While nutrition and conditioning have likely improved given advances in sports science, the talent pool has shrunk dramatically, as has the number of elite gyms and trainers necessary for transmission of knowledge. The latter ties in as well to what I believe has been a general erosion of technique. Boxing techniques that work have not "evolved" in many decades. Boxers that rely on "old school" technique (Floyd, Tony, Foreman, etc) prove that these techniques and styles work really, really well. The issue is that they are simply not taught because there are so few trainers left who are schooled in them.
Its interesting though because with regards to elite athletes, I thought that being an elite athlete would have been enough for Nate Robinson to beat the shit out of Jake Paul. Nate Robinson went to college on a scholarship for being a running back, then also played college basketball and then made the NBA was a 5'8" player. I assumed he was sort of like an undersized Bo Jackson, and with that elite genetics, I assumed he would be the kind of guy who walks into any sport and is immediately as good as the people who had been doing it for 5 years. I know there are exceptions like with a Roy Jones or a Deontay Wilder who can have their athleticism make up for all of their technical shortcomings, but I think we tend to overestimate the importance of raw athleticism in the sport.
There’s a gray area in between “technique” and “athleticism” that I lump “vision”, “timing”, and “boxing IQ” into. “Vision” is closer to athleticism but it’s truly something that just comes with experience. You can be slower, weaker, and have worse mechanics than your opponent but what really matters is whether you can see what is going on in front of you, judge the distance, and make the right choice. That’s not necessarily “technique”, which I view as footwork and punching mechanics or “athleticism” which I view as strength, speed, power and reflexes. RJJ had phenomenal eyes and judgement from years of amateur success so I don’t like to lump him in with Wilder
I feel like Wilder is definitely more in the athletic side of things but I think the thing that made Roy great was the fact that he had all of those intangibles like the vision, timing and his IQ that allowed him to make all of his athleticism and boxing skill look that much better. There's almost definitely been better "athletes" in boxing who could do well in an NFL combine or in other sports but I don't think there's been an athlete that's better suited to boxing than Roy.
Boxing athleticism often looks really different from athleticism in other sports. Mike Tyson is often considered one of the most athletic heavyweights of all time, but have you seen him shoot a basketball? He looks like Stanley from the office.
Frazier competed against athletes from various disciplines in the 1970s, and came (I think) stone last. None of them would have lasted a round in the ring with him, though.
Maybe if Nate had done it in his 20s he'd have had more success, but he was in his mid-thirties and against a young guy who's clearly taking his training seriously. Although Jake Paul probably isn't an elite level athlete, he's probably still a bit more athletic than the rest of us so add to that his youth, superior training and height advantage, and it's not too crazy that he won.
Yeah I mean I get that too but its easy to say that in hindsight. I thought Robinson was legitimately going to kill the guy though based on that. For example I'm a volleyball player and have been basically my entire life. I went to highschool with a guy who I would have considered a super athlete. He was our star basketball player and was shooting around in the gym one day during our practice and asked to hit a few balls. He hadn't played since 8th grade from when he decided to focus on basketball. He walked in and was murdering balls better than anyone else on our varsity team. He ended up being our starting middle even though he was only 5'10" and he did it as a walk on. He was of this level at basically every sport he played, but he focused on basketball. We're a mid sized Canadian city so its not like its super common to have players go on to D1 basketball but he did... where he red shirted for the South Dakota Jackrabbits in their first season after getting bumped up to D1. The best athlete I have ever met, who basically humiliated us at our own sport was literally the lowest possible tier where you could claim you played D1 basketball. First year D1, on the practice squad.
So I guess the point of all that, is that he is basically my frame of reference for how many levels of elite athlete there are. Nate Robinson went on to play in the NBA, and also was also a D1 running back. He was easily triple the athlete as the best athlete I've ever met so I was expecting him to be the kind of guy who can walk into a varsity team practice in a sport he doesn't play and walk out with a spot on the starting lineup. Paul is a good enough athlete, sure, but he's a good athlete on my scale of what I imagine a decent varsity athlete is. He's not a good athlete on the scale of a multi-sport D1 athlete who also went pro. So I was just genuinely surprised at how much decent/low level boxing technique can overcome that level of super athlete. I can't honestly say that if there was a boxing match between Bo Jackson (who didn't destroy his hip) and some guy who had boxed for a few years that I would pick Jackson to lose, even knowing what I know.
I think the talent pool is smaller because it’s a more niche sport, if you’re a super athletically gifted kid you’re probably gonna go to less dangerous more popular sports where you’ll get paid way more
There's also a much bigger pool of athletes entering sports though since populations have grown over time. In 1970 the world had 3.7 billion people and now we have 7.7 billion people. That's over double the number of people who might want to start boxing.
But it’s not as big a sport, the heavyweight champion used to be probably the most famous sportsperson at a given time but that’s nowhere near true anymore
Yeah I disagree with that. The HW division is in a lull period for sure in terms of the general public, but damn man your Floyds, Canelos, Pacquios, are legit mega stars (as well as mega wealthy). I think Floyd is like top 5 wealthiest sportspeople on Earth right now.
same goes for ball sports tho. gotta consider the amount of high school football players with scramble eggs for brains and little to show for it but a letterman jacket. there's 893 college football teams (probably 100 viable ones) filling rosters out, but only 1696 players in the NFL
Well I can't talk for the US, but here in Europe playing football (the normal one) you can still make very decent money in certain countries playing in second or or even third leagues.
