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

The simple fact is that Graziano hadn't fought one MW contender and only one MW all in all when he got the fight with Zale. And at that time you had a slew of contenders (Williams, Burley, LaMotta etc) who had waited around a long time while the title was frozen. When Hagler fought Hearns he had at least done a pretty good job at cleaning out that generation of MW contenders before.

And of course it made financial sense, but so did Martinez taking on Cotto instead of MW contenders, like Golovkin, who had actually done something at the weight. But it was still damned weak.

Yes, I think a champion should defend against the best contenders not the most popular ones. Crazy, huh?

Sure, you see much of the same shenanigans in today's scene, but the notion I disagreed with is that the 40's and 50's were much better in that sense. A big difference today would rather be that the mob that doesn't have the influence it did back then.

 

"better trained"

In baseball skills? What training do you actually do to learn to hit to the opposite field or to throw to the proper base? Isn't this what you learn from actually playing baseball. As for strength training, we can get into it, but guys like Foxx and Mantle often hit the ball over the roof in the old double-decked ballparks. Hard to see doing better.

"much broader talent pool"

This sounds very good & I am certain many would say decisive, but let's look at another sport in which we have many more generations to study--horse racing (Yes, I know, horses are not men, but I think they can tell us something about talent pools)

In 1970 Secretariat was foaled. He went on to win the American triple crown (the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes) and according to wikipedia his times in all three races in 1973 have never been equaled since. Now I can't find any info measuring if the number of foals in 1970 was greater or lesser than the number of foals in any given year since, and especially in the 21st century. But one thing is absolutely obvious. The number of horses foaled in 1970 is nothing close to the number foaled over the 1971 to 2015 period, so the potential "talent pool" of horses in 1970 has to be a fraction of the whole era since. But no horse has come along which has beat Secretariat's time in any of these races. At least in horse racing, the talent pool does not seem to be decisive. A genetic accident or freak might be more critical.

Or take the NFL. African-Americans are about 13% of the American population, but they make up more than 70% of NFL players. I think this raises the question of what is the actual talent pool. Let's assume the population of the US increased to 500 million or so (330 million today) but the absolute number of African-Americans fell by 50% (not just as a percentage) and the difference is made up by whites, Latinos, and Asians. Did you think the increased population automatically means an increased talent pool. I don't think so.

"The fact that Americans aren't as gaga over Mike Trout as they were over Mickey Mantle doesn't prove he isn't as good as Mantle was or that the upper echelon of the sport isn't more talented today than it was 50 to 60 years ago."

And it doesn't prove the opposite either. There is really no way of telling. While baseball perhaps has a wider talent pool, there is no way of telling if it is tapping its potential talent pools as effectively as it did decades ago when they was more intense and general interest in the sport.

*I don't think there is any right or wrong answers to this type of debate. I am just throwing out ideas as food for thought.

 

Yes, absolutely—today’s baseball players are better trained from childhood. In America, the best of the best often specialize in it and play year round now. In some instances, their parents get them hitting and pitching coaches and take them to state of the art facilities to hone their skills. Not to mention all of the kids in the Caribbean and Central America who basically spend their childhood years in hardcore baseball training camps. However you measure training, today’s top kids get more of it and do it at a higher level. I don’t see anything to debate here.

I also don’t see anything debatable about the sport’s broader talent pool. Sure, we could imagine a scenario where foreign-born players were only able to make inroads into the sport because the best American players stopped playing, but I haven’t seen an iota of evidence suggesting that anything like that is plausible. Kids in America still play a TON of baseball, and usually from a very young age. I agree that the talent pool has weakened in one important respect though. For various reasons the sport has lost its access to most black American athletes though, who had been making real inroads into the sport by the 1960s. Still gets some though, and I think that’s outweighed by the factors I described above.

 

And yet, my Phillies still can’t find a Short stop to field like Ozzie Smith...a shame

 

I didn’t intend to add a 3rd perspective regarding toughness. However, I firmly believe that men today aren’t as tough (resilient) as our grand and great grandfathers likely were. This is not a knock on our generation, since I also believe we’re supposed to build on the success of those who came before us. This is to say that it’s okay and we should reasonably expect the current and future generations to have it “easier” than our predecessors.

