The Theory of "Modern Training Methods" Being Superior

This odious comparison of sprinting with boxing is idiotic.

This delusional idea that progress/evolution is inevitable in a sport as multifaceted as boxing is tedious.

Boxing combines endurance,power,skill,intelligence and will power.
Does man as a rule become more intelligent and have more will-power as time goes along? A visit along boxing history shows that many eras/decades show a steep regression. Check out the general heavweights after ali up until the tyson/holy/lewis era.
Check the middles after monzon and hagler. Or the welters after the leonard era. And we havent even got into the robinson/armstrong/greb/charles days....
Why is it we had soo many great fighters in the 80s alone? (hagler,hearns,duran,leonard,arguello,pryor,spinks,holy,tyson,chavez,whitaker,benitez,gomez,need i carry on?) Yet in the current decade we have pac,marquez,hopkins and mayweather only? Is this progress? Eat my shorts...

 

This always seems like a nonsensical subject to me. Training methods have not changed all that much. Boxers are still running, sparring, hitting the heavy bag, speed bag, double end bag, et, et. They still do pad work, swing big hammers, do agility drills, et, et. There is really "nothing new under the sun."

 

Well, trained fighters like James Toney, Eddie Chambers, Sam Peter and and of course the greatest of all time SNV prove the absolute superiority of modern day training and nutrition.

 

I think a lot of those concepts come from laziness. It's like...

"Why practice a normal jab over and over again if I can throw a medicine ball a few times and get a better workout?"

 

I've always felt like a lot of modern conditioning is really based on minimizing the work/results ratio. That certainly doesn't help cultivate the mindset or skillset of a fighter.

 

Well i dont know about training, but i know what i see. And the invincible Jack Dempsey, Stanley Ketchel, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries etc.. all look like **** and would get completely outclassed in the modern era

 

At the same time todays fighters would get outclassed in their era. They fought under different rules, basically it was a different sport, and their technique were perfectly adepted to the rules of their day, just like today´s technique are perfectly adepted to today´s rules.

 

But DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOran would beat the ass of pac,may,mosley,hoya and any other 135-147 guy from the 80s on......
(with whitaker being the only live competitor.)

 

Boxing was, exclusively vertical wrestling with kangaroo punches in their day. And no, as long as you're allowed to throw a punch, the modern era would outclass them in their own era.

Like i've said before, Robinson, Ali, Jones Jr, Tyson, would be like, "these white dudes craaaaaazy" and then BAM! Knock the pipe right out of their mouths.

On a serious note, i really cannot fathom how intelligent people like yourselves can look at the footage and still claim that they'd even be competitive

 

Dempsey at CW, Fitzsimmons at LHW, and Ketchel at MW would ****ing flatten their competition. I don't even wanna imagine Tavoris Cloud taking on Bob Fitzsimmons in a 15 round brawl.

 

This is what I've always argued. Boxing is far more than tuning the body to execute a set procedure (eg. a sprint, a throw etc.). It's about making the right moves, mental and physical, against another individual human mind and body that is interacting with you in an adversarial manner.

Usain Bolt gets on the track and sprints in a straight line, at the sound of the pistol. He knows his opponents will be doing exactly the same thing. He cannot trick them into doing something else, he cannot even lessen their speed, he cannot really prevent them from successfully running as fast as they are capable of. Boxing is largely about not allowing the other guy to do what he wants to do, and that's about doing the right thing at the right time, over and over, and being better at choosing the right moves than the other guy.

 

Yes, I think both the use of supplements (depends which, though) and weights make fighters more explosive.

The simple fact is that strength, speed and stamina has improved in all other sports. Why would this somehow pass boxing by?

 

Because of exactly that. I´m not only looking at what I see, I also factor in the context of it, the low quality of the films and so on.