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

Well, it's a very interesting question... and one that can never be answered with any king of certainty.

Today many of the top boxers come from countries that 30 years ago didn't even allow pro boxing. The sport is now truly international, with contenders and champions being produced all over the world - and no longer (almost) exclusively in the US.

You'd have thought, that this would be a good thing, and looking at the many fine fighters we have today, who originate from outside the US... it's difficult to conclude, that the increased international competition has hurt boxing.

And yet, we have people here, who completely dismiss the idea, that there are great fighters today - just like there have always been. In their opinion, boxing has, for some strange reason, DEvolved over the past 20-30 years... to such an extent, that some posters come on here and proclaim (almost proudly!) that they no longer follow contemporary boxing!

So is the "quality" of today's talent pool worse or better than 50-60 years ago? I don't know! Nothing can ever be proved one way or the other. All I know, is that I enjoy watching superb fighters like Lomachenko, Usyk, Inoue, etc... just as much as I love watching the greats of past eras.

 

The deepest talent pools in sport, tend to be a result of extreme uptake in one or two countries, rather than general uptake globally.

 

For the year 1986, 11,599 pro fights can be found in BoxRec's database (as of April 9, 2017)

30 years later, in 2016, this had increased to 26,873.

Which two countries do you think are mainly responsible for this growth?

 

This. Also, too many weight classes and too many world titles have also resulted in more one dimensional and lazy fighters. Globally more fighters are taking up the sport, but obviously the quality control isn't there anymore. In the past it wasn't anywhere as easy as it is today to become a world champion. Today a guy can become a title holder without ever beating a ranked fighter, which says a lot while guys like Archie Moore had to beat many top ranked fighters for years before even being entertained for a title shot.

 

Obviously record keeping has got better since then.

The Soviet Union probably played a roll in this increase (damn is that still a country?).

 

"dismiss the idea, that there are great fighters today"

Not me. I think it almost impossible to judge fighters across time except on record in their own era.

But I would raise some issues about the expanded talent pool.

"Oleksandr Usyk"

Is 31 years old, has been fighting 5 years, and has 16 listed fights on boxrec. How long did it take famous old-timers to reach 16 pro fights:

Ray Robinson--debut 10-4-1940-----16th fight 4-30-1941
Joe Louis--debut 7-4-1934-----16th fight 3-8-1935
Willie Pep--debut 7-25-1940-----16th fight 3-25-1941
Benny Leonard--debut 10-14-1911-----16th fight 3-5-1912
Harry Greb--debut 5-29-1913-----5-29-1914

Why did it take Usyk so long to reach only 16 professional fights? But we are also being told that there are so many more boxers than there were back in the day. Seems a contradiction.

But that brings up the issue of how a talent pool is judged. Take the US pro football league the NFL as the example. There are 32 teams. The talent pool is more or less restricted to the US. Almost all players come up from the colleges. The NCAA has 130 division 1 teams, and a total of 774 teams. The colleges teams are (supposedly) amateur.

Now the NFL teams only play the other NFL teams. Only one team ever has gone through a season undefeated. It is relatively rare for a team to only lose one game. Most champions lose 2 to 4, or even 6 games. Why? The best are playing the best.

But what would happen if tomorrow the NFL took in the 130 division 1 college teams (or even all 774 NCAA teams) and scheduled 162 teams rather than 32. Clearly, the best wouldn't be playing the best nearly as often and there would be a lot of mismatches.

What would I expect? A lot of undefeated teams each year until they were eliminated in the playoffs, but the Super Bowl champion would probably be undefeated more often than not. Because no one would play the top competition nearly as often.

Isn't this what we have in boxing today?

What about the talent pool? Actually, despite all the extra NFL games that would be played, the talent pool would be EXACTLY the same.

