they used to try and make leftys into rightys, starting in kindergarten. force them to write right handed, etc.
Back in the day trainers would usually force you to become conventional. The reason was two fold. 1.) Nobody wanted to fight a southpaw, so it was bad for business, since southpaws struggled to get fights against top competition. 2.). Southpaws tend to be suckers for right hands.
I think it's because if the explosion of the international amateur scene, and southpaw being an advantage for point scoring etc. Alongside the 'classical' style and stance not suiting most southpaws, leaving them vulnerable. Even back in the day though, you had southpaw ATGs such as Young Corbett II(?) and Lew Tendler, who gave Benny Leonard hell.
There were some good southpaws before - Whitaker, Hagler, Elorde, Papp, Nunn, Marvin Johnson and others... At the beginning of the XX century though there southpaws were extremely rare in boxing. Outside of Young Corbett III, Fred Fulton, Tiger Flowers and Luis Ortiz I can't name anyone else.
For some reason I never liked watching southpaws. I don't know, something about their style just was not aesthetically pleasing to me or something. I made exceptions for Hagler and Marvin Johnson, but other than that I can't think of any that I liked watching