My $.02

 

Maybe not, but Jimmy Rollins was damn sure better than whoever they had in the 1960s!

 

Touché lol I miss J Roll

 

"The simple fact is that Graziano hadn't fought one MW contender and only one middleweight in all when he got the fight with Zale."

This begs the issue of why they considered him a contender? Obviously, at the time they didn't see the distinction between welter and middle quite as strongly as you do. One thing they might have pointed to is that Graziano had fought three fights with two welter champions and gone 3-0 with 3 KO's. His top competitor, LaMotta, had lost a fight to Zivic, and fought him on very close terms two other times. The KO victories must have impressed them.

"At the time you had a slew of contenders who had waited around a long time while the title was frozen."

Which is looking at it from the point of view of the WWII era challengers. But the champion had lost four years of prime earning potential, an enormous sacrifice to the war effort. It would take a saint, or perhaps more than a saint, to pass on the challenger who was the best box-office draw after such a sacrifice and with time running out on his career.

"Williams"

The #1 contender going into 1946,but not really in the hunt after losses to both Cerdan and LaMotta.

"Burley"

Had lost in 1945 to Williams, so wasn't the #1 contender going into 1946. Williams was.

"LaMotta"

Was only the #3 contender going into 1946, behind Williams and Burley.

Fair or foul, there was the view that wartime competition was weak and therefore 1942-1945 ratings weren't as important as what happened once the soldiers returned. Two points about that. One, they were there and watching the fights. Two, it makes sense on the face of it with such a huge percentage of young men serving in the military that competition would be weakened.

As for LaMotta, Burley, and Williams, none came out of the war as the clear #1 and held on to that position, which certainly weakens the case that they and they alone should have gotten the title shot.

"I think the champion should defend against the best contenders, not the most popular ones."

Who decides who the "best" contender is? Ring Magazine? Boxing politicians? A boxing buff in the next century? Or is it the public? What is obvious is that Graziano had excited the paying public like none of the other contenders had. He was the one the public wanted to see fight Zale. The three Zale-Graziano fights drew great gates of $342,000, $422,000, and $335,000. The best gate LaMotta ever drew was $180,000 and that was with Robinson who often did much better against other opponents.

I can see the point of a distinction between the best contender and the most popular contender if there is an under-girding of racism eliminating the best contender from consideration. I think the issue is far cloudier when comparing Graziano to LaMotta as a choice for Zale. A book and movie decades later made LaMotta a big name, but being old I know that this image wasn't nearly that strong back in the day. Folks were far more likely to focus on the great Zale-Graziano series than the "raging bull" legend.

 

"today's baseball players are better trained from childhood"

How can anyone say that. Just look at the ages of most of the games big stars starting their professional careers and reaching the major leagues. A lot of them didn't finish (or perhaps attend) high school and so began pro baseball careers as teenagers.

Just a few--Jimmy Foxx. His father had been a semi-pro player. I don't know what he did as a really young kid but Jimmy was an outstanding all-around athlete in high school. In 1924, at 16, he was signed by a local pro minor league team managed by Hall-of-Famer Home Run Baker. Baker told Connie Mack about him and Foxx skipped his senior year in high school to be in spring training with the A's in 1925 at 17. Now neither of us have any idea what training Foxx had when 10 (except his father had baseball knowledge) but from 16 on he was in the hands of top flight baseball people.

Willie Mays--was playing in the Negro National League in 1948 at 17.

Ted Williams--was playing in in the minor leagues at 17.

Joe DiMaggio--was playing in the minor leagues for the San Francisco Seals at 17. He probably, like Williams, could have played in the major leagues a year or two earlier than when he actually broke in.

Mickey Mantle--was playing in the minor leagues at 17.

Ty Cobb--was playing in the minor leagues at 17.

Cobb, Mantle, Foxx, Ruth and a ton of other old-timers were in the major leagues as teenagers. I don't think they jumped directly to top level minor leagues or to the majors w/o a solid grounding in baseball.

