Why would we expect historic heavyweights to do well in the modern day?

And they would be called morons.

Both men would kill Whyte, literally.

 

I couldn't help but laugh when a fat 40 year old Povetkin actually got off the floor to brutally KO Whyte. That pretty much killed any notion that each era becomes progressively superior to the previous ones automatically.

Whyte was in his prime and the #1 contender. That was a horrible loss.

 

Agreed.

 

Game ,set and match

 

Can’t argue with that. Great fighter

 

You need skills and physical power , its not chess or darting where physical power is irrelevant .

I think we can agree that holyfield has also today great skills , style and experience in boxing , much more than vitor belfort.

And we saw against vitor belfort - not even a pro boxer - what skill , experience and box iq alone is worth if your body does not provide the physical performance and speed anymore due to age .

I gave the argument already so hate to say it again but : if size and power would be unimportant in boxing we would not need weight classes but see featherweights boxing against hw.

Skill alone brings you nowhere.

 

As a potentially interesting talking point...

There may be some significant crossover, here.

I would argue that there's a significant extent to which heavyweight is already the crossing point beyond which added size ceases to present enough of an advantage to counteract the deficit and resultant disadvantage it causes in speed... If it didn't, we'd be seeing even bigger men than we do, and less potential for the less huge guys in the division to be competitive, whilst this doesn't seem to be the case.

If heavies are getting bigger, and they clearly have done, then it would make sense for that to mean that the tipping point beyond which performance declines is moving.

Sure, selection plays a part in that but the sports science does as well - not by making equivalent individuals better than they'd otherwise be, but by making physically larger men viable in a boxing ring.

Improved science together with a deeper pool to work with is probably what gives us huge fighters who can still move enough to put up a good fight... Without relying on cast iron chins to save them (Valuev, for example, presenting an exception due to a superhuman chin without which he'd have been nowhere).

 

God given talent can't be taught and those who possess it would likely shine in any given ere so long as they have access to the right tools in order to hone their craft.

That said, there is no doubt that modern heavyweights would hold an advantage over these former greats, as the aforementioned tools have evolved a great deal since their heyday.

However, even with this disadvantage, I still think we'd find these fantasy match-ups to be competitive for the most part.

 

You've read too much into my post.

Of course you need skills and power.

You need everything.

Speed, technique, timing, accuracy, power, size and weight etc.

Nobody is saying that it's unimportant.

I was just noting that compared to other sports like athletics, boxing is more skill based.

Athletics are more power/strength based, as the main objective is speed against a clock.

In boxing, there's more technical nuances.

The biggest, strongest guy doesn't always prevail.

Which is why we've seen both Andy Ruiz and Olexandr Usyk beat Anthony Joshua.

In any weight class, fights are determined by how they match up stylistically.

In boxing, skills are more important than power, relative to the weight they're in.

Of course, a LW couldn't beat a HW. But again, less powerful HW's are able to beat much bigger and stronger ones.

The biggest, strongest guys in any given weight class don't always prevail.

Of course, the athletes who compete at the highest level in any discipline are also highly skilled. Sprinters have to practice many things. It's not as easy as just running as fast as they can. But again, compared to boxing, it relies less on skills and more on strength/power.

Regarding Evander, he had no balance or punch resistance. It was awful to watch. He should never have been put into that position.

 

Old fighters fought more, were hungrier because they didn't get huge pay days after only 10 fights. The 1 belt system weeded out the mediocre. Fighters don't fight into their late 30's early 40's because of modern training and science. They are able to fight at an advanced age because they don't have 60, 80 or 100 fights by the time they're 32. In my opinion, the only advantages modern fighters have are better film studying capabilities and they are bigger.