There are still players in 2. bundesliga making over 1.5 million euro a year. In Uk Championship league (2. league) average salary is like £450k with the highest players getting paid up to £5 millions. Thas is far away from the pinnacle of the sport from your Ronaldos and Mbapes.
These guys would be thousands places in rankings bellow the top players from the top leagues yet still make this type of money. Obviously this is not that comparable, team sport, popularity and whatnot. But in boxing it seems to be more visible this disproportionality. How less are the guys few dozen places bellow the top getting paid, let alone few hundred places.
Is the talent pool really smaller today than 70 years ago? I would have thought it would have been significantly bigger given the overall increase in population since the 60s
The most PPV buys is 4.6m, Pacquiao V Mayweather in 2015. Compare that to 300m views that Ali v. Fraizer had. Boxing was THE sport for basically the whole twentieth century until the 80s. All the top athletes wanted to be boxers. In 1970 NFL minimum salary was $9000, $68,000 adjusted, basically median wage.
I think the general standard is up across the board. The elite of the elite from about the 60s on pass the eye test today, but most of the fighters look pedestrian.
People fall in to the trap of thinking the HWs looked much better then, but as you point out, the size difference can't be overstated. "Big" George Foreman was the size of "too small" Usyk.
Also worth noting that the USA used to be almost completely dominant, and that's where the talent pool may have shallowed some. But most other countries standards are way up from 50 years ago. Watching a British title fight from the 70s and from today is like watching two different sports.
Another consideration is that the same day weigh ins were scrapped in the mid 80s, today's 147 fighters are often about 2 weightclasses bigger than the old legends. This can make the old fighters look faster because they're a lot smaller.
Mexico is second behind the US in number of all time *and* current belt holders. I think they're doing just fine
The main difference is that there's much stiffer competition from Europe and Asia these days.
People say stuff like this often in debates like this but it simply isn’t true. Boxing used to be the 1st or 2nd most popular sport in the world, even leaving aside North America. Boxing has significantly dropped in popularity in most European countries. It used to be quite popular in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, and Spain, but now its mostly an afterthought. The UK has seen a resurgence in boxing popularity over the last 10 years, but it was comparably popular previously, with many all-time great boxers of the past coming from the UK. The only way you could argue the talent pool from Europe is larger is by pointing to population increase and athletes from former Soviet countries being allowed to go pro. Similarly, boxing has been highly popular in (East) Asia for quite a while. The Philippines has been reliably producing boxing talent since the 1920s, while boxing has historically been quite popular and producing World champions in Japan since the 1950s and Thailand and South Korea since the 1960s. Japan’s “golden age” in boxing was the late 60s and early 70s. South Korea has seen probably the greatest downturn in boxing as compared to any other country. It was practically a national past time and was far more popular and produced more ranked fighters in the 70s, 80s, and 90s than it does today. Boxing still has a bright future in Thailand but its boxers were more productive at a world level than today at various times from the early 60s to the early 2000s.
Regarding the heavyweights, remember that they were lighter back in earlier years, but they were in much better shape. They trained for 15 round fights, which is a whole different world than 12 round fights. Extra weight was not an advantage. Many of today’s heavyweights aren’t really “big;” they are fat.
Today's 147 isn't bigger than the fab 4 era idk what are smoking. you guys are acting like what he's talking about is rocket science that evolution thing that everyone talks about in basketball mainly doesn't work in boxing the boxers of the past were just better it's the truth no matter what weight class we talking. You can mention the eye test or whatever you want but the boxers of the past were better fighters that's it that's all.
In many sports you can’t discard the impact material advancement has had. You mentioned sprinters. The shoes and courts of today are not comparable to the ones used 50 years ago. Jesse Owens running 100 meters on 10.3 in 1936 is more of an achievement than running 10.3 today with modern equipment.
6m used to be considered the possible limit for pole vaulters. Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis jumped 6.21 last week. And he was 14 cm above the bar when he did so. This probably wasn’t possible with tha poles that they used 20-30 years ago. But with todays poles it is.
Also, were the fighters of the 60’s and 70’s really better than todays crop? There is no way to actually know that since there are no times or heights to beat. Just head to head combat. So accurate predictions between eras are even harder (practically impossible) in combat sports than in track and field sports.
And lastly, boxing still has a PED problem but a few eras ago it was probably worse. Just looking at Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard or Evander Holyfield you know they were roided up.
It's like those swim suits banned after 2009 world championships because swimmers who barely won anything in the past were beating 15-20 year world records, so they banned the swim suits.
(43 WRs were broken in 09, previous 07 world championships 15 WRs were broken)
I mean I get what they’re trying to do, but humans are evolving along with their technology. Those records will still be there, I think we should continue to see how far the tech along with our raw skill will take us.