Now for pure speculation. What impact would it have on the quality of the best teams? It is just an opinion, but my take is it would probably be deleterious. A team could score a lot of points against second-rate defenses with a stodgy offense and so would be far less likely to improve their performances. The same would be true of the defense against second-rate offenses. I think it logical that playing the best forces you to be at your best with tough competition producing top performances.

 

"So is the 'quality' of today's talent pool worse or better than 50-60 years ago?"

Who really knows, but I looked up the world champions from the 1950's to see where they came from.

There were 41 men who were generally recognized as world champions.

24 came from the USA. A 25th, Dado Marino, was a native from Hawaii which was at the time an American territory. If you want, we will lump him with the Americans. So 25 Americans.

The 16 non-Americans represented all the inhabited continents.
5 were from Europe.
4 were from Africa.
5 were from Latin America.
1 was from Australia
1 was from Asia (Japan)

Now of the Americans,
14 were African-Americans
10 would be classified as white (of those, 7 were Italian-Americans)
1 would be classified as a native Hawaiian.

What stands out is that the US was about 6% of the world's population. African-Americans were about 10% of the American population. I guess (and it is a guess) Italian-Americans were probably somewhat less. So two American ethnic groups which made up at most about 1 to 2% of the world population produced more than half the champions.

I have no answers, only questions.

1----What impact would an earlier loss of interest (or a color bar) have had if African-Americans and Italian-Americans were not interested in or allowed to compete in boxing?

2----What happened to the earlier dominant American ethnic groups, the Irish and the Jews?

3----a big one, Americans made up 61% of the world champions. What was the percentage of the active boxers in the 1950's who were American? Did the USA have 61% of the world's pro boxers or were they grossly over performing at the championship level?

4----Another big question. Within the United States, African-Americans and Italian-Americans were statistically around 20% of the potential talent pool, but they produced 84% of the American champions (21 of 25). What does this say about the width of a potential talent pool?

Now, what is clear to me is that boxing was basically a world sport back then. The big pro expansion has been into the old Warsaw Pact nations. Hard to tell what interest there really is over most of the Middle East or Asia, and it is certainly likely that interest has waned not only in the US, but in quite a few western European countries and possibly in Latin America. Overall, though, there seems to be more world interest and I am interested in finding out any info I can.

I have a lot more questions than answers.

 

I would never accuse you of dismissing the idea, that there are great fighters today. You're a sensible guy, and I don't recall you have ever expressed such an opinion... but, as I'm sure you have noticed, some posters do just that all the time.

Is it a contradiction, that boxers have fewer fights than in past eras - when we today have a huge talent pool? Boxers simply don't fight as often today, as was the case many decades ago. I'm afraid I don't understand, what impact the size of the talent pool has, on how often a boxer enters the ring.

You mention 5 ATGs, who all reached their 16th fight much faster than Usyk:

In his 16th fight Robinson met Joe Ghnouly (74-31-10). 6 of his first 15 opponents did not have a winning record.

In his 16th fight Louis met Don "red" Barry (52-20-13). Before that, Louis had been matched with several good opponents - of which only one had a non-winning record.

In his 16th fight Pep met Marty Shapiro (1-1-1). 8 of his first 15 opponents did not have a winning record.

In his 16th pro fight Leonard met Joe Shugrue (15-9-3). His first 15 opponents had a combined record of 7-5-3... and only 2 of them had a winning record.

In his 16th pro fight Greb met Whitey Wenzel (2-7-5). 8 of his first 15 opponents did not have a winning record.

These 5 ATGs were between 15 (Leonard) and 20 (Louis) years of age, when they made their pro debut.


Usyk made his pro debut at 26, after finishing with a 335-15 amateur record, that saw him win European, world and Olympic titles. As a pro, he has never met an opponent that didn't have a winning record. His last 7 fights have been for world titles, against the best in the CW division. So of course the frequency with which he has fought, has been much lower, than the 5 you mention.

