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

After Robinson defeated Tommy Bell for the W title he made 5 defenses of his crown over the next 3 years, 8 months. Over the same period he engaged in 33 non-title bouts

Usyk beat Glowacki for the WBO CW title in September 2016. In the 2 years, 2 months since then, he has had only 6 fights... which have all been title defenses/unification bouts.

What does this mean? Well, what it tells us (and as we already know!), is that today world champions only engage in title fights - because that's obviously where the big money is. Usyk's 3 WBSS fights earned him millions (and his purse against Bellew must surely also have been in 7 figures). He seems like an intelligent guy, and could no doubt live comfortably for the rest of his life, if he decided to retire tomorrow. So there's no need for him to take part in dozens of low-paying non-title fights in between defenses. No doubt he will now concentrate on preparing himself for an assault on the heavyweight crown. Personally, I can't wait to see, how that pans out!

In the old days, even champions were seldom that lucky (money-wise), and had to fight more often to put food on the table. Even someone like Robinson... who of course had his huge enturage, which he needed to keep happy. So he, too, had to put in a lot of meaningless non-title fights, to keep the money flowing.

The thing is, that for boxers like Usyk, Lomachenko, Rigondeaux, etc., the learning process doesn't start the day they turn pro. By then they are practically fully "developed"... and only need a few fights to adjust to the longer pro distance.

Now if you're of the opinion, that a boxer can't really be "great" if he hasn't had at least 50-60 pro fights, then you will probably think, that the competition must be very poor today.. where we have several champions who have not yet had even 20 pro bout. But can we really see this as an indication, that today's talent pool is of poor quality?

My own personal opinion: I don't really care how many fights a boxer has had. If he's good, he's good… that's all I'm looking at.

 

I've been thinking some more about this very relevant question!

Since we can't get these numbers from BoxRec, I've tried to look at the number of PROMOTIONS taking place in the US vs the rest of the world. Being smack in the middle of the 50s, I decided to look at the year 1955:
USA: 1216
Rest of the world: 3631

In other words, only about 25% of the promotions in BoxRec's database for the year 1955 took place in the US. Which doesn't prove anything as such… but makes it highly unlikely (imo) that 61% of the worlds boxers were Americans.

Just for fun, I took a look at 2016 as well:
USA: 624
Rest of the world: 4719

 

Thank you. I think a fine premise to investigate and a great bit of research.

I would notice that the rest of the world promotions have increased by about a third, but it is not as overwhelming an increase as some sometimes imply. Being old, and a reader of the Ring Magazine international fight reports back in the day, this does not surprise me. Nor is it a big surprise that American promotions have gone down. Only that they haven't gone down more.

*It is possible that small venue promotions were missed back in the 1950's, or at least far more likely than that they would be missed today.

**My main point about the the US ethnic groups is that boxing did not seem to draw equally across the board of the American population. 21 of its 25 champions were African-American or Italian-American, about 20% of its population. These two American ethnic groups produced 21 of the world's 41 champions that decade, so 1-2% at most of the world's population produced over half the champions. I don't draw a hard and fast conclusion. I just note it.

***As for the NFL. I don't think you have to understand or be interested in Gridiron football to understand my point. There are currently 32 NFL teams. They play a 16 game regular season. That comes out to 256 games. If the top 130 college teams were added in to make a 162 team league and played a 16 game schedule, there would be 1296 games. If the teams reduced their schedules grossly, let's say to 8 games, there would still be 648 games played. So it would appear that there was a much wider talent pool with a great deal more football activity. But in fact, the talent pool would be exactly the same.

And a result would be a lot of undefeated teams as the best wouldn't often be playing the best. I submit that this could be what has happened in boxing. There are more fights but not as often between the best.

For example, in the old days Archie Moore, Willie Pep, and Sugar Ray Robinson all fought more than 200 bouts. It is one perspective about their own activity and in-ring experience, but it also means there were a lot of boxers who were fighting the best in their division. Somewhere like 150 to 200 or even more men fought each of these fighters. Only 16 men have so far fought Usyk.

 

I have been watching some of Usyk's fights. Not all yet. My guess is he would have done very well against the classic, orthodox boxers of the past. I see him beating Tunney, Loughran, Harold Johnson, etc. Anyone who tried to box him. What I don't know off what I've seen, is how he would do against someone with a different style. What about the crouch and bob and weave fighters who try to get inside and stay there. Every one of the fights I watched are basically two guys fighting the same way. Jab and move, with Usyk being better at that than his opponents (and looking better than most historical boxing stylists) with his opponents having no plan B or alternative strategy.

as for his chances against super-heavyweights, my guess is he will have trouble against taller opponents. It will be interesting if he has a plan B if he can't simply jab away at a taller opponent.

 

I would like to reply to your post and include some research I have done on 1955 and 2016. However I'm about to go out tonight (just past 6PM in my part of the world), so I haven't got the time right now. I will be back tomorrow around the same time.

 

He ain’t beating no Philly fighters lol!