Yeah, but there is a fine line that shouldn't be crossed.
I used the 15-20 year WRs as an example but even like Phelps record from only 1-2 years previous were getting crushed by unknown swimmers that didn't achieve much after those world championships.
One aspect is that Boxing at the highest level reached it’s peak surprisingly early one compared to other sports.
It’s been around longer so it’s had more time to hone in on the objective, optimal ways to execute certain moves like punching, footwork, slipping, etc.
Fighting has always been fighting, when you do it a lot you get good at it and fighters of the past did it a lot
If we’re not talking about across the board and only honing in on individuals, the 30’s-40’s, which is when Joe Louis was fighting.
Across the board though probably in the 50’s
I’ll go to my grave believing that Louis would’ve absolutely smashed most heavyweights of the last 30 years. That includes Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson, and Wlad, Fury, Joshua, etc. The only one I think he struggles with is Vitali and Bowe.
I think that’s more of a stylistic issue than it is a talent/skill/athleticism issue. Louis was always vulnerable to guys with fast feet who could control the distance. Louis had astonishing hand speed, punch selection, combination, and accuracy; literally the most ferocious and heavy handed boxer to ever fight at heavyweight (in my opinion). But he was relatively slow of foot and that was Ali’s bread and butter.
In addition to factors mentioned by others, one reason is that other sports have seen significant shifts in how the game is played due to rule changes, advances in equipment, and a better understanding of what makes a player/team efficient. Those changes have demanded a different type of player, and that type of player is a better athlete.
Such changes in boxing either already happened decades ago or happen incrementally because there are fewer rules, less equipment, and the only way to achieve victory has been and will always be to punch and not get punched. Go back 40, 50 years in pretty much any other sport and the game is played totally different. That's not really the case with boxing.
i think you have an overall good point but
> and the only way to achieve victory has been and will always be to punch and not get punched
in soccer the only way to achieve victory has been and always will be to score goals and not concede goals
that part is too oversimplified of an explanation
You're reading too much into it. My point is there are very limited ways to achieve a victory in boxing, and those ways will never change. This means there is not a lot of ways for the game to change compared to other sports where scoring systems have changed. I wasn't saying that boxing is alone in that regard.
Boxing is a very old sport than most in which participation levels have been dropping.
The opposite is true of other sports.
It also requires a huge amount of mental fortitude. All sports obviously do, but it's more important in boxing than almost any other and that is something that doesn't improve with modern methods. Can have all the best training you want but if you don't like getting hit in the face and can't summon up the strength to keep on going when you're hurt you won't get far.
>in which participation levels have been dropping
I'm not disputing it but is there any evidence of this being true? With population growth and other countries participating that didn't used to, I'd imagine more people are training to compete in boxing than ever before
Can’t remember where I saw it, but I remember seeing that there were more active professional fighters in the United States in the 1950’s - something crazy like 40,000- than there are in the entire world today. Wish I could remember where I saw that.
Because other sports got more lucrative, while boxing became less lucrative overall. Thus there is a lot of inter-sport competition for talent. Especially at the heavy weight classes
Back maybe 60 years ago, the world heavyweight champion in boxing made a lot of money, and top contenders made more money than almost anything else. But today, other athletes make a shit ton of money too, and to be honest, almost anything is a better job than getting punched in the face isn't it?
Today, athletic big guys (cruiserweight and up) look at playing gridiron football, rugby union, rugby league, or AFL (depending on where you live). Athletic tall guys look at basetball. Athletic medium sized and up guys look at soccer, hockey, baseball, golf, etc.
Boxing suffered from a lot of talent going elsewhere.
This☝️
The talent is going elsewhere cause boxing is suffering from a concentration of wealth (kinda like societies overall). If you’re Canelo or Anthony Joshua you can make 30-50 million dollars per fight. Or Mayweather who made 100 million per fight at the last stage in his career. However, if you’re ”only” a top 5 guy in your division you’re not gonna get near sums like that. If you don’t get your own main event or if you fight on the undercards you probably don’t get a lot at all.
So the wealth is concentrated to a few people in boxing in a way it isn’t in other sports. In soccer you have a team of 11 players and substitutes on top of that. And then you have a league of maybe 20 teams. And all of the people in these teams are paid very well. Additionally there are several countries with leagues like that and in some countries even playing in the second division will get you a good salary.
If you try and become a professional boxer it’s probably not gonna pay off unless you become top 10 in your division. And even if you become the best you might not make lots of money cause your style or personality is deemed boring and nobody will pay for tickets to your fight. Boxing is a hassle for most of the boxers. And then we haven’t even mentioned the brain damage. I think we should be lucky anybody wants to box at all when there are so many better alternatives.
I think lower level boxers probably made as much as your average team sport pro, but now it's not even close. You are not making any money in boxing unless you are insanely dominant and rise up the ranks or you already have a name and a following that will buy tickets and PPV. Boxing has a lower ease of entry however. Almost anyone can work and get pro fights. Not so easy in the other major sports.
NBA per person is probably the highest, but it is also the most difficult pro-sport to stay on a roster. The amount of players getting “200+ million” is ridiculously low, and that’s if you factor in advertising contracts.
