Why are there no Jewish fighters now when there used to be a lot?

Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Max Baer and many more, but something has changed; there are basically none these days.
What’s the reason for this?

 

Boxing has traditionally been a sport of the have-nots. At least those who participated. Simply put, there aren't a lot of Jewish ghettos around anymore.

There used to be slums housing Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants new to the country, and that deprivation bred great fighters. Those times are over now.

 

The prevailing theory, in line with what @salsanchezfan said, was that the Jewish fighters dropped off after WWII. And that was because of the G.I. Bill, which gave these returning vets the opportunity to go to college. Like Sal said, greater opportunity without having to go to the school of hard-knocks.

 

Same reason there aren’t anymore Korean fighters.

 

Dana Rosenblatt and Yuri Foreman were two that I can think of that haven't been gone too long.

 

You beat me too it. I really liked Yuri a lot. He was a very skilled guy that would have done a lot more had it not been for that bad knee.

 

bingo.

 

People want to say socioeconomic reasons, but that’s too simplistic.

It’s also a numbers game. If there are 100 million or so total blacks, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. compared to about 6 million Jews, you aren’t going to see a lot of Jewish boxers.

So if you get Yuri Foreman, Cletus Seldin, and Dimitry Salita over the past fifteen years, it’s kind of in line with the population.

 

It is mostly related to socioeconomic reasons. There are numerically more jews now than there were in the early 20th century but proportionally less boxers in the community. The Jews who were boxers in the first half of the 20th century at least, were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. They grew up in tenements and tough neighborhoods and had to fight just to survive. That type of upbringing is natural to breed boxers, always has been and likely always will.

Their descendants on average live very different lives. There aren't nearly as many itallian-american or irish-american boxers anymore for similar reasons.

 

You seem to have missed my point. It's the thing that literally everyone in the thread is saying, but it's also that Jews are a small percentage of the population so their visibility in pro sports in gets washed out unless they're way overrepresented in something.

And btw most populations have increased over the last hundred years, but Jews have never recovered their pre WW 2 population.

 

True that. Not enough young jewish males out there like it used to be. Italians and jews used to have 10 kids per parents. Now, I am not saying blacks and hispanic-americans have that, but they certainly have a bigger number of young males in society today.

Rocky Marciano had 5 brothers, Paulie Malignaggi has 1.

 

Sure, but people die at 85 years old today. You are adding up all ages. In the number you speak of you are counting Larry David, Michael Douglas and a young 18 year old jew, so it makes up 3 but it is really 1 regarding Boxing.
So it is a cumulative number that means nothing for us here in Boxing, Larry David is not becoming the MW champion of the world anymore.

 

Economic improvements, opportunity and much easier and more appealing ways to make a living.

Control the struggle without the treacherous swim in it.

 

To summarize and simplify my point. Boxers have always been bred in tough lower income communities, I don't think anyone would dispute that.

The average Jewish American living in 1930 was not as well off as the average Jew living in 2024 America. If a community is mostly well off they don't breed many boxers.

The same topic can have been made about where did all the irish-american and Italian-american boxers go? And it would be the same reasons. Boxers are bred in the slums not the subburbs.

 

You got to remember that there are only 15 million Jews on the planet., that's .018% of the world population.