Who wins? John L Sullivan or Wladimir Klitschko?!!!

Unfortunately, so do we--just to a much lesser degree. Since boxing is a subjective sport in which the only measurement of success is against other fighters, we have to start making our assumptions somewhere. It helps to bring in a variety of measurements (film performance, rating of opponents by objective sources, physical abilities and athleticism, perceived quality of era) but ultimately we're just playing a sophisticated domino game.

 

I'm not sure how that applies. Please explain. If it implies that you can't offer any meaningful assessment of athletlicism without empirical data, I disagree. But I may be misunderstanding you entirely.

 

What I mean is that in all of our arguments, we're not dealing with athletes who can be measured to objective standards. We have to make certain assumptions about fighters as a starting point.

Say you want to assess fighter X's era. To do so, you would have to decide just how good fighter X is to begin with--by looking at his films, his record, his talent pool size, his professionalism--and then judge his opponents accordingly. The reverse is also true, but ultimately we're judging fighters only in relation to other fighters, so we have to make rather arbitrary decisions about their quality before we can make any meaningful comparisons.

Take Joe Louis. Some would argue that his decade-long dominance over his division, perfect punching, massive power, and large talent pool he fought indicate he was a great fighter head-to-head. Others would focus on his flaws and conclude his amazing film performances were the result of bad opponents. From there, they would deduce that the era was weak, and Louis would not do well head to head.

Or take Foreman. Some would argue that beating Frazier (who beat Ali and was a dominant champion) and Norton (who beat Ali) make him a great fighter--and also confirms Ali's greatness by beating him...and therefore the era's greatness. Others would look at his crude lunging punches and decide that his era must have been pathetic, and grade accordingly.

Dominoes.

 

Quite.

 

What evidence? If evidence is invalid, why shouldn't it be refuted? There's simply no firm way to answer a question like this -- we're all merely applying our own observations. Evidence, in this case, is my opinion against yours.

This is a classic tactic amongst people who are arguing over a subject they have little knowledge of.

They are candy stats, because fans vastly overvalue them.

You appear to agree and disagree with me at the same time. NFL scouts have made a science out of the combines, and if 40 times are included in the mix, they obviously have some value to the people who evaluate NFL hopefuls for a living.

My response to Sweet Pea -- and you disagree with him, whether you mean to or not -- is that he offered 40-inch vertical as a standalone measure of athleticism. He wanted me to concede that Wilt was the superior leaper to Shaq because of that unverified (keeping in mind that many 40 times and verticals are not undertaken at a venue such as the NFL combines) number. It's silly.

Even if Wilt hypothetically did achieve a greater height than Shaq on a vertical, that does not mean he is a better functional leaper vis-a-vis his peformances in games. Leaping ability is related to balance (some guys go off one leg, many off of two) and muscle explosion (some have to gather, some don't), and in my mind the best leapers are those who repeat these tremendous athletic feats against real competition.

Combine athletes are a dime a dozen, but those isolated drills simply don't do justice to the complex world of real, full athleticism.

This makes no sense at all.

 

We cannot know for sure, this is true. But I believe a fair-minded person watching these guys for the first time and studying actual game play will conclude, more often than not, that Shaq was the clearly superior athlete, and especially given the way he carried his considerable mass.

That's obviously just my opinion.

 

I know him off the forum, he's the most knowledgable boxing enthusiast that I have ever met, bar none.

 

Fair enough.

Let me posit my argument another way. Watching Roy Jones vs. Bernard Hopkins, one might mistakenly conclude that Hopkins was something other than world-class athlete.

The 20-something Hopkins was tremendously fluid (he actually could bend both knees inward and look slithery doing so, not something you see from many athletes) and quick, yet he looked inferior athletically to Jones.

Of course, he *was* athletically inferior to Jones, but even the trained eye of Gil Clancy failed to given Hopkins any credit at all for his athletic ability in that fight.

That's a case of over-competition potentially skewing someone's perspective, but again, athleticism most definitely is viewed in relative terms. I don't think the human brain is quite sharp enough to calibrate as well as it might.

 

I understand, but again, I don't see how this contradicts my posts. I'll have to go back and look again. There's certainly no way to *prove* that either guy was more athletic than the other.

Having said that, basketball competition certainly would figure to have improved since Wilt's heydey, if for no other reason than integration. Given that racial balance in the NBA wasn't achieved until relatively recently -- and presumably these are the best players in the game -- then the obvious conclusion would have to be that 1) Black athletes have improved relative to their white counterparts or 2) Black athletes lacked the same opportunities.

Perhaps both 1) and 2) are true, but I think No. 2 is so clear, you have to factor it into any dicussion of era comparison. I can't imagine a reasoned counterargument to this.

 

It doesn't contradict your posts. I'm simply saying prophesying that it will be the general direction of the conversation--we will both have our own subjective judgments of "quality" and few hard facts to back it up. Therefore, it is possible that we won't get anywhere.

I agree. But at the same time, we don't know the total number of players in the game (do we?). It may be that there were more whites playing basketball back then compared to today--a reasonable assumption, since people tend to go into sports they believe they can win--and thus the talent pools are equal in size even though black players were excluded.

 

OK, I got it now. Sorry for the confusion.

I view this as extremely unlikely. For one thing, the athletic talent pool has grown along with general expansion of the population, in terms of raw numbers. Beyond that, basketball exposure is almost a given for any American youth.

Kids play it in P.E. classes, on playgrounds, in impoverished cities and in soccer mom suburbia. There are numerous middle school teams, and the sport's popularity makes it attractive for older and low-level athletes (unlike football), hence the existence of so many weekend warriors.

Perhaps there are studies out there indicating that white kids are leaving basketball earlier than they did previously, as black athletes begin to dominate at an early age. I'm not sure to what extent this is true, if at all, but it's certainly possible. But even if it is, they are not leaving for lack of exposure, but bowing out when they recognize that they can compete better elsewhere.

Given that black athletes dominate the game as much as they do -- because so much hinges on quickness and overall athleticism -- Wilt almost definitely benefited from a lack of widespread black opposition -- or at least as black as should have been, based on ability.

Bottom line: If you have a 40% drop in white participation and a 20% increase in black participation, the game as a whole still gains. That's because, at the highest levels, black athletes dominate the sport at more than a 2-to-1 ratio.

Back to boxing, the talent pool issue is a much better question. You still have overall population numbers expanding the talent pool, but the percentate of kids exposed to the sport seems to have dropped precipitously over the decades. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this.