Why do people say that boxers of the 1940's and 50's were so much better than boxers today?

EXCELLENT DEAD ON CORRECT POST!!!!!!

 

They fought more often, but defended their titles less often in many cases. And often skipped the most dangerous contenders.

Archie Moore for example went almost two years without defending his title after the rematch with Durelle. And I think Harold Johnson had a stronge case to get a second shot at Moore's title, but he instead had to wait for Moore to be stripped of part of it.

 

I remember Garcia pulling the plug on his fight with Salido, just as it was heating up. Meanwhile in 1954, before my time, we have Marciano fighting through a grotesquely cut nose. Read the link below and pay particular attention to Marciano’s quote about his 8th round strategy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Marciano_vs._Ezzard_Charles

Also note that these two ATGs fought each other twice in exactly 3 months. Meanwhile, if (BIG IF) the Spence/Diva fight happens on March 16, 2019, they will have “only” been out of action for 9 and 8 months respectively. Plus this all assumes that they don’t fail to come to terms during the negotiations.

So yeah, I believe boxing AND boxers were better in the 40’s and 50’s than it is today.

 

"you have things, backwards"

I perhaps said it backwards, but I totally agree with your point here.

Charles would have been a "champion" at light-heavy in the 1940's if that era were like today, and yet he might very well have never fought Lesnevich, or for that matter, Moore, and today it could very well be more a matter of guesswork and opinion as to who was really the best light-heavy of the era than it is viewing actual history.

In my judgment, giving power to political organizations to strip champions had a down side that was worse than the problem it was supposed to fix.

 

The question I would raise is not about Lesnevich, but Zale being lumped with Lesnevich.

I would like to know the actual monthly position of Graziano in the ratings when he fought Zale. Graziano was rated #4 in the 1945 year end rankings, and #3 in the 1946 year end ratings. The fight with Zale came in the fall of 1946 after Graziano scored a big KO of the welter champ Servo. With Holman Williams losing twice, it is hard to buy that Graziano would have been rated any worse than #3, and quite possibly higher when he stepped into the ring with Zale.

But the big problem is that the Zale-Graziano fights were both tremendous financial successes and for the generation which saw them, considered among the great fights of the time. LaMotta was a draw of sorts, but never drew against anyone, even Robinson, like Graziano did with Zale. Burley doesn't seem to have been much of a draw at all.

So the bottom line for your take is that the paper ratings should dictate title fights, rather than the fights the public wants to see, for clearly the challenger the public wanted to see go up against Zale was Graziano.

But I think the current champions would make the same defenses Zale did. They would likely go with the challenger who would draw. If not, the argument is to the devil with the ticket-buying public.

 

Every poll I have seen shows that baseball was the most popular sport in the USA up to the 1960's. Certainly a huge percentage of the celebrity athletes were baseball players. Today, I think if you asked folks to name the top athlete in the nation, few would name a baseball player. Who is the most famous? Mike Trout? How many would name him before Tom Brady, among others.

I think almost all observers believe that baseball doesn't have the hold on the American public it once had.

Yet, I could use all the arguments you use for boxing to claim baseball is far more popular than it was in the old days. There are 30 major league teams to 16 back then. Therefore they play more games and the average attendance is much higher per game. Why? Night baseball and far expanded urban populations. But I think it also true that a far lower percentage of the total population pays attention. We forget that a relatively small percentage of the population can support a sport at the gate while the sport loses interest among the general population.

Horse racing is another good example. This year's Kentucky Derby drew 157,000. The 1938 match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral drew 40,000. On the face of it more interest? Hardly. Horse racing is now a fringe sport. There was much more interest in the 1938 match race, so much so that it is still a famous event and there have been at least two major movies over the years made about the winner.

On folks not paying attention. The Super Bowl is certainly the biggest sports event in the US, and probably the biggest TV event of any year in and year out. Yet the viewing figures indicate that only about 1/3 of the US population watches the Super Bowl on free network TV. It puts things in perspective that 2/3 of the folks don't care enough about the Super Bowl to watch it.