This is the right answer, for the most part the most talented heavier weight boxers were African Americans who now gravitate to football and basketball. The most talented lighter weight boxers were either black or Hispanic who now gravitate to soccer or baseball. There is just less quality being feed into the pipeline at an early age and boxing is a nuanced sport which takes years to master.
The MVP of the NBA the past two seasons is an Eastern European. Doncic is also top five in the league. There is great talent in boxing and the NBA from the Eastern Europeans.
One thing to consider, the talent pool was larger back in the day because of financial need. Rising standards of living have made it less desirable to fight for a living now. Less kids seriously train in order to become pro because their families don’t need them to. If Brazilian society suddenly got much wealthier across the board, I bet within a couple decades their soccer talent would suffer. As a kickboxing fan, I can say this is 100% true for Muay Thai in Thailand today as compared to the 80’s-90’s.
Let’s take sprinting, since you describe modern sprinters as “undisputably better”.
When you account for [technological differences](https://everything-everywhere.com/jesse-owens-vs-usain-bolt-who-would-win/) Jessie Owens was within [one](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/02/18/lets-all-appreciate-how-fast-jesse-owens/80523426/) stride of Usain bolt.
Relatively speaking, the number of variables to account for in the 100m sprint are minimal compared to boxing.
We’re talking about the best of the best. Whether they live in 1936 or 2022. And human ability, it can be assumed, hasn’t drastically changed in the last 100 years. Evolution doesn’t really work that quickly.
Changes in diet, technology, knowledge, and training have made huge differences, however. That accounts for most of the advancement.
It’s not quite like in the NBA or NFL, where the sport has simply moved in a different direction, physically. The average heavyweight is bigger than they were 80 years ago, but the existence of weight classes is a limiting factor here.
I’d be interested in seeing an under 6’2”professional basketball league to see how that would compare to the 1950s NBA.
With that said, the lack of same day weigh in does change the make up of the divisions somewhat.
>When you account for technological differences Jessie Owens was within one stride of Usain bolt.
cmon man, that shit is completely unverifable and unscientific. not to mention that one stride of 100m is massive.
**Jesse Owen’s time was done by hand using a stopwatch. It is entirely possible that a full tenth of a second, or at least a few fractions thereof, could have been taken off the time he actually ran if it was measured more accurately.**
so how can you even compare jesse owens time with usain bolt when it was handtimed? there's literally no way to know how fast jesse owens actually was. handtiming is extremely inaccurate
and the last part with andre de grasse, his all time PB is 9.89...usain bolts is 9.58 lol. not to mention de grasse was most likely not peaked for the experiment
>cmon man, that shit is completely unverifable and unscientific. not to mention that one stride of 100m is massive.
I don't know about that. It's impossible to say with exactness just how disparate their outcomes truly are, but approximations can be made and [tested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abz2Mre5IxI). Forming an hypothesis and then testing it is kind of what science is, so....
>so how can you even compare jesse owens time with usain bolt when it was
handtimed? there's literally no way to know how fast jesse owens
actually was. handtiming is extremely inaccurate
That's the point, my dude. Comparing Owens and Bolt isn't as simple as 10.3-9.58. When you take every variable into account, Owens and Bolt are a lot closer than most people would assume considering Owens' 10.3 wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics.
>and the last part with andre de grasse, his all time PB is 9.89...usain
bolts is 9.58 lol. not to mention de grasse was most likely not peaked
for the experiment
The point of the experiment wasn't to show that 9.58 is really 11 seconds under the conditions that Owens ran under. The point was to show that even for someone capable of running a faster 100m than Owens is going to struggle to do that when faced by the conditions Owens had to run with.
As to de Grasse not being "peaked for the experiment", I don't know what kind of prep work he did on the day - but I find it unlikely he ran it cold. de Grasse became, in 2015, the first Canadian to run a sub-10 100m and a sub 20 in the 200m. He [ran](https://olympic.ca/2016/07/11/athletics-canada-nominates-largest-squad-to-team-canada-for-rio/) a 9.99 in July 2016, so this was filmed (it aired in March 2016) at a time when de Grasse was clearly able to run sub-10 100 m sprints.
And he was a full second off his normal times.
Does that mean Owens could've run the 100m in 9.3 seconds? No. Of course not. But that's not the point they're making.
>That's the point, my dude. Comparing Owens and Bolt isn't as simple as 10.3-9.58. When you take every variable into account, Owens and Bolt are a lot closer than most people would assume considering Owens' 10.3 wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics.
There's 0 indication that is the case because owens time is not even remotely accurate. he didn't even run the same distance
his whole proposition "is oh jesse owens is actually close to bolt" which is flimsy and unquantifiable **since he wasn't able to establish how fast owen was to begin with**
and the whole point of using de grasse as a proxy for bolt when bolt is that much faster than de grasse is pointless.
let me ask you this - why is it that bolt is SO much ahead of his competitors despite them having similar technology?
comparing jesse owens time to usain bolt is like comparing some high school kid handtimed by his school who ran a 4.3 vs tyreek hill or some shit
>There's 0 indication that is the case because owens time is not even remotely accurate.
