Why did America lose heavyweight dominance

I attended a function that Emanuel Steward was present at, he said the real reason is the American Amateur system is broken and it doesn't do enough to cultivate young talent. He also said that American athletes want instant success now and don't hang around in the amateurs long enough to hone their craft. He said "he didn't care how naturally gifted a fighter was if he only fights ten twenty times before turning pro he isn't going to beat someone with a 150-200 amateur bouts against top competition."
He said the sport also produces more top end talent from other areas today, that it's truly global now. He kind of downplayed the football, baseball stealing talent theory. Just his two cents on the matter.

 

Funny that. The rest of the world is led to believe that the highest earning Murican athletes ever were Jordan, and O'Neal until the Tiger came along.

How many of your Heavyweight boxers are worth their kind of money?

 

America lost dominance because they couldn't adapt to a new style. Bob 'n weave doesn't win HW fights since 30 years. Yet US Americans still try to employ this losing style.

 

I think this is the answer.:good

Boxing is global now. Professional heavyweight boxing has always been supplied by the children of poverty and for generations America grew the largest sized children of poverty.

The rest of the world is catching up with America's larger average sized men. Years ago most of Europe's working class kids were shorter and smaller than middle class kids from the same country where as America's kids were always as big rich or poor. Obviously the country with the biggest poor kids produces the most professional heavyweights but that has leveled off now.

 

Its crazy to see such accomplished amateurs like Guinn, Brock, Walker, Estrada, and others do nothing in the pros

I think there is a stigma in letting kids box. My parents would never let me in the gym when I was a kid. Most parents would be terrified of brain damage and death in the ring.

My dad is a good friend of a guy who runs a youth football league like ages 6 to 13 and numbers are down to the worst they have ever been, word is that its the concussion fears. My freshman squad was 80 kids, the freshman squad last yr was 33.

 

That's as crazy as saying a horse would make a great Tuna.

There's only one sport an athlete can dominate in. They can be proficient in lots of sports but only special in one. That's why they invented decathlon and MMA for those that don't make the world grade at any one thing but are good all rounders.

 

true, but they had domestic success, as someone said about a manny steward held conference he mentioned the death of the american am system

so i guess success in the american domestic circuit means little if no success is had elsewhere

Could also just be the rest of the world caught up

 

American dominance has wained not just in the heavyweights but across all the weights.
The fact is since the fall of the iron curtain that's opened up a huge talent pool that in the professional game wasn't there before.
Boxing has simply developed in other countries while it's lost some of it's popularity in the States put it all together and their dominance recedes.

 

well, Eastern Europe makes a difference, but most of the areas which are competing in boxing were competing in boxing way back before WWII,

in the fifties there were champions from Sweden, England, Cuba, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, Algeria, Hawaii, Japan, Argentina

and challengers for titles from

Trinidad, Canada, France, Italy, the Philippines, Spain, Scotland, Thailand, Venezuela

and all sorts of other countries which just produced contenders.

How many could produce big heavyweights is a valid question.

Eastern Europe seems to produce big men more than most.

 

They weren't even able to win the Olympic championships in those days.

The question of America's decline versus Eastern Europe's is and will always be impossible to answer.

Take the elephant.

It is the biggest animal walking the Earth, but there have been much bigger animals. They are extinct.

Good American heavyweights might just be going extinct,

or maybe boxing evolution is now producing bigger animals in other areas.

 

????

Are you forgetting a certain Lennox Claudius Lewis? Or are you going on the fact that although he was born in East Ham he emigrated to Canada aged 12, because if that is the case we might as well say millions of Americans are really Eastern Europeans.

 

Didn't do anything at boxing did he?