What Advantages Did The Old Time Fighters Have, Over Todays Guys?

First of all... it's nice to see someone actually do some research! Some posters sadly can't be bothered, and just throw out ignorant nonsense... so kudos to you!

As someone who is all about numbers and statistics, I have of course already looked into this question several years ago:

I wanted to find out how much more active the old TOP boxers were compared to today's best ... so 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, since 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 for all 80 top boxers. I made the same calculations 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

2014 was the last year, where data was available, when I made the list.

Since this is pretty much exactly what we've been talking about in this thread, I thought you might find this interesting.

As can be seen, over the years there has been a dramatic decrease in the average number of annual fights for the best boxers - which of course should come as a surprise to absolutely no one!

 

I don’t know what OP intended but I think the point that some guys fought a ton but the average fighter didn’t is valid.

It’s also without question that there were more active fighters in the past than now — which means more fights. We have guys with 15 fights challenging for world titles on the regular now, whereas they’d be preliminary guys with that level of experience in the past.

Current top fighters also have many more amateur bouts than their 1930s counterparts, so they learn from those what the guys of the past mostly learned in the pro ranks.

So it’s complicated.

You also at some points in the past, especially before TV, had deals where two guys would fight to a 10-round decision in Cleveland, fight again the next week in Detroit, two weeks later in Chicago and then maybe take it to the East Coast … sometimes with a couple of fights in between, sometimes not. And we know from contemporary accounts that there were cases of ‘silent’ (or maybe not-so-silent) agreements to take it a bit easy on each other so as not to blow the next payday in the next town. Glorified sparring.

I think it is also skewed to a U.S. perspective. We’ve got ‘professional opponents’ in the UK with 100 fights or more who never win but provide rounds to up-and-comers. Those guys fight safety-first and might be booked three weeks in a row, take a week off and then another three weeks. Not to mention that fighters are more prolific in Mexico and pockets in South/Central America and other places. I’d be surprised if there’s not some Mexican featherweights or bantamweights with 50-70 fights or more who are pretty obscure.

I also don’t know that it was an ‘advantage’ to have to fight multiple times a month to put food on the table. That inevitably means fighting when injured — bust a knuckle, you fought one-handed or just gritted through the pain to get enough money to pay your rent or whatever and maybe back in the ring the next week.

EDIT: I’ll also add that you see matchups on the records of yesteryear where the world-class guy with 100 fights faces a guy who’s 3-1 or something like that — it would never be sanctioned today. Harry Greb fought an 0-3 guy fight after one of his fights with Tunney … now maybe the guy’s record is incomplete, but I doubt he was hiding 50-100 unrecorded wins.

 

Thank you. @Fergy will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm confident he was referring to fighters relevant on the world stage, or at the very least full time professional boxers who made their living from the sport, in the thread title, his OP & his post you initially responded to in this thread.

It's good to have established that Fergy, you & I, as well as others who have contributed to this thread, all agree those fighters fought substantially more frequently pre-1940's than they do today.

 

I disagree that fighters on average pre-1940 likely didn't fight more often than the average fighter does today. I suspect it's more likely to do with flawed data &/or incomplete records. Either way, I'm not precious about it, as CT alludes to in post #133, it's irrelevant. As with 99%+ discussions on this forum, the OP's question related to rated fighters, or at least fighters who made a full time living from boxing. As has been established in multiple posts on this thread, those fighters fought far more frequently pre-1940 than they do today.

FYI, I'm from the UK.

I agree that fighting substantially more regularly than world rated fighters do today has drawbacks, as well as advantages, pertaining to the quality of their output in fights.

 

It would be impossible for someone today to fight with the frequency of Greb and Rosenbloom for a variety of reasons, starting with there are so fewer fighters in the world today and so fewer cards. And there’s also the economics of it — when I first stepped into a boxing gym as a young teen, the going rate for a four-round fight on a club show undercard was $100 per scheduled round ($400) … today you’re talking closer to $1,500 for most fights like that, which was main event money (or more) on club shows back in my day.

The promoters in the 1930s didn’t have to pay for mandatory insurance, extra hotel nights (day-before weigh-ins … you could use local fighters in many places and not spend any money for hotels for a club show at least, especially in places like New York and Philly), etc.

When me and my brother ran club shows in the 1990s, we’d be risking like $10K if not one ticket was sold (fortunately that never happened) … today I’m told it’s $30-40K minimum that you have to put up to put on a club show … and six figures if you do something on a bigger scale than the local club circuit.

Therefore there’s not as many places to fight, at least in the U.S. — the economy of scale in say Mexico or some less affluent places in Eastern Europe probably have lower entry points.

