Why is there an anti-recency bias in boxing?

The problem is the big fallas are so inactive it's becoming a joke.
Fury has had 7 fights in 7 years.

 

My simple answer to this thread is :
Too many inactive fighters.
Too many titles.
Money/PPV.
Boxing Politics (probably caused by the above).

 

IMO the issue with recency bias has to do with waiting for the totality of the career to measure against the greats as well as the breadth of experience against various styles without the complete picture it is difficult to place them, but when it comes to talent yes, we can make those comparisons, but the intangibles is incomplete until the career is over.

Also, most sports are based off metrics with some intangibles which determines the mastery of their play against their time, boxing is based off intangibles coupled with metrics, otherwise the basics are the same consistency, time etc...

 

There's also the fact that records in boxing aren't produced the same way as other sports. They're carefully strategized in a fight-managing metagame. Bolt can't duck opponents like a beltholder sometimes can, so we often don't know how good many fighters are. (Or were.)

 

One other “sport” you see the same thing with is NASCAR. I know most here probably don’t follow it but NASCAR has lost a lot of fans over the past few decades, and the fans they still have are always complaining about the current drivers and talking about how much better the drivers of the past were.

 

Dempsey had 8 fights in 8 years so you have a point.

 

when you start to complicate it, you get analytic error in breakdowns, be it a particular Era, Weight Class or Fighter...

stick with the accepted consensus first, remembering that Contemporary Documenters, Reporters, Reports & Commentaries are the 1st and Only place to start such research & assessment. Follow that with later analyses and other Era's, Decades, Fighters, whichever it is you are investigating and make academic & honest conclusions.

Remembering. Humbly - the People that were THERE, were/are more often than not, Boxing People, Top Boxing people and most of them have Far More Credentials & Insight than Most of Us!

worth considering & respecting.

 

How many old-time top boxing people, with maybe 60 or more years of experience in the game, give any credit to modern boxers? Isn't it always a case of today's boxers being inferior, to those they grew up with?

As an example, look at Nat Fleischer's all-time rankings. Are we to take his lists seriously, because he "was there"... or are we to take them with a pinch of salt, because we suspect that nostalgia may have clouded his judgement?

 

Obviously we are both right here, so that is why I stated 'after' your 1st Starting point the 'next' step is to see 'if' the consensus remain the same or is still the popular view.. i.e Era's or SRR for example that rarely gets totally altered.

but yes there will be 'exceptions' - there always is.

 

Only on Classic.

On General it's the other way around, with people proclaiming AJ to be the finest heavyweight of all time and Canelo the GOAT.

In greatness it will always be hard to surpass the very old timers who had 350 fights and probably more that were unrecorded. That said the modern guys have a claim to greatness through the eye test.For example Lomachenko looks as fine to me as any boxer I ever saw, 15 fights notwithstanding.

 

Good question. One reason is quite objective, I'd say, and that's the number of fights and number of fights against good opponents. Look att Fury for example: he looks to be supremely talented, but his third best opponent so far, 15 years or so into his pro career, is Chisora. Ali's third best by that stage was Liston, Frazier or Foreman, depending on how you rate them.

Fury might be as good as Ali, but how are we to know when his resume is so relatively weak? Spence and Crawford are other fighters that seem talented enough, but don't have the resumes they probably could have. There's a lot of padding going around, so you don't really know have good fighters are.

Loma and Usyk are exceptions, but they both started late as pros so will have a hard time to catch up. Just look at SRR:s in his early 20's. 40 wins, over the likes of Angott, Zivic and Lamotta. That was when he was just starting out. There's no way fighters can get those kind of numbers and wins today.

Floyd and Pac both have lots of good fighters on their resumes and are the standouts of recent decades, but even their numbers pale in comparison to the old timers. With that said, they might get a bit underrated.

Because there is also that current and even recent fighters seem to be held to a higher standard than older ones. The same fans that complain that today's fighters take no risks seem very quick to write someone off as soon as he loses. Case in point here is Joshua. He's taken on a lot of good opponents, but one bad night and he's a "china chinned pathetic quitter" and whatnot, whereas for example No Mas is glossed over. Imagine what fans would say if he had walked out of the ring against Usyk? As it is he gets called weak despite quite obviously leaving all he had in the ring that night.

Also, a lot is made out of Mayweather not facing Mosley and DLH sooner, but few old timers get called cherry pickers because they didn't face the top fighters of higher weight classes. Catch weights and whatnot rightly gets faced with scepticism, though.

So I think it's a bit of both.

 

Pele and Maradona, even Di Stefano and Cruyff, will show up in discussions about best footballer ever. And isn't Ruth and DiMaggio considered among the ATGs of baseball?

As for tennis, I think that the likes of Borg and McEnroe would still be in the conversation if it wasn't for the quite ridiculous exploits of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. I think Nicklaus still is considered the best golfer ever.

Most of these didn't precede television, though.

 

Yeah, I never understood this thing about how modern boxers can't be as "great" as the old-timers, because they don't amass 200+ career fights anymore. What has that got to do with anything?

I agree with Loma being a fine-looking recent fighter. I would add Inoue as someone who, imo, certainly passes the eye test - despite less than 25 pro fights. The same with Usyk - who every time out takes care of business in his opponent's backyard! How is that not impressive?

 

Three closely related reasons the guys with 200+ fight records look more impressive:

1) They've proved themselves to be consistent. In Robinson's case, it's not easy going with something like one loss in a 100+ fight winning streak.

2) They've often proved themselves against the best fighters available. As others mentioned, you can be amazing, but you can only prove it by actually beating other elite fighters. There's a difference between being awesome, and others (later historians) having good evidence of your awesomeness.

3) It demonstrates that they probably had a lot of experience. So it's unlikely you'll show them something they haven't encountered before in some form (unlike, say, young Joe Louis against Schmeling.)

 

This. "200 fights" is of course an arbitrary number, it could be different. The point of it is experience. The more you do something, the better at it you're going to be, period.