In fairness to the Super Bowl, 1/3 is sensational. Very, very few events or shows can draw even 10% of the public for free viewing. I doubt if the World Series gets 10%.

*not that I think you are making bad points, but just my effort at food for thought about any sport's popularity now and then.

 

But meanwhile baseball draws from a much broader and better trained talent pool than ever before. The fact that Americans aren't as gaga over Mike Trout as they were over Mickey Mantle doesn't prove that he isn't as good as Mantle was or that the upper echelon of the sport isn't even more talented today than 50-60 years ago.

 

I am sure that some eras are better than others, but it is all speculation at the end of the day.

How could you ever prove it?

It should probably be the default position, if you can't make a compelling case to the contrary.

Which would you consider the safer assumption:

That a fighter who was successful in era A would have some degree of success in era B, or that a fighter who was successful in era A would be a non entity in era B?

 

This doesn't get us anywhere though, as we all have very different views of what constitutes a "compelling case to the contrary." The fact that something can't be proven doesn't render it unlikely or implausible.

I'm no ideologue so my answer would depend entirely on the specific fighters and eras in question. If there are obvious differences between a given division in two different eras (skills, size, physical talent, styles, etc.), then I don't see much basis for a blanket assumption that someone successful in one era would also be successful in the other. And I certainly don't see anything to support your notion that people with underwhelming records against the Ring Top 10 of their era would fare similarly poorly against the Ring Top 10 of a different era.

 

The problem is that we don't even have a high degree of consensus regarding what we would expect the difference between eras to be.

some people argue that the general trend has been towards them getting stronger, others have argued that the general trend has been towards them getting weaker, and others have argued that there has been no particular lineal trend either way.

Let's face it, a guy who is only good enough to be a journeyman in era A, is going to be a journeyman in any era.

If the kinds of difference that you are talking about exist, then they are obviously between the fighters at the top of the divisions.

I think that most of us would agree that a weaker era can follow a stronger era.

I am going to guess that none of Marvin Hart, Jimmy Braddock, and Leon Spinks, would have been a dominat champion in another era.

I am going to guess that any of Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, and Wladanmir Klitschko would have been an exceptional fighter in any era.

I see common factors among the champions and greats of different eras.

 

This is completely unsupported dogma on your part. I can't think of any compelling reasons for making such categorical assumptions. I don't think I even understand the logic.

 

It must surely have come to your attention, that the men who top out at say journeyman level, or fringe contender level, are the same sort of men, with similar training practices, natural talent etc?

There has never been an era so weak, that a 220lb guy with fat rolls over the top of his trunks, won the title because he hit like a truck!

The men at the top. whether short reigning champions, or dominant ones, always had something about them!

 

I literally can't name a single active baseball player. The only basketball players I can name are Lebron James and Dwight Howard. I have no idea what "musicians" are currently on top of the charts nor could I name a single movie playing in theaters right now. I could name two or three TV shows at most but have no idea which ones get the highest ratings.

 

It looks like you're looking to add a third perspective on this: If the fighters back then were tougher than today's fighters. I don't where I would stand on that, but Rocky was certainly as tough as they come.

I've been over this ground in this and other threads. Yes, there is no doubt that the fighters below HW fought more often than they do today, but, as I stated already several times, the champions didn't defend very frequently and often skipped on the most dangerous contenders. And black contenders didn't gets fights with white contenders nearly as often as they fought each other.

Rocky's reign was all in all very good, though.

 

No. No such thing has come to my attention. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that the journeymen of the 1890s would measure up to the journeymen of the 1990s. None. You are making a huge over-generalization that can't possibly be based on observations. You're really just stating your ideological priors.

What's Tony Galento got to do with this?

I've seen plenty of big men who weren't able to advance beyond the fringe contender stage in recent years who I absolutely believe would have fared much better one hundred plus years ago.

Again, you're just restating your ideology here.

How high in the heavyweight rankings do you really think champions like Tommy Burns or Marvin Hart would be able to climb today (if they were allowed to fight at their actual weights)?