How? Well there were lots of local leagues. I lived in a dump town as a kid, but we had a pro team, and there were also the industrial and tavern leagues. Therefore there were a lot of potential teachers.

And as kids we played ever chance we got.

I've been in the city I now live in for 12 years. There are scads of empty lots in which kids could play baseball. I have not seen one game being played in all that time.

I think there is a lot that is debatable about the talent pool. Just a lot of people doesn't mean they are going to be doing this or that activity. Are there as many folks who can play the piano as there were 100 years ago? How about the violin? Do folks actually play the music themselves today or do they just listen to it now that this is so available.

 

I don't know much about horse racing, but what would be interesting to know is this:

Were the horses foaled in 1970, or thereabouts (lets say from1965 to 1975), better (generally speaking) than those foaled in the 2005-2015 period? In other words: Were the top "old-timer" horses better than today's top horses... or did the best horse ever just happen to have been foaled almost 50 years ago?

The best boxer who ever lived, is by many considered to be Sugar Ray Robinson - who was born in 1921. Does this mean, that the tiny pool of boxers born that year included more great fighters, than the enormous pool of boxers born since then - and that therefore the size of the talent pool isn't really decisive, when it comes to producing top talent?

Ok, I know, you're just throwing these ideas out there for discussion - but I think the size of the talent pool at different times, is something that should be considered.

 

I don't understand how your examples are at all responsive to what I wrote above. Especially when you admit that you have no idea what kind of training and development any of these guys received as children.

It's like you're so convinced that I can't possibly be right that you haven't bothered reading what I wrote. Today's top youth aren't screwing around in sandboxes or empty lots or getting pointers from random guys who played on local bush league teams--they're on competitive, organized travel teams playing against the best of the best in their area (if not the country) or they're getting one-on-one skill development coaching or they're in baseball factories in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. And they're not just fooling around because it's fun--they're doing it for college scholarships or, in central America, the chance to strike it rich and lift their families out of poverty. It's not just the number of children who pick up a bat--it's the intensity and seriousness with which they pursue the sport. That's why tiny places like Curacao produce so many major and minor leaguers. But I digress. Most importantly, you still haven't provided any reason to question whether baseball has a larger talent pool today than in the past--just random analogies and hypothetical scenarios.

 

I don't think you qualify yourself as a MW contender by beating WWs. Not in the case with Graziano nor Cotto. There were several far more deserving, but Zale passed. And he did so again for the rematch.

It would have been one thing if Zale defended against the nr 1 contender shortly after Graziano. Then I would be fine with it, really. But when you only defend once a year you should defend against someone who really deserve it, and Zale didn't for two years.

When Sergio Martinez does something like that it's a "sign of the sad decline of boxing", when Zale does it it's just common sense. I call BS on that.

That's what I got to say on the matter and what I've already said in a long thread recently.

 

"I don't think you qualify yourself as a MW contender by beating WWs."

Fair enough position, but the people at the time apparently did not think that way. And it wasn't only Graziano. LaMotta's big wins were over Robinson and Zivic. It wasn't until about a month before the first Zale-Graziano fight that LaMotta beat Williams who was coming off a loss to Cerdan.

But you don't really deal with the paying public, after all fans intense enough to be willing to pay hard earned money to see the fight, wanting Graziano to get the first shot, and frankly, the rematch. The first fight was a tremendous success at Yankee Stadium, drawing more than Louis drew with Mauriello. The rematch was the record gate for a middleweight fight up to that point. The reason for the rematch being so successful was that the first fight was so great that there was intense interest in seeing the two fight again.

I don't find LaMotta's claim that overwhelming or what happened regarding him that unfair. Unlike Burley and Cerdan, he was only 25 and not an aging fighter. He was penciled in as the next challenger. All he had to do was not lose and it wasn't like he was taking on all the top men. Whatever the situation, he never fought Burley or Belloise. Blowing a fight to the ordinary Cecil Hudson cost him his shot. He was only 26 in 1948. Cerdan was 32 with time running out.

I guess the bottom line is whose opinion should trump the wishes of the paying boxing public?

