring's end-of-year rankings for 1925, to see how many fights the 10 top contenders (I did not include reigning champions) in each division (80 men in total, as there of course were only 8 divisions back then) had during that year. I found, that they had anywhere from 2 (Harry Wills) to 33 (Young Stribling) - with an average of 13.09! I made the same calcuations for 1930, and then for every 10 years after that (each time only for the 8 classic divisions) and came up with this:

1925 - 13.09
1930 - 10.74
1940 - 9.94
1950 - 8.60
1960 - 5.86
1970 - 5.33
1980 - 4.15
1990 - 3.29
2000 - 2.96
2010 - 2.26
2014 - 2.18

As said, these numbers are only for the 80 top men in the 8 original divisions! There's no way of telling, if they can be said to represent the ENTIRE pool of boxers at any given time. However, they certainly seem to indicate, what I'm sure we all know/believe... that the old-timers fought MUCH more often than today. Of this there can be little doubt!

 

Not sure why people assume the word "evolution" to automatically represent a constant upward line of ever-refining, always improving conditions that consistently yield better and better results through time. That's not evolution. Sometimes evolution means the death of a thing, usually attributable to an inability to adapt or improve upon itself. It then recedes and withers on the vine until there's little left to recognize.

 

Boxing has evolved in technique. Compare fighters from the 20s to fighters from the 80s.

 

Wow, wasn't going to comment anymore, but you and Kingfisher really deserve props for this research!

Not to restart an argument that's basically played out, but given the above fight infrequency of contenders, if that is symptomatic of all pros (and I think everyone would probably concede that), then based on the raw volume of fights, there must be many more pro boxers nowadays than any time before. On the other hand, to be fair, records get more sp**** the further back you go, so its conceivable boxrec could be missing more fights from earlier periods.

Anyway you slice it though, awesome job from the both of you crunching the numbers:good

 

"*if it relies on quantifiable results, it nevertheless has still seen increased performance standards (because all quantifiably defined sports have)"

People say this but this is absolutely untrue. Track and field has advanced in some cases and not others. The shot put record is 25 years old; the discus is even older going back to 1986; Bob Beamon could've won every other Olympics- heck Ralph Boston the 1964 medalist would have been very competitive in the last olympics. All the strength related track and field records come from the 1980s. Therefore people in the 1980s were stronger than today. Most distance running records come from the late 1990s. Are people then in better shape than they are now?

What has happened of course is that we have taken at face value a series of numbers that do nothing more than trace the evolution of different PEDs and then watch when testing catches up, and records become unbreakable. No woman is as fast as Flo Jo today; do we accept that Flo Jo represents the height of human female evolution or do we step back and ask to why?

 

I almost always say in such threads as this "the last 30 years". It doesn't happen overnight, 30 years is a good baseline for generational shift. (Rampant PED use in 80's may have had something to do with it as well). But I've looked at probably 100 sports with quantifiable records, and couldn't find any older than mid 80's.

 

We will have a better view in 20 years but drawing the line at the 80s ignores the issue. If I wanted to argue that in baseball pitchers were better in the early 20th century or hitters were better between wars I could do that. But to do so I would also have to ignore the fact that an entire segment of the population was not allowed to compete. To merely accept the numbers at face value means that we are not actually ****yzing and instead merely compiling.

 

Fair points, but you're misunderstanding me. I don't mean the 80's stand alone. I mean, athletes from the 20's in some circumstances could compete with athletes from the 50's, athletes from the 50's with athletes from the 80's, 80's to today, etc. I think it takes a generational time of about 30 years. "Progress" is a long arc, it doesn't happen overnight or in a pure linear fashion. Styles make fights, further complicating it in boxing. Top boxers who can potentially beat the top boxers of today get rarer the further back you go, until it essentially disappears. I'd put that as probably around 30 years, using the oldest records standing from tangibly defined sports as the baseline.

As you said, we'll be able to gauge it better in 20 years. Although, also as you suggested, its possible the rampant PED use of the 80's may force some permanent records to stand that probably aren't legitimate.

I'm going to stop at this point, I've really said everything there is to say on this topic. After a certain point, it just goes back and forth over the same stuff.

 

i agree with that when applied to most sports, but for boxing i'm not so sure, fottage from 1965-75 is 40-50 years old, but i don't see anything in duran v buchanan, griffith v rodriguez or a bunch of other fights that is not done today, and i don't see any techniques today that those guys weren't doing.