Was the 1980's the Greatest Boxing Era?

The 90s were better

 

For heavyweights maybe. But the 80's had more going on in a lot of the other divisions.

 

The heavyweight Shavers was a nobody in the eighties.
But lots of eighties heavyweight fighter(Tyson,McCall,Bruno,Tucker
Holyfield,Holmes) were good in the 90s.

 

They may not have been money-men, but I'll be watching Izzy & Rafa's first three fights over & over for the rest of my life.

Duran vs. Leonard I, a handful of times for sure, but not as much.

 

While that was an AMAZING fight, I'd put tbe Chavez-Taylor fight up there with it. Just my opinion though.

 

Well ya because 1983 was the last year we had 15 round fights, i remember after Mancini Kim, the boxing commissions said 15 round fights were killing people, which was a big pile of horse****..

Leonard Duran will never be replicated because we will never see 15 rounders anymore...

 

Chavez-Taylor didn't even complete 12, and Taylor took a helluva lot more punishment than Leonard, Taylor had broken bones in his face after that fight, swallowed a lot of his own blood, and was never the same Chavez literally beat the **** outta him...

 

This happened in every era.

 

AMAZING fights! My fave ever, probably. :good

 

I thought the 80's were the best, but every kid coming up remembers his formative years the most fondly. I can't be counted on to offer an unbiased opinion here.

Except for that overrated clinch-fest called Duran-Leonard I. That was terrible.

 

Agreed.

 

You and I seem to reverse our roles a bit as of late, but I have to say that the 50's, 60's and 70's were probably better in this aspect.

In the early 80's Holmes was the best in a very talented HW era, but he never established true dominance by failing to fight Page, Thomas and Dokes. The JMW division of the mid 80's was also filled with talent but several of the top dogs never faced off. No McCallum vs Hearns/Duran/Mugabi no Mugabi vs Jackson. This is even more the case with the post-Hagler MW era that really was stacked with quality fighters that in too many cases never squared off.

 

100% mine, excluding the fourth which I don't even recognize. (roughly as valid as Maske vs. Hill II or Holmes vs. Weaver II, even though neither was all that old, just because the state of Izzy's eye tissue - the fact that even Rafa looked embarrassed rather than celebratory afterward says it all..)

 

This is true, but you only need to look at 'The Murders Row' just before that to see how a whole era was skipped by, at least by the champions.

In the 70s we had Victor Galindez not fighting either John Conteh or Saad Muhammad. Not saying it's anyone's fault, but either of those matches were probably essential and never happened.

You are right, my whole point is that there are always instance in every era where he missed a few of the must see fights.

Also, I don't think we've reversed. You have always shown an appreciation for the older fighters, and I am commonly mistook for a 'hater' of the modern game, when in fact I just notice more issues with it than previous era's and it irks me more because there is plenty of potential for a brilliantly stacked talent pool.

Would you agree with me that the last era/this one is the absolute worst for this?

 

I often find myself brining up the murderer's row when people talk about the "golden 40's", but that kind of thing seemed to go away during the 50's. So you had about three decades without such discrimination and before alphabet champions, that are standouts in this aspect. Of course, there were probably some top fights not taking place then as well, as you say. But it seems to have been less of a problem during the 50's, 60's and 70's than during just about any other time.

As for today's... No, I probably wouldn't say it's absolutely the worst in this aspect. That honor would probably go to the 90's, actually. An era with a great abundance of talent, but where the best often often managed to avoid each other at MW, SMW, LHW and HW. Today Wlad is without a doubt the man at HW, Kovalev is the clear champ at LHW and Ward at SMW.

MW is a bit frustrating at the moment, since there seems to be an obvious reluctance to give Golovkin the chance to prove himself undisputed champ. At WW there's the big issue that Pac and PBF have yet to meet, of course. But I wouldn't call it worse than the 90's in terms of the right fights not being made.