 

Well, here are the Kentucky Derby winners' times for 1964 to 1973 and for 2009 to 2018

1964--2:00
1965--2:01.2
1966--2:02
1967--2:00.6
1968--2:02.2
1969--2:01.8
1970--2:03.4
1971--2:03.2
1972--2:01.8
1973--1:59.4

2009--2:02.66
2010--2:04.45
2011--2:02.04
2012--2:01.83
2013--2:02.89
2014--2:03.66
2015--2:03.66
2016--2:03.02
2016--2:01.31
2017--2:03.59
2018--2:04.20

"the best horse just happened to be foaled about 50 years ago"

Yes.

Were the horses generally better?

Well, these times certainly don't justify any conclusion that they weren't, although as always comparing across time I think demands a great deal of caution in drawing any conclusion. I don't know about the condition of the track, the weather, something else I can't think of being put in place to avoid injuries to the horses, etc. All I would say is that there is no evidence here that horses have improved, and Secretariat seems likely to have won any Kentucky Derby he ran in past or present.

As for boxers, it is interesting that Robinson debuted as a pro in 1940. Debuting that year were Robinson, Willie Pep, Ike Williams, Ezzard Charles, and Jimmy Bivins.

Top boxers born between 1921 & 1923 included Robinson, Charles, Williams, Pep, LaMotta, Graziano, Maxim, and Marciano.

It does seem to be years in which the boxing assembly line was working very well.

"the size of the talent pool isn't really decisive"

Possibly not. Certainly we have to draw a distinction between the width of the talent pool, if you will, and the quality. I just don't know. What do you think?

 

"Today's top youth aren't screwing around in sandboxes or empty lots or getting pointers from random guys who played on local bush league teams--they're on competitive, organized travel teams playing against the best of the best in their area"

My point is that this was also true back then. I pointed out that Foxx not only played on a high school team (with I assume a coach), he was playing on a professional team at 16 managed by a Hall-of-Famer. At 17 he was on the roster of a major league team. What is the big advantage you see for a modern baseball player over the background Foxx had?

"doing it for college scholarships"

A college education is good in and of itself, but why is playing on a college team preferable to playing on a professional team as most of the better prospects did in the old days, often before they actually graduated from high school.

"organized travel teams playing against the best of the best"

The best of the best is the major leagues. I don't know what you are talking about with travel teams. Do you assume that minor league teams didn't travel? How do you think the San Francisco Seals played the Los Angeles Angels. or the teams in Hollywood or San Diego?

"the intensity and seriousness with which they pursue the sport"

How can anyone tell if the intensity of a modern player is greater than the intensity of, say, Ted Williams. Or Ty Cobb? Or just an average player? Williams, for example, is said to have lived, breathed, and focused on nothing but batting. Williams and Hornsby and others refused to even go to movies for fear of hurting their eyesight.

"Poverty"

Well, this might be a great motivation, obviously, but baseball, unlike some other sports, is fun for a lot of guys to play, like for example golf, so I would like to see more evidence of a connection between poverty in youth and becoming a great player. It isn't a sport in which pain and agony is central to the training or participation so just liking the sport and the competition might be an adequate motivation if the talent is there.

"Curacao"

Seems to argue against your whole broader talent pool argument. There are only 160,000 on these islands, but they have produced since their first major league player in 1989 quite a few since. Why, because kids became interested in baseball and were playing it all the time. Here are some quotes from their major league players about their home islands:

"Every city has a team. Every neighborhood has a baseball field."

"Those fields are largely rock strewn dirt lots, but they are ideal for sharpening reflexes and building toughness."

"We didn't have the prettiest fields, so our hands have to be kind of sharp and our footwork has to be sharp."

"Official games were infrequent."

"We want a field with grass."

This sure sounds like these major league players are saying they became better defensive players precisely because they didn't have good fields to play on and so picked up skills for dealing with bad hops.

The key for me is they are playing on those lots. My point is I don't ever see kids playing on the many empty lots where I live here in the USA. Yes the potential talent pool is broader, but that doesn't matter much if there is a lack of interest across most of it.

I don't dispute at all that there is good training today. I only dispute the view that there wasn't good training in the distant past, even over a century ago. And I don't know a better way than examining the actual careers of players.