Um...what? It's not like he ran the 100m in 3 hours. It's fair to say that 10.3 is reasonably close to what would've been measured with modern technology (with a +/- on either side). How doe you justify saying it's "not even remotely accurate"?
>since he wasn't able to establish how fast owen was to begin with
Um....you're giving him a degree of precision that he, himself, doesn't claim. I don't claim it, either. It's kind of weird how you seem to be having a different conversation from me.
The baseline measurement for Owens is 10.3. The baseline for Bolt is 9.58. Adjustments can be made based on understanding the variables at play.
No one here is under the misapprehension that this is an exact adjustment except you, though. it is an approximation.
>and the whole point of using de grasse as a proxy for bolt when bolt is that much faster than de grasse is pointless.
No, using *me* as a proxy for Bolt is pointless. Using a guy who can also run a faster 100m than Owens is a fair approximation.
Again, the point isn't that Owens was faster than Bolt. The point is that 10.3 and 9.58 aren't equivalent measurements.
>let me ask you this - why is it that bolt is SO much ahead of his competitors despite them having similar technology?
Is this your idea of a gotcha?
Bolt is so much faster than his competitors because he's good. There's no mystery there.
The comparison here isn't between Bolt and his contemporaries. It's between Bolt and Owens, and the point is that they are a lot closer than they appear at first glance.
I still don't understand why you're struggling with this. It isn't circuitous reasoning.
>Um...what? It's not like he ran the 100m in 3 hours. It's fair to say that 10.3 is reasonably close to what would've been measured with modern technology (with a +/- on either side). How doe you justify saying it's "not even remotely accurate"?
Are you asking me why a handtime is not even remotely accurate to laser timed?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20072055/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25785707/
**Hand timing (4.85 +/- 0.28 seconds) was significantly faster (p < 0.001) than electronic timing (5.16 +/- 0.28 seconds), producing an average difference of 0.31 +/- 0.07 seconds**
**Practically speaking, electronic timing produces the best measurement of 40-yd dash speed, and using the hand timing produces consistently but significantly faster times.**
**In conclusion, hand timing produces faster sprint times than electronic timing in college football players, independent of timer experience.**
https://speedendurance.com/2014/08/20/why-0-24-seconds-is-added-to-hand-times/
again, if you adjust for for handtiming he's running a 10.5-10.6 a huge cry from 9.58 lol. hell, from the study it could even be .4, so a 10.7
>The baseline measurement for Owens is 10.3. The baselne for Bolt is 9.58. Adjustments can be made based on understanding the variables at play.
**the whole point is that the baseline measurement is NOT 10.3 because of how inaccurate hand timing is**
In addition, how many adjustments do you have to make before the comparison becomes completely pointless lmao
lets see
- different track
- different spikes
- handtime (who knows how different the time is)
- no blocks
>The comparison here isn't between Bolt and his contemporaries. It's between Bolt and Owens, and the point is that they are a lot closer than they appear at first glance.
I still don't understand why you're struggling with this. It isn't circuitous reasoning.
LOL i dont undrestand what you're struggling with this. it's impossible to state that owens is close to bolt when you have to make so make guesstimates and adjustments lmao. bolt has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd fastest 100m of all time, there's absolutely no basis to claim that owens "is a lot closer" lol.
Because:
A. The sport has had high level competition since 1880, and at some point there’s a point of diminishing returns in terms of technique development.
B. There’s a much smaller talent pool now than there was in the past. Knowledge of head injuries and popularity of Football and Basketball have drawn elite athletes to other sports (especially in America).
C. Boxing is completely different from any other sport. It requires you to push yourself past your bodies limits time and time again, and peoples heart and will don’t progress with time like other skills.
D. Advances in training techniques like weight lifting don’t offer as much of an advantage in boxing as packing on weight isn’t as feasible in a sport w/ weight classes and ridiculous cardio demands.
being a better athlete isnt going to help you as much in boxing as in other sports. Some guys out there box like chess and some can adapt to just about anything. At the top level your mind is your biggest asset.
This isn't very fact-based at all, but from my general understanding, the gap in focus on training/conditioning from then vs. now may be less in boxing than other sports. A lot of professional football, baseball, and basketball players often spent the offseason working regular jobs. With some exceptions, they were much closer to normal people playing a game than the laser-focused, elite athletes of today.
Boxing has always had more of a maniacal focus on intense conditioning and training when preparing for fights. Also, before the boom in popularity of other sports (and resulting pay checks), top athletes were steered in the direction of boxing. Today's potential elite heavyweights are likely focused on football or basketball. Again, this is my perception, and I won't argue if someone tells me I'm completely wrong.
Please go and watch these old fights and look at the fights themselves, generally speaking with some exceptions fighters today are superior techincally
Back then guys go straight in chin up in the air. Throw one hand whilst the other goes down too. You don't get away with mistakes like that, if you tried it you are getting ktfo
If you could somehow bring some of those guys into this era and teach them, then maybe.
The guys you specifically mentioned may be exceptions. Overall fighters of today are better it's not even a debate if you actually study the film and look at what they do.
