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

The problem with this is we have no idea what a "90's Louis" or a "40's Tyson" would look like. We can only judge fighters we have actually seen. If you want to make the point that modern fighters have unfair advantages then I don't think you will receive much argument. This reads to me like you don't realistically like the greats of the past chances against the modern equivalent, at least at heavyweight. That doesn't make Marciano or Louis or Dempsey any less great than they were but I don't think inventing super-Louis or undernourished/PEDless Tyson is helpful, if you prefer not to judge h2h between eras because it is unfair/disrespectful to past greats then fair enough.

 

Some of the greatest black champions fought in the 1920s to 1950s.
Henry Armstrong was great and his manager knew it, that's why they went for 3 titles. I think that's a great example of "golden era", Armstrong's amazing accomplishments.

White champions weren't necessarily paid more than black fighters. And just as likely to be ripped off. Boxers were generally paid according to the box office. They were then ripped off by managers who exploited them, that's true, as was the case in 1960s and 1970s, your chosen golden era. The stories of exploitation apply just as much to white as well as black.

I don't think mobsters or the criminal element ruined the sport at all. Some of them were just as good managers and promoters as the other managers and promoters. Yes, the standard is low in boxing.

Champions do duck contenders, that's true. I don't think that's peculiar to the era or to white champions.
Often the champions have good reasons, ie. risk v reward. And, as you pointed out, the financial rewards in those days were less.

 

Jake LaMotta had to throw a fight to a mob-owned black fighter to a promise that he'd get a shot at a title later on down the line so there's a bit of a myth being created that everything was based on racial prejudice.
There are plenty of examples where the white fighter didn't have the right manager and was frozen out of the picture or robbed by crooked judges.

Even so, for all the faults, the eras spanning 1920s and 1950s were the best, for my money.

 

To answer the bolded see your 1st paragraph. Judging by your own equation, if they fought so often against such competition they would be even greater and even more atg-er! Wow, imagine what Roy would've looked like...

 

Are you trying to claim that being black wasn't a negative? Jesus.

A champ conducting himself like Dempsey or Lesnevich today would be stripped of his titles.

Of course the mob influence was a bad thing. Having to throw a fight to get a title shot is a travesty, whether it happens to a white or a black fighter.

 

Archie Moore refused to use it as an excuse pointing to,Louis,Armstrong,Robinson,Williams.

 

Modern boxers are ultra protective of their records.

Fewer fights overall, and safe bets for matches that are made far more often then in the past. Lack of tests can hurt of fighter legacy wise.

 

No, I'm not claiming that at all. Racism existed (and exists) throughout society, and the black man got (gets) the short end of that. Everywhere.

But I feel you were perhaps painting the entirety of a four decades of boxing, the golden era, as primarily or thoroughly shaped by racism. When in fact BOXING was one of the few areas where blacks could excel and earn money equally with whites. Loads of great black fighters from these eras became champions and stars and became rich.

Then down-rank Dempsey and Lesnevich if they disgraced themselves, not the whole era !

For every champion you can name who ducked disgracefully in those days, you can probably name ten who fought a ridiculous amount of worthy contenders (as champ or on the way up) and would put modern fighter's to shame in that regard.

There's no evidence that was the mobsters' primary M.O. though. Mostly they 'muscled in' on uncooperative managers and tied up boxing into a monopoly, which is pretty much what all successful promoters do.

The problem of course with the mobsters is the violence or threat of violence that went on behind the scenes to extort the profits from the industry, but in terms of great fighters and great fights inside the ring (which is what the thread is about, not business ethics) the 1920s to 1950s eras were incredible.
That's just my opinion.

 

So much bunk in one post.

Walcott's skills are not representative of anything--he was an outlier, revered for his especially high skill level even relative to other ATG heavyweight champions. The fact that there aren't any heavyweights today who move like Walcott or put together punches like him (arguably) isn't some scathing indictment of the division, especially when they have other physical advantages and skill sets that enable them to exploit those advantages.

The number of belts has no bearing on the skill level in the sport.

There were plenty of examples of fighters with weak records (and especially minimal amateur experience) becoming contenders in certain past eras too.

Your conjectures about steroids are also irrelevant and even cut against your attempts to trash modern fighters. If your claims are true, then today's fighters presumably have benefited from steroids in ways that their predecessors did not. In any event, the idea that these guys couldn't be muscular without steroids is nonsense.

 

Jersey Joe Walcott had skills but he lost to some of the guys who get ridiculed for being crude or low-skilled or whatever.
He lost to Abe Simon, for example, and Rex Layne.

Walcott's career turned around when he hooked up with Felix Bocchiccio, a fairly serious underworld figure who was banned from being licensed in New York state.
Some of those mob types were pretty good managers.

 

I think if I were to make a top 30 greatest fighters ever, probably more than half of them would have their primes fall somewhere in the 1920s to 1950s period.
And I don't think I'm too far off what others here would reckon too.
For whatever reasons, those four decades tended to produce so many of the true boxing greats.

 

So everybody looks better back then because the operators weren't good at handling a camera? Gotcha!

 

I think modern fighters are given credit when they've earned it. But not before. I think that's always been the case.

The fact is the sport isn't set up to produce a fighter as great as Harry Greb, Sugar Ray Robinson or Henry Armstrong again. Those Golden Age days shouldn't be held against modern fighters because that's unfair.
We're unlikely to see another Joe Lous or Muhammad Ali either.