When Did Heavyweight Boxing Become Modern?

Agreed. I think Dempsey and Tunney were the first that displayed all boxing skills and technique that have been developed since.

 

Heavyweight boxing became modern when today became yesterday. The sport has always been modern, constantly evolving sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Gloves have got bigger, fights have got shorter then longer, then shorter again. Fighters have got bigger but not necessarily fitter. The 80's made being a fat sportsman acceptable, thanks Leroy and Tony. The 90's made being really tall seem essential, till an overweight Dempsey/Tunney size guy beat 7 feet tall Valuev. It changes all the time, I hope the next change will be when we go back to laughing at how slow overweight giants are instead of claiming they are unbeatable.

 

Put it this way.

Could you take any fighter today and with the benefit of modern boxing technique guide them to a win over Jim Jeffries under the rules of his era?

My guess is, No.

 

correct. if all of a sudden the sport became istantly better by one person using a 'modern' style then that guy wouldn't lose for fifteen years. that's never happened.

 

Well put. With that in mind, Joe Louis didn't lose for 14 years, Jack Johnson had a pair of ten year winning streaks (broken only by an endurance contest against a challenger with vastly inferior skills), and the argument has been made that Ali wasn't legitimately defeated until Holmes did it in 1980, a span of 20 years. What other examples might you be able to suggest?

 

I'd say when Holyfield got the HW belts.
Because Holyfield was probably one of the first big names to go for good weight training, rather than just the usual bag/pad/bag/sparring meat.

 

"Good weight training" - and we know what THAT'S code for.

This content is protected

 

What about Joe Gans?

 

Tunney definitely brought boxing forward.

 

Some would say that Tunney was just a carbon copy of his idol Mike Gibbons.

Incidentaly he got the formula for beating Dempsey from Mike Gibbons when he defeated Jack Dillon.

 

Sorry, i was talking about heavyweights.

(as the thread title reads)

 

Was just wondering about this today... (bump)

 

The boxer that most stands out to me as "modern" in the context of his time is Joe Louis. A lot of the time I look at old boxers and wince at sloppy technique, hands by their knees, haymaker punches, weird "fencing" leaps or funny looking footwork, but Joe is technically (insofar as my opnion counts for anything) perfect and I could imagine him destroying people in any era. He looked modern to me.

 

I bet you in ancient Mesopotamia there were fighters who could pump out three jabs in a row.

 

I bet these fighters from 300 BC were decent blokes:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7549203@N04/6898397198

Chin down, hands up, straight punching.
Using the same god gifted speed and strength our species have shared for hundreds of thousands of years.
They could probably so some damage.