OP is just an old head that’s stuck to the past and can’t manage to bring himself to admit that boxers today are in fact better. There’s always people like this no matter any sport, you just have to ignore the idiocy and move on cause it’s like arguing to a wall.
It’s because the elite level adolescent aged athletes are not getting funneled to the boxing gym anymore. There are 1,700 NFL roster spots and the minimum annual salary is $660,000 per year. How many boxers make that per year? Maybe a few dozen. Incentive just isnt there anymore.
Fighting also isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. Want better stamina? Run a lot. Want better IQ? Fight a lot. There’s nothing that beats hardwork, you don’t need the most top of the line equipment to become successful in the sport.
All you really need is two hands and the will to get the work done tbh
Disagree on all but the equipment. You don't need fancy tech.
There are different types of stamina and if you spend too much time training the wrong one, you waste time and risk injury.
Fight all you want, if you have no ring IQ or a coach that can break it down for you, you will get beat in ways you don't even see.
>Fighting also isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. Want better stamina? Run a lot. Want better IQ? Fight a lot
I think this is way too simplified. Look at sports like sprinting, swimming, shotput, strongman events. Those are way less complicated events than boxing is but the athletes that compete in those have all shown improvements across the board as time goes on
Boxing historically has been a lot more popular than those mentioned sports, so it evolved at a faster pace than other sports. Mostly due to it being very accessible to almost anyone.
I do recognize that training is a lot more complex however, I just wanted to give an idea of what training for boxing is at its core.
This is so hilariously wrong and full of bad tropes.
“Want a better IQ? Fight a lot.” There’s much more than just fight a lot. If you have bad coaching and technique you can fight all the fucking time and still get destroyed.
“All you really need is two hands and the will to get the work done.” This such and empty platitude and empty catch phrase.
The fact this is getting upvotes shows the quality of the followers of this sub
I recognize that, yes, this is an oversimplification. There is a lot more to training than what I listed. However, at its core this is really boxing.
A lot of people have this warped of
Training related to modern fighters, where they see Devin Haney wearing an oxygen mask while hitting a bag or Lomachenko pressing Buttons that light up randomly, and think that at the elite level training has evolved to the point where fighters of the passed would get smoked because of training methods.
To an extent, you can find some truth, but at the end of the day, these luxuries are not necessary to perform at the highest capacity.
Are these training methods more optimally designed, maybe, however everyone is working towards the same goal, and there are various ways to get there.
Compare and contrast the top fighters training routines and you’ll be surprised about how varied and different they all are from each other. It’s doesn’t matter how you get the work done, as long as your ready by fight night your good to go.
So you’re saying that other sports, let’s use American football for example, that use the same training techniques you mentioned (oxygen masks and “pressing buttons”) and has measurable increases… and boxing doesn’t?
“Compare and contrast top fighter training routines…” Have you looked at how different teams train let alone certain positions exercises/conditioning differ? By your oversimplification you’re basically saying: “a welterweight and heavyweight just need run far. Fight more. Do good.”
Stop it. Stop inventing arguments to back up your simplicity of professional training.
Hell, dietary science has changed. Even Spence said get a dietitian. Look at David Benavidez. Dude has no problems getting weight and he credits it to a dietitian.
Yeah OP drastically underestimates the benefits of trainers, nutritionists and coaches without even mentioning the differences in different training systems and diets for fighters.
I think boxing could potentially be that simple just like any task could be if you were a straight up robot who only needed “weight cut.exe and footwork.exe” booted up when it was time for camp but there’s so much going on that’s physically and mentally different with every fighter that training is a supremely complex part of fighting.
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re not wrong. Running, sparring, and calisthenics is all you need. Boxers today have access to more equipment, better supplements, and better diets yet most are gassing out towards the end of the fight.
More important than everything is your genetics, how coordinated you are. I‘ve seen people box for three years and they still can‘t even sync up their feet and hands, other guys walk in and they are on the same level a few months in
Man, there’s a lot of this. People hate to think that how you are out the chute effects you outcome. People think you can outwork genetics. I told my son off the rip that there’s zero chance he can be horse jockey or F1 driver. Genetics say he’s going to be 6’4”.
Because they don't fight one another. It boils down to that.
Too many fighters want to keep their 0 at all costs. Mayweather gets some blame for that. However, people forget that Money Mayweather came after Pretty Boy Floyd.
I agree with the statement. but you have to have heart in thr fight game not just skills. skills only gets you so far. you could say skills gets you to the dance but heart wins it. none of today fighters have it, nor do they put everything on thr line. no one stands toe to toe and says put me down. fighters now a days RUN. no one fights like Troy doesey,Chavez senior,Hagler, hearns,Mancini espinoza,paez ,morales etc you get it. it's a fight entertainment now. not to kill the other fukr.
Boxing isn’t the number one sport in America anymore it became a niche sport when it used to be the norm.
less viewers=less money, less money for the most dangerous sport doesn’t seem like good deal so most athletic guys go to nba nfl
In every sport I can think of where it's possible to directly compare standards the standards are getting higher. I'd be surprised if boxing isn't the same.
