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

Way better trainers back then and it's not even up for debate.

 

I'm disappointed in you, John! I thought you were one of the few decent posters here - and then you turn out to be just another one of those, who thinks rudeness and insults will save the day for you, when you can't come up with anything sensible.

You're not even man enough to answer my last factual question - how sad!

 

You've personally insulted multiple posters by wasting their time, shifting the goalposts and basically playing the obnoxious twat - and you still are.

You reap what you sow and you certainly sowed it.

In the meantime i'll hang out and have fun with all the other majority posters you label not decent and maybe even the few "decent posters" that passed your scathing assessment.

 

Instead of this tripe - why not man up an answer my factual question?

 

Far too much time has been wasted on you already. TWE said it best.

 

So when faced with a factual question, you don't like... your cop out is a lame "too much time has been wasted on you already". LOL!

 

Refer to post #110.

If confused continue to refer to post #110.

Ad infinitum.

Tata

 

For fighters of the late 1910s there was the global pandemic (Spanish flu) of 1918 to contend with, though.

 

Yes, yes I get it - you have nothing!

 

As someone who has defended you on here in the past, I find you digging your heels in on this point bizarre.

The 40 x boxers that comprised the NBA's top 5 in each of the original 8 weight divisions in 1930 averaged 10.45 fights that year. Their counterparts, based on the current ring magazine rankings, averages 1.6 fights in 2022. That's roughly 6.5 fights on average the 1930 guys had for each that today's fighter had. I don't think that means you could take them out a time machine, put them in the ring today, and they'd all dominate. It just means boxers back then fought far more often, that's all.

To my mind, there are 3 explanations for the 3.3 fights average data you cite:

1) There is a flaw with the data. E.g. are you certain all boxers listed as active fought that year?;

2) Boxrec records from 1930 are incomplete. @thistle has already informed you that boxrec acknowledge that they are. This will particularly be true of low profile boxers, especially from lesser developed countries, in 1930. This is obvious and common sense, imo.

3) The top 5 boxers in each weight division averaging over 10 fights in 1930, was some freakish, statistical outlier, not representative of how often boxers fought then.

I know it isn't 3). I could do the same analysis for fighters ranked 6-10 in 1930 and today, or the entire top 10s of any year of your choosing throughout the 30's and compare them to the last decade, and I'd wager the total fights were more than tripple greater than the modern era. But why should I spend my time doing that, only for you to then claim there's no evidence fighters outside the top 10's fought more often?

It's easy to double down on a nonsense position when there's no jeopardy of being misproven. So let's introduce some, in a low key and harmless way. You choose any year from the 1930's and any year from the previous decade. I'll collate the total fights of the 80 x boxers from each decade that ranked top 10 in the original 8 weight divisions, wagering against you that the set from the 30's will have fought more than 3 times than their modern counterparts, if you agree that the loser has their avatar for the next 12-months chosen by the winner. What say you?

 

I too will bet, that you're right! You (and some other posters) don't have to explain to me, that the top boxers from many decades ago fought far more often than today. Don't we all know that... so why are several posters coming up with examples of very busy top old-timers? I don't know, what that's supposed to prove - other than the top men from back in the day fought much more frequently than today's top guys. Which of course is old news!

It's like none of you guys understand my point, which is this: While there certainly were many back in the day with a ****load of fights - there was an even larger group, that had very few fights. We hear again and again, how the old-timers fought all the time, thus gaining valuable experience and honing their skills. And while this is certainly true for a small section of the active fighters... for a much larger group, this isn't really the case.

Look at the numbers for 1930 (#118). Is it not reasonable to assume, that the VAST majority of boxers must have had very few fights - for the average to land at 3.3, despite many top boxers having a lot more fights than that?

Of course there will be those, who will completely reject these numbers - because it goes against their ingrown belief, that back in the day boxers fought all the time. They will claim that BoxRec's numbers are incomplete - and they will of course be right! But what would the impact be (in relation to this argument), if EVERY fight, without exception, that took place in 1930 could be found in their database?

Imagine if there were 10,000 boxers, who had but a single fight that year in a remote location - a location most known for its remoteness - that was never reported in a local paper, or anywhere else... and therefore of course never made it into BoxRec's database. But if they had been included, this would of course raise the number of both fights and fighters by 10,000 - resulting in the average dipping just below 3 (2.98).

 

Not only have I understood your point, I've already addressed it. I repeat, your 3.3 fight average is likely explained by either:

1) Flawed data - E.g. You haven't answered if you know for certain that all fighters with an active status in 1930 fought during that year.

2) Incomplete records - I accept its plausible there are many fighters listed as having 1 fight on boxrec, against a fighter high profile enough that boxrec staff found a record of it, but that no records exist of the other small hall show fights they had that year. Hell, Jimmy Wilde is generally accepted as the GOAT of all time at Flyweight, but it's also believed that a less than a third of his for-pay contests are on boxrec. Of course most of the low profile fighters from 1930 aren't. It's obvious and common sense.

The alternative to either of the above explanations are that whilst world class boxers, virtually all of them apart from perhaps the HW champ, had to fight several times a year to earn enough money live well, unrated fighters earnt enough money in a single fight. No reasonable minded, intelligent person would accept that as plausible.

Even if, and I don't accept this as a likely explanation, the data is explained by a whole host of part time boxers having a single fight a year, its immaterial to the discussion in this thread, which to any reasonable minded, honest poster, isn't "what advantages did unrated fighters from previous eras have", but rather clearly pertains to the world class and rated boxers, I.e. the level of fighters that compromise 99%+ of discussion on thos board. Full time professional boxers fought substantially more often in 1930 than they do today. Frankly, this shouldn't need to be explained to a poster on the classic forum.

You've made claims in a series of posts on this thread, that have subsequently been comprehensively disproved, and instead of doing the honourable thing and conceding you were wrong, you've doubled down, changed the goalposts, and are now looking silly to anyone who cares to read this thread in its entirety.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this issue matters.

At most, @Bukkake's numbers tell us about how often lower level boxers might have fought. This forum almost never debates who would win between unknown boxers.

I've never seen a thread entitled "0-0 Joe Nobody from 1930 versus 0-0 Bob Anonymous from 2017." It's always contenders and champions. People have already demonstrated that the contenders and champions from 1930 fought more than today. So this whole side-road seems beside the point.

 

You're not missing anything CT.

 

Repetition. Sparring and fighting enough
until their reactions were instinctive not
thought.