Given his age, and his amateur experience, it wouldn't have made much sense to let him go through dozens of "learning" fights... before gunning for world titles. I know, many oldtimers scoff at the idea of a 16-fight "beginner" holding world titles (and see this as "proof" of boxing's sad decline)… but it's possible, that Usyk is already as good, as he will ever be. Which is pretty good, imo!

As for the NFL, I'm sorry… but I'm afraid you lost me there! I'm from Denmark- which means, that I know NOTHING about American football.

 

First of all, let me say, that when it comes to the "old vs new" debate - I have no horse in the race (which I think, is the way you Yanks would put it). I'm interested in boxing history… especially what the boxing scene looked like at different times. For example: How many boxers were there - and where were they?

"Overall, though, there seems to be more world interest and I am interested in finding out any info I can."

So am I... and for the past several years, I have been pleading with BoxRec to make public the number of active boxers in their database for each year. They can tell us the annual number of fights - but for some reason they refuse to release the number of boxers. Which is a pity, as those numbers would be super-interesting.

As for your other questions… man, my head is spinning, after all those percentages, ethnic groups, etc.!

In the 1950s "Americans made up 61% of the world champions. What was the percentage of the active boxers in the 1950's who were American? Did the USA have 61% of the world's pro boxers or were they grossly over performing at the championship level?"

That is a very good question - but how will we ever find out, if BoxRec refuses to help? My gut feeling tells me, that the Americans were indeed over performing. I doubt if approx. 60% of all fighters in the 50s came from the USA (but there's no way I can prove that)

Your questions about the different ethnic groups in the USA... I don't know enough about that to offer an opinion.

 

That word Yank has so many meanings in different cultures.

To Brit’s it generally means from the USA.

In the American South it is a derogatory term for people above the Mason Dixon Line.

To me it means New Yorkers (and is always a derogatory term for those of us who hate NY)

So tell me (I sincerely don’t know) is it simply a geographical/national descriptor or does it carry a negative connotation.

I just find it funny that this term means different things depending on where you live.

 

It is also used as a derogatory term in North Korea.

 

I thought it just meant Americans - and I never thought of it as a derogatory term (but I'm from Denmark - so what do I know?)

 

That’s cool! I wasn’t looking to stir anything up and generally enjoy your posts. I was legitimately curious what meaning it carried.

 

Fair point that Usyk is a finished fighter.

The main point I was trying to make about the old fighters is that they reached the same total of fights less than a year into their careers. It is a worthwhile question when they reached the same number of TOUGH fights.

But there is also the difference in activity once they got to the top.

Usyk has fought from 26 to 31. Robinson fought 61 times between 26 to 31 while a world champion. Archie Moore from 1953 to 1958 when much older fought 44 fights. Usyk doesn't seem to be or have been very active.

Another thing I found interesting looking at Usyk's record is that he has fought 4 men who had perfect records out of his 16 fights.

How many unbeaten fighters did Robinson meet in his career? Discounting debuting fighters who hardly count, the answer is none at all. Archie Moore fought a handful who were unbeaten but had five or less fights. He fought two we could call honestly unbeaten. Rocky Marciano and Dogomar Martinez (24-0-1). Between them Robinson and Moore fought over 400 fights, and well over 120 against men who were ranked (according to the Boxing Register) when they fought them, and probably 150 to 200 fights, at least, against men who were ranked sometime or another. And between them they fought only two unbeaten fighters.

Usyk has doubled that in 16 fights.

Certainly food for thought about the competition and who was/is fighting whom.

 

Nostalgia.

Some of the footage of some of these “greats” is abysmal. Their form is atrocious and their skills are overblown. Then we have the records! “He was 106-5. You don’t get that today!” Who exactly are you beating to get that many victories on your resume?

The late 70’s to early 90’s is where it peaked for me in terms of skill. There were still some from after that time that are ATG’s, but I don’t see two guys slugging it out and would be two divisions below the actual division of today as better than what I’m seeing.

I’d pick Holyfield to beat Marciano, for example.