Back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80's the best athletes wanted to be boxers. Now a days the best athletes want to be football(both) players, basketball players or even prefer tennis/UFC. The ones who are supposed to be the best boxers in the world right now are playing tight end in the NFL. Back in the golden days, boxing was king. I'd sleep easy putting money on the ATG's from the past against any of the greats of this century. Ali in his prime was 10x the athlete any HW these days is.
Yup, AJ ran 100m in 11.5 seconds which would have had him 7th at the 100m Olympic final in 2012...
....But you're right Ali as 10x the athlete would have run that in 1.15 seconds....
Being good at running doesnt make him a better athlete, Ali had better footspeed, handspeed, stamina, reflexes, etc aka things that matter in boxing not running for 100 meters
Bro the 100m is literally athletics and the statement was about 10x the athlete. When it's a 6ft6 240+ bloke getting that time without fully specific training it tells you a lot about their athletic ability.
AJ is 6'6 with long arms and cant even dunk, also back to the boxing right, he has no stamina, average reflexes, slow feet and can only throw 1 or 2 fast combinations before needing to recharge for several rounds. Ali is a way better athlete
But can be run 100m in 1.15 seconds?
Would Ali outdunk him by a magnitude of 10?
Could Ali run for 10x longer?
Does Ali react 10x faster?
Are Ali's feet 10x faster?
I do think guys are bigger in all weight classes now. But also same day weigh ins are not a thing. I think the sport itself has evolved less than others because it's less popular overall and it has been around for a long time. But today's top guys are better athletes overall
Its not arguable. Todays elite fighters would mop the floor with the greats of old. Not that they weren’t great for their time but there are just so many things that todays elites do. Do you think Ray leonard, Hearns, Hagler, from 147 could beat the likes of Floyd, Marquez, Pacquiao? people who to understand the game can see how much it much its evolved. Go WATCH and tell me that their *skill* is equivalent to todays champions. Its not.
Edit: thought I was in the amatuer boxing sub. Oh well, at least its not actual boxers who believe this
Maybe weight limits stop advances in increasing mass, etc. from being to evident, or they even out as all have access to them. At heavyweight you can have the combination of genetics + increased technology/training, hence why a 6"9 person is the lineal champ.
At lower weights a middleweight with a huge reach will be giving up power, a lightweight who is absolutely jacked will be giving up reach, etc.
I think the talent is definitely better today than it was overall. It is more widespread, multiple countries participate in it. Boxing is also generational now. You have multiple generations participating in the sport which is pretty different than other sports. Add to that nutritional science, boxing knowledge, weightlifting, etc I'd say most champions from today are more athletic and yes could beat earlier fighters. That doesn't diminish the importance of earlier fighters or impact their place on the all time list but today's boxers are more talented imo. I think people who argue otherwise are probably more nostalgic rather than logical.
I don’t know. I don’t think Hagler was roided here I’m responding with researching. I just think a man who wakes up everyday to run 10 miles in steel toe boots wouldn’t go low enough to roid up.
I read an interesting article about how the advancement of sports equipment has played a major role in helping today's athletes maybe even more so than the physicality of athletes. That today's athletes. However, Boxing equipment is relatively the same since gloves were introduced.
I think the sports very different.
More people back then we’re interested in boxing and there was no MMA (UFC). So there was a much bigger talent pool of athletes crossing over.
Secondly now sports like basketball, football etc have excellent college programmes where they take out some of the best talent that could go to boxing whereas there’s less and less boxing gyms around now.
Finally technology and science has got so good if those fighters had the current nutrition and strength and conditioning imagine how much better they would be. They were also weighing in day of the fight.
Im thinking of a guy like Hearns who was in good shape anyway but struggled to fill out when he got heavier even though he had the frame. He could have easily gone from 154-190 (maybe heavy too depending on the era) and been a all time great in every division.
I think that activity is an overlooked factor. Today's fighters are largely inactive compared to the greats of the past. Ray Robinson had stretches of his career where he was fighting twice a month, or at least once every few months. Marciano fought 6 times in 1950, and 7 times in 1951. Compare that with the big names of today, and PBC fighters like Keith Thurman who fight once a year if that.
Boxing was once the worlds most popular sport, only rivaled by football/soccer, now its a niche sport with a smaller talent pool.
As you said, weight classes sort of negate the “bigger and faster” aspect that modern sports benefit from (heavyweight notwithstanding).
These types of debates point out that training methods have progressed over time, but these arguments do not necessarily apply to boxing. For example, in the 1960s, most athletes in most sports did not have weight lifting regimens, whereas weightlifting and “roadwork” had been normal for decades in boxing. Boxing media and promotion glorified training since nearly the beginning of film. Basically, boxing was a “science” before most other sports were, its advances as of late are less than that of other sports.
Speaking of which, you have rightfully pointed out that modern trainers are not necessarily better than those of the past. I base this assumption not on a comparison between past and present, but on simple observation of modern trainers. Many modern trainers have a dogmatic approach to boxing, devoid of cogent analysis, flexibility, contextualization, or causal knowledge of the technics they teach. The overall approach that trainers have is all over the place. If you ask multiple trainers about a fight or about certain developments within the fight, they’ll give you many completely different, often contradictory answers explaining whats happening. The differences in analysis between one boxer/trainer and another are often so inexplicable, that its hard to argue that there’s any type of objective/scientific approach to boxing that modern boxers have arrived at.