Seriously I like Usyk and think he can be overrated but the modern crowd and under appreciated by the classic contingent.

I have liked what I have seen so far, and am interested in seeing the impact he could have on the HW landscape...if this proves premature we may be giving him to much credit or to much credit to soon.

At this stage I see Loughran taking a crafty decision.

 

A few more observations re 1955 vs 2016:

Some years ago I took a closer look (from the available information in BoxRec's database) at the years 1955 and 2016 - in an effort to determine how the boxing scene has changed over the years.

What immediately struck me, was that promotions were spread much more evenly over the week in 1955. Back then there were lots of fight cards almost every day - whereas today most boxing takes place Friday-Sunday (with a heavy emphasis on Saturday). This seems to be a worldwide trend; not just an American "thing".

Another thing that quickly became clear, is that the really big promotions (10+ fights cards) you see every week today, were very rare back in the 50s.
In 1955 there were, worldwide, only 7 such cards (6x11 and 1x13). All 7, by the way, took place in Australia.
In 2016 such cards were staged in over 30 countries (more than 50 in Mexico alone).
Even a small country like the Dominican Republic staged 21 10+ fight shows in 2016 - 3 times as many as the entire world back in 1955!

This trend towards bigger and bigger cards, is also reflected in the average number of fights on a card:
In 1955 this was, worldwide, 3.17.
In 2016 this average had gone up to 5.00.

So while the number of known promotions rose by only a little over 10% (4847 to 5343), the number of fights listed by BoxRec went up approx. 75% (15,238 to 26,837) over the same period. Does this mean, that there was the same increase in the number of active boxers? Well, for this to be the case, boxers in 1955 and 2016 must necessarily have been (on average) equally busy… which I think is highly unlikely! I would strongly suspect, that boxers were a good deal more active in 1955 than today. But how much more active, is anybody's guess.

A few years ago, I wanted to find out how much more active the old TOP boxers were compared to today's best… so I took The Ring's end-of-year rankings for 1925, to see how many fights the 10 top contenders (I did not include reigning champions) in each division (80 men in total, since there of course were only 8 divisions back then) had during that year. I found, that they had anywhere from 2 (Harry Wills) to 33 (Young Stribling) - with an average of 13.09! I made the same calculations for 1930, and then for every 10 years after that (each time only for the 8 classic divisions) and came up with this:

1925 - 13.09
1930 - 10.74
1940 - 9.94
1950 - 8.60
1955 - 7.48
1960 - 5.86
1970 - 5.33
1980 - 4.15
1990 - 3.29
2000 - 2.96
2010 - 2.26
2014 - 2.18

2014 was the last year, where data was available - and I have since added the year 1955.

As said, these numbers are only for the 80 top men in the 8 original divisions! There's no way of telling, if they can be said to represent the ENTIRE pool of boxers at any given time. But I'm pretty sure, that they can't! If they could, there would be 5-6 times as many boxers today, compared to 1955. I would guess, that there are a good deal more active fighters today than in the 50s - but surely the difference can't be as big as that!


Anyway, what we're really discussing here (I guess!), is whether a bigger talent pool gives us better boxers. No, not necessarily (needless to say!). Many factors, other than merely the pool size, come into play! Often mentioned factors such as the lost art of body punching, the lost art of feinting, the dying out of all the good trainers, 12 rounds instead of 15, fewer individual fights, too many world champions, poor competition, the best not meeting the best, softer living, etc., etc. When you take all this into consideration, you can make a case for the old-timers being superior to today's "two-fights-a-year" sissies.

You can also chose to disregard all the above, and simply form your own opinion... based on what your experienced eyes tell you!

 

In regards to talent pool the following things need to be taken into account:

The boader talent pool is simply the world population, and that has grown quite considerably since the 40s and 50s. Also the number of major 'boxing nations' has grown, the 40s and 50s were a lot more parochial. The mechanisms of both finding and nurturing talent in sport has improved considerably since the 40s and 50s, is boxing really so different from other sports in that development?

Also the emphasis on 'decline' when looking at the place of boxing in US life and sport in the 40s and 50s compared to today rarely takes into consideration everything else that has changed outside of boxing, I mean why would anyone actually expect boxing to hold the same or greater place than it did then? It is a very different world.

 

First, thanks for doing all this research and for sharing it with us.

The number of fights by the rated fighters is interesting, and the decline in # of fights per year not surprising.

One thought about the old fights. I just checked Argentina in 1951 and found that there were a lot of promotions of only one fight. Is this likely? Or is it that the local newspapers only reported the main event? If so, many fights would go unreported as I don't know how boxrec could now discover fights from decades ago if they were not listed in newspaper reports.

Another issue is if fights were listed in a newspaper report, were the archives of that newspaper preserved? Have no idea what % of old newspapers have been archived.

The reason I brought up Argentina is that while Argentina consistently produced heavyweights from Firpo to Bonavena who broke into the top ten, or at least into the top twenty-five or so, I noticed a while back looking at their records that their Argentina opponents almost always had few fights and/or dismal losing records. The thought occurred to me that perhaps only major fights in big venues were recorded, as it is difficult to see anyone becoming world class fighting only the worst sort of pushovers.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your research.

