When did the modern era begin

I haven't read the rest of this thread so i'm kind of bugging in, but i would like to comment here that there's a difference between a few freaks of nature being able to get away with low hands (Ali, speed, Jones, speed, VK, size, speed and only holds the left low) and boxers fundamentally having low hands, i.e. nearly all of them.

 

It is hard to say for sure.

They would have had a skillset as intricate in its own right as that of modern fighters but I dont know what it would look like if you saw it.

Jem Mace was a complete box of tricks. In his late 50s he fought an exhibition with Tommy Ryan and gave him pleanty of problems. Around the same time he fought Burke who held Jim Corbett to a draw by some acounts and some papers said he had the better of it. Joe Goss was the American/world heavyweight champion aged 37 but when Mace fought the prime Goss he just toyed with him.

Jawn L Sullivan is a primaevel monster. Reconstructing his style is like fleshing out a dinosaur. Based on contemporary acounts he seems to have had a style that was a hybrid between Jack Dempsey and Floyd Patterson. I will post an article justifying this statment in detail soon.

 

Do you think that these early boxers never thought to raise their hands slightly to protect themselves?

Presumably around 1940 an obelisk apeared in the sky and a boxer lifted his hands up and thus a new era was born.

Presumably you rate Carl Froch among these "freaks of nature".

 

You can make jokes about it, but it's true. Watch any film from heavyweights pre-1930's. They carry their hands by the waist whenever they can; evolutionary inheritance from centuries of bare knuckle boxing.

 

When did the top black and white boxers start fighting each other on a regular basis?

 

The modern era started on Queesberry gloves rules which required gloves, a set number of rounds, the count for knocked down fighters, and a square ring.

 

Oh... so modern boxing began in the USA did it????

Interestingly enough, both England and Australia had been conducting national H/W title bouts under Marquis rules since the latter part of the 1870's.

The mediocrty of Sullivans H/W title reign can be accoutable for the delayed effects on the USA scene. Sullivan seemingly didnt know if he was a Prize Ring Champ or a gloved champ.

 

I voted for the 1930s.

The '20s did feature some fighters with modern era style/form, like Benny Leonard, but they were exceptions in that time, and in fact it's part of what made them so unique and successful.

I believe the '30s is when there was an earnest transition from the "old school" era to the modern one, with fighters like Armstrong, Ross, Schmeling, and others. It essentially was the decade of transition. By the '40s, I'd say the modern era was in full swing.