Why don't some classic boxing fans and historians give modern fighters credit?

There are conscious biases, and unconscious biases.

A person will have an unconscious bias towards the eras about which they are most knowledgeable, simply based upon having a more comprehensive knowledge of the era.

They will pick out points of merit that would not be apparent to a person less knowledgeable about the era.

If your knowledge of a given era is comparatively sketchy, then you are probably undervaluing it.

 

You can say it for anyone. Arcel obviously had some funky ideas about Dempsey since we have plenty of footage of Demps and it doesn't square with his views. Obvious point of contention would be his assertion that Dempsey had no weaknesses when he got outboxed twice by Tunney and knocked out of the ring by Firpo.

His views on Dempsey's chances against Foreman and Tyson are his own to make, but he doesn't make any particularly convincing breakdown of why he'd win, just hyperbolic fluff about God-given talent, so I take them for what they're worth, same as I would anyone else.

 

One thing I love is when someone makes me aware of something I'd never considered or noticed before and hence deepens my own understanding and appreciation of the sport. I love that because I'm not being bludgeoned into accepting a certain view but made to understand why that view might be preferable to my currently held one. I encounter that from all different spheres though, from writers, trainers, fighters, online commentators, random forum posters, so I'm not sure where to put the label expert in such a context or even if it holds any real meaning.

 

My feedback to you is that your interpretation is far more poor than his.

Your logic is very non sequiter. The Firpo instance doesn’t expose a elite fighter as something worse. Any more than Ali’s, Lewis’s and Wlad’s worst moments do to theirs.

You seem to have a blind disdain for the older fighters. You’ll shout about their flaws, while whispering their achievements. And you’ll do the opposite for modern fighters like Marco Huck. This is no good.

 

But all of those fighters had weaknesses which were exposed in their worst moments. That's my point. If you say a fighter has no weaknesses then he should never have an incident like that on his record. Hence Arcel is either misguided or intentionally skewing the facts.

I've got no blind disdain for older fighters. I just hold no illusions about them either. If a fighter impresses me, like Benton or Locche, then I'll give them the praise they deserve. But I'm not going to stand by and listen to an old school nuthugger sing praises about some wild slugger from the thirties while denigrating similar fighters from the present without calling them out on it.

 

You have to know what Arcel means in the context of boxing. Many great fighters have been described as perfect, when perfection is impossible. It’s called using literal interpretations in the wrong places. It’s a human skill.

 

He said Dempsey had no weaknesses, implying he couldn't be beaten. Since he was in fact beaten that statement is a lie.

His prediction of the Tyson fight is pure hyperbolic fanboism. Tyson might make it through a round. Yeah right.

 

How can he imply that he couldn’t have been beaten, when he was in fact beaten? Now you’re calling him a liar?

What is more likely: Ray Arcel being a liar, or you having terrible interpretive skills?

 

"Mike Tyson might have got through a round with Dempsey, maybe two. People always asked me what Jack’s weaknesses were. That’s the point – he didn’t have any.”

So Dempsey was unbeaten at the time Tyson came on the scene? WTF are you saying?

 

Bro wtf are you saying?

 

Unless I'm very much mistaken, you were claiming that Dempsey was unbeaten. Is that what you were saying?

 

I see the typo now.
Sorry, smoked a lot of crack last night.

 

Right, so, we'll assume Arcel wasn't lying since he must have been aware of Dempsey's losses. How then do you explain his ridiculous comment about Tyson? If this is a man whose opinion on judging fighters has to be held to the highest respect then we can also assume he was being perfectly sincere when he said that Tyson would barely last a round with Dempsey. I don't think I need to breakdown why that's a ridiculous and unrealistic prediction, so either Arcel isn't an infallible judge of talent or he's as prone to hyperbole as the rest of us.

 

Since you'll probably ask me why Dempsey couldn't achieve that feat:

- he'd be fighting with larger gloves
- he'd be fighting against a man with twenty to thirty pounds of fast twitch muscle, sinew and dense bone on him
- he'd be fighting a man with a world class chin who's never been knocked down in the early rounds before
- he'd be fighting a man with head movement modelled and perfected after his own
- he'd be fighting a man who could knock him into next week with a single punch

None of this bodes well for Dempsey lasting a couple of rounds, let alone beating Tyson in same.

 

This explains quite a few posts.