So not enough shows and not enough opponents. But today’s fighters aren’t stepping into the ring against an 0-3 guy after fighting someone on Gene Tunney’s level like Greb did (I’m not saying Greb didn’t fight top opposition — he clearly did — but among his 300-plus fights you can see several that are absolute mismatches no commission would sanction today).

 

All reasonable contributory factors to why fighters don't fight as often now as in previous eras.

I agree many ATGs from previous eras didn't fight world rated opponents every fight. You wouldn't expect Greb to, given how frequently he fought. Whilst I don't for 1-second think Ray Nelson was a world class fighter, and so in no way am I disagreeing with your underlying point, it wouldn't surprise me if he had contested substantially more than 3 x fights when he fought Greb.

Jimmy Wilde is generally considered to be the greatest Flyweight of all time. According to Boxrec themselves "Wilde's claim that he had at least 800 fights is probably greatly exaggerated, but it was a great deal more than the 139 listed" - https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/Jimmy_Wilde

If Boxrec concedes the greatest Flyweight of all time likely had a great deal more fights than they list, the chances of them missing huge swathes of fights contested by unrated, low level fighters, is a virtual guarantee.

Imo, Greb has the deepest win resume in history, relative to each fighters era, and by quite a distance.

 

I also think some fights today get missed — in small republics in the middle of nowhere. I mentioned in another thread how Oleg Maskaev was rumored/reported to have 20-odd wins in Kazakhstan before his ‘official debut’ against a 21-0 guy.

I know for a fact that I attended cards that either aren’t on boxrec or don’t have the full card (like 2-3 fights listed when I know there were six or more) and that’s in my lifetime.

There’s probably fighters today who have multiple fights missing from their records, though not as likely in North America where there are regulatory and licensing agencies involved. But you can bet your bottom dollar guys like Bruce Strauss had a ton more fights (in a more modern era) than listed — I saw him get ‘knocked out’ in a fight in my hometown and talked to him after and he was asking me how he could get the promoter to change his name in the result so it didn’t show up as a KO loss on his record because he was fighting the next week and didn’t want the commission in whatever state that was going to happen to find out and suspend him.

I like what George Foreman said in his ‘By George’ autobiography: Boxing has always had an element of ‘come see the bearded lady.’

By which he meant there’s a bit of a circus atmosphere around the whole thing. I mean, state regulation or not, who’s to say a toughman type fight with real gloves and 3-minute rounds at a state fair or bar where both guys get paid isn’t a professional fight? Well in Greb’s day or even in the 1970s or ‘80s, it probably could have been — some fights in bars in Tijuana are probably recorded as legit results but across the border in Texas they’d say it was a toughman and not a pro fight.

I’d wager that there are probably pro fights going on in places like China or, hell, just about anywhere that aren’t recorded today. So who’s to say?

 

The boxers of yesterday fought a TON more then today's fighters and it is not even up for debate.

Beau Jack has well over a 100_fights.
Ike Williams has OVER 125 wins
Tippy Larkin has OVER 130 wins.

Show me today's fighters with a 100 wins better yet 80 wins.
Hell Ike has more wins then the top 5 rated lightweights today combined.

 

I often forget to poof read my posts before hitting submit. It’s such a pain in the bum.

 

If you read your posts more carefully, then Poof!! The mistakes would all disappear!

 

Like magic, eh Kid?

Which reminds me of an old primary school joke: What happens when two magicians get into bed? Okay, that’s a bit juvenile, scratch that..

As to my own posts, I type ‘em but I never read them - too long and full of hot air. I’ll let others suffer through them if they’re willing.

 

Yeah, of course records are incomplete today. Just nowhere near as incomplete of those pre-1940, for obvious reasons. Common sense really.

 

The costs as you mentioned in the U.S. are too much for promoters, and fighters. One of the two is going to have to pay for all of the medicals, (MRI, eye exam and sometimes more). Fighters can't afford them and usually promoters can't either so there are going to be less and less sanctioned fights. But, in this area (and I assume most areas) some private clubs, restaurants, etc. are doing their own shows, using their own judges, refs, etc. with no sanctioning, no meds, etc. This is what usually happens when things get too regulated and expensive... an entrepreneur sees a way to make money doing the same thing that made money before it was overly regulated. A lot of the same people who fight in local shows are fighting in the non sanctioned shows.

I haven't been to any of the non sanctioned shows, but from the people who have, I haven't heard any complaints about a drop off in quality of the fights, or a drop off in quality of officiating. I'm sure the state commission will try to put these people out of business because it cuts into their money, but it will probably become more prevalent and just go farther underground. The commissions have a nice little arrangement, they get paid for sending a commissioner, officials, etc., they get other fees too and travel, meals, etc. at the promoter's expense. They won't give it up without a fight.

 

Pathetic isn't it?