Which 2010's fighters could compete TODAY with turn-of-the-century training?

No steroids. No weightlifting, plyometrics, or periodization. No supplements or nutritionists. No strength & conditioning coaches.

Training is limited to sparring with 6-8 oz. gloves, bagwork, "roadwork" (mostly sprints and walking), and the occasional light weight machine or pair of light dumbbells.

Diet is primarily dry bread and dry meat, with a cooked vegetable for variety once in a while. Water intake is kept to a minimum. Heavyweights are reduced to their bare minimum weight through dieting and exercise. Everyone trains dehydrated, and even heavies will go into the ring dehydrated on fight night. Diuretics / emetics are used liberally.

Which fighters in the last 5 years could still perform at an elite level today with this regimen?

 

Tyson fury. He's naturally big and strong without the aid of modern training regimens or PEDs. And he'd dwarf just about anyone back then..

 

I meant against his current opposition.

 

:huh

I'm not the sharpest knife in the kitchen but I'm having a hard time following this hypothetical.

 

Modern fighter using turn-of-the-century training techniques to prepare for modern opponents.

So imagine if (for example) Tyson Fury suddenly decided for an upcoming fight that he was going to abandon his strength and nutrition coaches, dehydrate himself, and train like an early 20th century fighter.

And I'm asking whether the forum thinks a modern fighter who trained like that could still maintain an elite position in their weight division.

 

I'm not convinced that todays training regiments are better. We till know so little about the human body. And every person is unique and reacts to diets and exercises differently.

So for all I know, Fury might be better for it.

 

Oh, I see now. If we accept all of the premises that you've laid out, I suspect that only a handful of 2016 fighters with extraordinary power would have any chance of remaining elite within their weight divisions. First names that come to mind are Kovalev, Golovkin, Wilder, and maybe Stevenson. The other fighters would probably be at serious disadvantages relative to their healthier, better conditioned adversaries.

 

You may indeed know little about the human body, but I suspect that the men who make their living maximizing their physical potential--and the professionals who make their living guiding, counseling, and preparing them--know quite a bit more. Seems safe to assume that their nutrition and training practices reflect real advancements (unless you would rather assume that all of these men are all fundamentally dumb and irrational...)

 

Training methods haven't really changed a whole lot. The equipment used is sometimes different but the same basic principles are the same. Quite a few training methods used hundred years ago are still used today. Even the new stuff isn't really new even. Most of them have been around for a long time. However, a hundred years ago they couldn't tell why this method worked. Only that it does and just do it. Today they could probably tell you why the science behind why it works. But it's still the same method.

 

Yeah, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

But, at the same time, there is no magic bullet when it comes to diets. We all know this. Every article about food health contradicts the last one.

 

By turn of the century methods, you mean like 2000?

 

I am absolutely convinced that today's training regimens are better and that we know vastly more about the human body. Having trained with world class coaches (in athletics not boxing) in the 80's and early 90's and seeing what is done today, along with the better performances, I am left wishing that I was of prime age today. And it's not even close.

 

All these steroids and muscle building **** is just that... ****. I present the following words from the great Aussie, Bob Fitzsimmons.
.................................................................................................. ... "RIGHT AND WRONG KINDS OF MUSCLES CONTRASTED

Soft and Supple Muscles the Kind that Give
Athletes Speed, Strength, and
Lasting Power
A PROFESSIONAL strong man came into my
gymnasium one day, and said, “I would like
to be a boxer.”
“A boxer, eh?” I replied. “What makes
you think you would make a good boxer?”
“Why, I am as strong as a lion. just come
in here and I will show you.”
And then this strong man went into my
gymnasium and took the heavy weights and
the heavy punching bag
and tossed them
around like feathers. In a moment he was
puffing and blowing like a porpoise, but he
stepped back and looked at me with a smile.
He certainly was a picture of strength. The muscles stood out all over his body in big
knots. From head to foot he was one mass
of knotty, protruding cords.
“How is that for a starter?” he said.
I did not say a word. His ignorance was
pitiful to me. Walking over to one side of the
room, I took a set of boxing gloves from the
wall and handed him a pair. Following my
lead he put them on.
It took me about two minutes to show that
man how useless, unwieldy, and impracticable
his muscles were. He handled himself like a
carthorse.
He was as slow on his feet as a
messenger boy. His brain acted as did his
muscles, slowly and stiffly. Although a big
man, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds,
he did not make as good a showing with me as
many amateur lightweights
with whom I had put on the gloves.
I think I showed him clearly the uselessness
of his heavy weightlifting
muscles. They were
good for one thing—the service for which they
had been trained.
Like every athlete in his profession he was
musclebound.
Those huge masses of muscle,
gained at the expense of many hours of hard work, were for all practical purposes of no
more use than a hand organ would be to a
shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean.
In fact, such muscles serve to help shorten
one’s life. The musclebound man, with every
fibre of his body drawn to a tension that pulls
at the very heartstrings, most frequently dies
with what is known as an “athlete’s heart.”
A musclebound
man is worse than a skinbound
horse. He is as awkward and ungainly
as a crocodile would be in a ballroom. Take
him away from his chosen profession and he is
all at sea. He is a frightful object lesson
against the use of heavy dumbbells,
or heavy weights of any kind.
The man or boy who wants to become quick,
strong, and clever must avoid the use of heavy
weights as carefully as though they were
poisonous snakes. They completely destroy
all that suppleness and agility which mark
every detail of the clever athlete’s work.
A man who is a runner, jumper, boxer—in
fact, anything except a heavyweight
lifter—
can have no use for knotty, unwieldy masses
of strength. Even our best wrestlers nowadays recognize
the fact that muscles of that kind are of no use
to them. They know that there are right and
wrong muscles just as well as they know there
is a right and wrong way to wrestle. They
know that such muscles bring them premature
old age and early death.
Thus it is that every ambitious young athlete
should strive to train his muscles in the proper
way. Light dumbbells,
Indian clubs, and other
muscle building weights should never be forsaken."

 

Have you seen his training ?
He doesn't have a fancy 'strength and conditioning coach'. His weight training is basic, some barbell deadlifts, and his form/technique on additional exercises is often atrocious. And it's just any normal gym circuit with triceps extensions, presses etc. It doesn't matter, since he's a boxer.
He does long slow runs to keep his weight down and he does hill running, he sometimes trains in the woods, carrying wood, whatever. Sprinting on a sand beach. Flipping tyres.
His trainer is his uncle. They are old school gypsys. They train like boxers. They don't train in lab or under the guidance of some guy who has some sort of degree or other spurious claim to expertise.

His nutrition is better these days when he's in camp. He has some meat and vegetables and porridge and protein shakes even. Instead of the junk food, cakes and ice cream he started out on.


I think people overestimate how much boxing has given way to "new sports scientific methods" or whatever.

 

The Fitz-story was nice, thanks for sharing. I don't doubt it's authentic. But why would one assume that it was the muscles that made the strong man a bad boxer? It seems quite obvious that a man who never fought before would look like a fool if put in the ring with a world class fighter, big muscles or not.

Of course a strong man can't compete in boxing with a professional fighter, but the reason for that is not the weightlifting but the absence of boxing training, surely this is not debatable?