Who say's the oldtimers were primitive ?

Jorodz I remember a thread a while back used 'old time' footage of Welsh vs McFarland and we analysed it using modern textbook approaches and if I remember correctly 90% of posters were impressed. I know I was.

I recently watched a British Middleweight title fight from 1910 between Frank Sullivan and someone who's name I cant remember right now. And Sullivan was very, very impressive, IMO he was as good as Sergio Martinez, from what I seen and judging from a modern perspective. Stylistically he wasnt a million miles away from Sergio either.

 

:goodthanks Gpat. I recall that thread but I never looked at the footage. I will take a look today.

To be fair though, the footage on this thread is not terribly impressive to me. If we doing it by modern standards, there are significant flaws and gaps imo

 

I am really impressed by some of those oldtimers handspeed

 

It holds up fine with 3-4inches of height/reach in a poor division, unless you run into Chris Byrd

 

I might take a look later in the day at the footage in this thread and see if I disagree with your Jorodz, but Welsh and McFarland are very impressive.

 

look forward to it:thumbsup

 

Some highlights of the Nelson-Wolgast match:

[dm]xkuye5_nelson-wolgast-highlights_sport[/dm]
Both have fairly distinctive styles so it's easy to figure out who is who. Wolgast is the shorter, more mobile boxer using the cross-arm defense while Nelson is always coming forward and throwing mostly straight punches.

 

Yep...a great thread !
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=263844

 

i do recall watching some of those now but i'll take a closer look at them today :good i'm sure they'll be eye opening

 

I don't think the film and cameras of that time were nearly so primitive as some of you are making. The problem is degredation over time, or watching film thats been reprinted several times, or printed onto smaller stock, or is not projected to a correct speed, or is not shown with a silent aperature (so part of the frame is cut off). Occaisionally there may have been an excitable cameraman.

Look at this, about 1:00-2:00

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtZORqB_WAM[/ame]

This is an example of well preserved 1890's film.

 

Actualy you will see all these flaws in the top fighters today.

People just don't look out for them with the same critical eye, and when they see them they are treated as a lapse or a stunt.

Also, there are fighters in every era who throw the rulebook out of the window and get away with it. You never know if you are looking at the Floyd Mayweather of the era, or the Ricky Hatton or the David Haye.

 

this really did literally make me laugh out loud,

 

i agree to a point but those typically ARE lapses. at least in elites. look at around 3:40 in the video and driscoll is throwing wild right hands from way back. one punch at a time with no set up. I saw maybe 3 combinations in that whole video. if these were two decent journeymen of the era sure, but driscoll is legitimately an all time great and extremely highly regarded fighter. what about the push/punch behind the head that ended the video?

what i'm looking at is, if this video is indicative of the era, it's full of flaws. take a floyd mayweather fight, any fight, and analyze 5 minutes of it. you will not find these same flaws and if you did, he'd be torn apart on this forum.

again, i'm not disputing GREATNESS but there were deficits in the era in technique that are clearer visible in video and prevalent in that clip. ali, roy jones, whitaker threw the textbook out of the window at times but there technique and their effectiveness would look good in any era. don't know if i could say the same here