Good point on equipment (gloves/shoes) playing a role. Jack Johnson wouldn’t be able to tie an opponent’s hands up the same way today as he couldn’t grip. Advent of larger, modern gloves also cut down on facial damage including cuts over the old-style gloves, and I suspect also minimized hand damage too. Shoes would also factor to some degree.
Shoes made a huge difference. Leather soled shoes were slick, so they had resin boxes in the corner. They used to score the soles with a razor to try and get traction. Always makes me laugh when someone posts that fighter x had terrible footwork because he slipped when throwing a punch.
No one has improved upon Sugar Ray Robinson since and due to circumstance I do not think we ever will.
This. Your footwork is definitely going to change when wearing leather soled boxing boots. Nowadays a lot of leather dress shoes even have a little rubber under the toes and heels to give a little traction, since the worst thing in the world is having to walk on even semi wet surfaces with leather soles. Also, modern rings are a godsend. I used to have one of my Grandfather’s old rings from the 50’s and the canvas was as hard as a rock. I talked to plenty of oldtimers, who fought in the 50’s and much before then and they said getting dropped and hitting the floor in those old rings was sometimes more dangerous than taking a punch.
Wlad? C'mon, he is a borderline great fighter, but not the kind of ATG who deserve to be put in the Top 10 heavyweight of all time, I mean dominated the division thanks to the lack of great competition and the fact that his brother Vitali let him have his belt because he promised his mother he would never fight Wlad. Lewis, on the other hand, was a beast, a man who beat every fighter he ever faced, Who dominated the 2nd Greatest heavyweight era...So yeah Wlad is a borderline great fighter who IMO belongs in the bottom of top 20 heavyweight of all time. Didn't mean to say that we will never ever see great heavyweights in the future, but as of now, Lewis remain the last ATG heavyweight.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where many people are ignorant of things that they possess no knowledge of. The MMA fighter in question obviously falls into that category. It's easier to dismiss something than to take the time to research something. No knowledgeable and objective person would share that same view if they studied Ray Robinson. Even if they think that his modern peers would have beaten him, they wouldn't hold that same opinion. It's just pure ignorance on that guys part. But again, it just seems easier for people to dismiss something or somebody instead of saying that they don't really possess enough knowledge to comment. You only have to look at some of the debates that's had on social media. Those ignorant guys will rubbish the greats of the past and laugh at the notion that they could beat anybody today, without possessing any knowledge whatsoever of the guy/guys in question. Sure, some people can be nostalgic. Than can be biased of the past. But I think the majority of today's society just assumes that everything modern simply has be better than everything of the past. Boxing will never keep evolving over time. It will just continue to ebb and flow like it has done for decades. Skills and techniques aren't discarded when they don't work. Do you know why that's a stupid thing to say? Because those skills will ALWAYS work and be beneficial to any fighter at SOME POINT in a fight or their careers. And that's because there's been no dramatic rule changes in the sport or any new techniques invented for decades now. Regarding switching stances, Marvin Hagler was famed for doing that over 40 years ago.
There are arrogant and ignorant fighters in every gym, there always was. I know fighters in my gym who think they'd beat Marvin Hagler because "we have better training now" but they don't really have a clue about Hagler, it means nothing. They are just shooting off the mouth, taking a bias for their own era or whichever fighter is closest to their era, to make themselves feel superior. And the same people are crap at picking winners anyway, just like a lot of fighters and trainers are, they get it wrong all the time, despite being decent fighters/trainers themselves. Then you get a fighter like James Toney, who's as arrogant as anyone, but he credited the SKILLS he developed in the 1980s/'90s as the result of watching "old timers", old films of old greats from the 1930s, '40s, '50s. He studied them, copied them, and became known in his own time as having "old school skills". But people on this forum are still in denial that the fighters of that era had great skills. They will usually categorise James Toney as a "modern" but then deny that fighters of the 1990s could learn anything from 1940s fighters. Others, of course, are just trolling.
Great post. The sport has been diluted. Look at what Marvin Hagler had to endure to become a champion. Yet we now live in an era where European level fighters are able to obtain world title fights. There's too many org's and too many belts.
Dunno tbh it's not something that can really be proved conclusively one way or the other just my overall impression is that all the great technical boxers of the last 25-30 years learnt their craft pre 1999 - Floyd, Toney, Pernell, Lewis, Calzaghe, DLH, Mosley etc. There's really been no one on their level since those names retired perhaps some of the modern boxers from the old Soviet Union were close but a level below for me. A big factor in the stagnation or decline in skill is that the old school trainers who had been in the business since the 40's, 50's, 60's and knew every trick in the trick in the book began to die off in the 1980's and 90's and it seems a lot of their wisdom went with them, Manny Steward was probably the last of that breed of trainer.
Heavyweights are generally bigger than ever, and relative speed and absolute power of heavyweights increased, on average, among heavyweight contenders. In technique and skills, no boxers haven't improved since he 1930s. Every move and punch, every tactic, seen today can be seen then too.