 

Your comment on those one-fight Argentinian fight cards is interesting! They were not only common back in the day, but are also seen quite often today. Last year I actually asked (as "Bundana") BoxRec, as I was wondering about this, just like you:

http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=210935

I have also noticed a lot of one-fight French shows, which looks strange - but I think the editor's explanation probably makes a lot of sense.

I also see, that every now and then, there are fans who don't understand, why pro fights in their neighborhood can't be found in BoxRec's Database, like here:

http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=215205

As for someone "becoming world class fighting only the worst sort of pushovers"... I believe an Argentinian from the 50s, Pascual Perez, is a perfect example of this. One of the very few champions who, prior to winning his world title, had not registered a single win over someone with a winning record:

http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/9037

 

"Pascual Perez"

"prior to winning world title, had not registered a single win over someone with a winning record."

Worse than that. If I read it correctly, none of his opponents in 23 fights had won even ONE fight.

I know there was an explanation given (although from France) of pro cards filled up with amateur or other fights, but I have to admit the question still lingers for me with at least doubts concerning that answer. It seems really hard to believe that they would not have gotten, or imported, better opposition for Perez.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out Perez, who is an extreme example of what I noticed among heavyweight contenders. Fights back home against men with no or terrible records exclusively, followed by immediate success against world-class fighters.

It might be accurate. I can't say. But it seems so illogical to me that I would consider missing fights and thus incomplete records.

Pablo Sosa--a good example. According to the records, this fellow fought 11 years from 1950 to 1961. He fought and was stopped by Perez four times from the early fifties into the sixties. His record is 0 wins and 28 losses with 20 KO defeats, but he not only fought Perez but other top men. This guy kept a career going for 11 years just to be a pushover opponent getting beaten all the time & KO'd most of the time? If this was his accurate record, why would anyone pay to see Perez fight this guy not only once, but four times?

 

I have no set answers about this talent pool issue. Just questions or observations for thought.

"world population . . . has grown quite considerably"

Yes, but it is worth noting that it has aged considerably. Much of the increase is people living longer. There is a much higher percentage of the population over 30, or over 40, or over 65, etc. So just comparing gross population statistics might be quite misleading.

There are certainly plenty of claims that the number of births in many western European countries is not even at replacement level, hence the need for immigration to build up the work force. (I don't want to get into any political question, but the stats seem pretty strong about this) A possible area of study would be the number of young men of fighting age now compared to decades ago. Certainly the gap would not be nearly as wide as the total population figures might at a glance imply.

"the 40's and 50's were a lot more parochial"

I would separate the two, as the 1940's were scarred by the war, which obviously cut down international fights.

Taking a look at 50's champions Sandy Saddler, Bobo Olson, and Archie Moore, these men often traveled outside the US and fought men from these countries between them:

Puerto Rico, Canada, Cuba, Britain, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Panama, Italy, Ireland, Chile, Algeria, France, Japan, the Philippines,Thailand, Estonia, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Peru, Uruguay, Trinidad, Germany, Brazil, Mozambique.

So I think you could overdo the parochial argument. Yes, eastern Europe wasn't involved, (nor some of the big Asian countries which are still only marginally involved) but there are nearly thirty countries here from every inhabited continent, and there were places which produced champions, such as central Africa with Tiger and Bassey, from which these three champions did not fight an opponent.

 

You pose yet another interesting question… which I have tried to look into.

World population pyramid 1955:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/world/1955/

World population pyramid 2016:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/world/2016/

If, for the sake of argument, we define "fighting age" as 15-39, we can see that this group of males in 1955 made up 19.2% of the total world population of 2,8 billion.
In 2016 the group made up 19.7% of 7,4 billion.

So in 1955 this group numbered approx. 538 million...
which in 2016 had grown to a little over 1,45 billion.

So it would appear, that since 1955 the number of young men of fighting age has kept up with the growing world population.

 

In terms of creating a strong boxing culture most of these countries you listed were in an inchoate state in the 1940s and 50s. The 1950s is the decade where the change started to take place, when the sport became less parochial and more global, you can see that by looking at the number of events put on each year in various countries as well as when the best and greatest fighters of these countries came about. Of course there were some boxers from most countries in the world before that, the 1924 Olympics shows that, but in terms of creating a boxing culture and scene that can give rise to highly talented boxers, that came about from about the 1950s onwards.

Also you mention Dick Tiger and Hogan Kid Bassey, both Nigerians who started boxing in Nigeria but of course Nigeria was a British Colony at that time, plus both of their careers took off after relocating to Liverpool.

 

There are a lot of strange fighters like this. Juan Carlos Moreyra, who lost to Pascual Perez four times and had a career record of 0-25-2, lost to Horacio Accavallo seven times in only slightly more than two years. I suspect these type of fighters have records that are not complete anywhere and at the time of the fights were probably advertised as having much better records than they actually had.