What's stopping "old school" coaches from taking over boxing?

Because they are now dead.

 

So the knowledge died with them unreceived by any worthy scions as its custodians, IYO?

 

I'll add my 2 cents. For example before the 90's boxers didn't lift weights. there was the muscle-bound myth, that lifting would make you stiff and slow. Evander Holyfield was the first top fighter to seriously start pumping iron, training with Mr Olympia Lee Haney. Nowadays all athletes follow some kind of strength and conditioning program. Now I'm not putting down trainers like Eddie Futch, whose work continues nowadays through Freddie Roach, or Emmanuel Steward, I think Jonathan Banks has picked up from him, but so many new approaches to training have occured. A lot of fighters don't do roadwork, they swim instead, they have nutritionists, etc. So in a lot of ways newer better ways of training replaced old ones.

 

I don't buy that Manny Steward or any other guy you want to name had a secret technique to make a champion.

What caused fighters of decades past to reach higher heights was bumping up against the other good fights earlier and more often.

The good trainers didn't have some secret understanding of jab mechanics they could teach anyone who walked in the door. They understood the deep **** you can't put into words that only comes out when two ATGs are halfway through their sextology, the battle of wills, and how to help a guy who's always been the best navigate losing and coming back stronger than before. There's no secret to that, nothing you can put in a manual, you just have to have experience seeing dozens of pupils pushed past their breaking point.

If you expect boxing to behave rationally you'll drive yourself crazy.

The markets that people think of as efficient all have players relying on coercion or other "out of band" strategies.

Great skill is important, maybe even the largest piece, but it's less than half the battle. You've got to scout physical talent, keep a kid focused on training (by the way, I believe the decrease in childhood boxing training and fights in general is one of the causes of our non-Golden Age, good for other reasons though), make sure he doesn't get drafted by a sport that offers more money for less danger (another big problem), and on top of that you have to get him a social media following?

I don't think you'd have trouble finding a kid willing to do it, but what's the point when you can be a millionaire off good-not-great skills and a flashy persona? What more can anyone else give you?

The "lost arts" people talk about won't help you blow out journeymen any faster. They're usually techniques that play on the layered expectations of good vs good matchups, and you might only have 3-4 of those in a typical belt holder's career.

To balance out my admiration for these old timers, I bet a lot of their techniques wouldn't be as effective if opponents could do in depth film studies like they can now.

It is very true.

I'm sure some interesting techniques have died (and others discovered), but what really died was the knowledge of how to coach a guy through the kind of crazy schedules they used to fight and become a really robust champion.

You can only learn it by doing, though mentorship can help.

 

Another great thread, @cross_trainer

Whenever I say to myself "I've been thinking about that issue, I should have posted it"

But now that I see it all the other similar issues have fled right out of my mind and I can't think of a good thread to start in response.

 

Where would you find these, "old school coaches?"
Where are the new McCoy's,Arcel's,Brown's,Gore's,Lenny's,Futch's,Roach's,McGirt's ,Steward's, and the several excellent ,Mex/ Latino ones whose names always escape me?

 

I think being a "successful" trainer in that sense does depend a lot on getting talent through the gym door, and getting reputation with favourable word of mouth and media. Networking, which will bring more good fighters through the gym door, and so on.
A lot of the so-called "great trainers", old and new, are shrewd careerists rather than just being good at training fighters. There are probably a dozen others for every one of them who are just as good at the actual training, but they never get the fighters or don't sacrifice as much to build themselves a great training career.
Trainers are sometimes viewed as pure and good compared to promoters and managers, but it is all the same business.

 

I don't believe in there being any major difference in boxing training anyway.
Boxing is boxing.
Practicing boxing is the same as it was.

 

Arcel, D'Amato, Moore and Futch (really the great generation of trainers) continued to be big influences in the 80's and 90's, bringing experience from as far back as the 20's and 30's. And I can't see that they didn't bring the details, when applicable, from that time with them. What you can say is that not many of their students transitioned to trainers, if you believe there's a disconnect between them and the next generation like Benton and Steward or that the line of old school knowledge ended after Benton and Steward.

But maybe the thinking is that the disconnect happened before even Arcel and co?

 

Or that with each successive generation the original vision and its appreciable results become more and more diluted - markedly, if viewed through a wide lens as we have the luxury of doing, but with the loss of integrity being, to any of the coaches themselves, imperceptibly subtle - in a game of fistic "telephone", perhaps.

So while Futch and D'Amato both KSAB more than any of their acolytes, they in turn represented diminishing returns from their own teachers and so forth.

 

That would make them void of creativity, just slightly leaking containers of information, unable to invent or refine. That's not how I view some of the finest minds of the sport.