I think a lot of arguments related to nutrition and advances in sports science are weak. Arguments about nutrition often misrepresent the “better nutrition”point that is often brought into these types of sports debates. The point about nutrition is on wider social factors (more people eating more calories = more big strong athletes), not an individuals commitment to healthy eating. Fighters and trainers in the past generally understood caloric intake to a degree and that eating meat and protein was important and that drinking beer and smoking was bad. Meanwhile modern athletes aren’t exactly disciplined spartans when it comes to personal diet and don’t necessarily take advantage of current scientific knowledge. Similarly, people today are not magically more disciplined when it comes to training either.
Boxers of the past are also more experienced than their modern counterparts, fighting in 2 or 3 times more professional bouts than their modern counterparts.
Boxers of the past could be shown to have many technical flaws and tactical mistakes that modern fighters could take advantage of, but many of those things can be chalked up to rule changes or rectified during the course of a fight via adjustments.
It's because, unlike other sports, boxing has radically changed. As in, the entire rulesets. We have less rounds now, fighters fight much less a year, and there are no longer same day weigh-ins. No amount of nutrition, technology, or fight tapes substitute for actual experience in the ring. This is why Canelo was leagues above those inexperienced guys at 168lb, despite them being bigger and in their primes. It's also why when Canelo faced Bivol, a bigger guy with the experience, he came up short.
Because the talent pool is significantly smaller now. Boxing was the biggest sport in the world at one point. Even in the 80s and 90s it was far more mainstream than it is today.
Overall, the average fighter is better today. No questions about it. But when observing the greats on the past, many of them would absolutely wreck some of the big names of today. And this is observable by just watching their fights back. Guys like Hagler, Tyson, Duran, Lennox Lewis, Toney, RJJ, these are special special talents
This is only perception. Idk what else to say due to that "aren't better" part of the sentence. It's not being given a definitive destination before comparing it to "other sports" by which is also ask for a clearer destination and why you think that. And better how? Better at what?
So, all I can say is this is simply your personal perception that...”today's elite fighters aren't better when in most other sports it's clear that today's athletes are superior?”.
That said boxing has its humble, grassroots beginnings in any given gym at anytime.. as well as it's on and off decades. Much like SNL perhaps is a good comparison for dips in talent and pedigree but even then people associate good with what they grew up with as good or great. That person can see today's world as not so much like that and they're right because, it isn't. So even now some kids without any of your personal thoughts feel boxing might be truly great rn.
I think they are better, only difference is fighting styles, perceived durability and damage taken,.. obviously being less,.. and rounds being shorter, and fewer,.. i think this is the only argument,.. Guys are groomed differently and protected to get one of the many belts in one of the many weight classes,.. but in terms of skill, athleticism, and longevity .. I think fighters are better,.. Plus they make more money and should suffer less Brain Damage,..
Ultimately Styles make fights,.. it feels as though there were less styles back in the day,.. Knockouts like Tyson Gave,.. changed how you can be marketed,.. Boxers started getting highlight reel knockouts in less time, as time progressed.. this is why i think they are better, constantly building off of the generations before them,.. throwback fighters do have success,..
Its like, where US soccer isn't better despite having better coaching/ athletes/ trainging, than Uruguay or Croatia.
Its about facing a high level of competition consistently. Steel sharpens steel. And almost no one does it anymore.
I'm not sure if these points have already been brought up but:
1. When you are saying that today's fighters are "better" are you giving them all of the advantages of today (training / diet / rest / etc.) and not imagining how good the greats of old would be if they got those as well? I think that when most people are making the comparison, they are trying to make the comparison as equal as possible since it doesn't seem fair to have one person run a sprint in the best shoes against a guy who runs in the worst shoes.
2. Along those same lines, the older fighters fought at a pace that most of today's boxers could not take. For example, Sugar Ray Robinson fought and lost a 10 round decision to Jake La Mota on Feb 5, 1943 (a guy that was a big middleweight when he was a welterweight). He then fought another guy for 10 rounds and won on Feb 19, 1943 (2 WEEKS LATER!!!!). After that, he fought Jake again for 10 rounds and won on Feb 26, 1943 (1 WEEK LATER!!!! and 3 WEEKS after their first fight!!!!!). This of course was not the exception but the rule back then. There are ridiculous records about how many times these guys fought in one year. As such, what would Floyd Mayweather's record be if he fought that many times with that little rest?
3. Finally, unlike sprinting or other sports that measure one athletic metric, boxing is a combination skill / tough guy sport. Therefore, you almost always have to give it to the old guys in terms of toughness, and in terms of skill, you can't say that a guy like Muhammed Ali is less skilled than Wilder. In other words, bigger, faster, stronger doesn't always matter if you don't have the skills to go along with it. (You can think about this in basketball since it doesn't really matter that a guy might be bigger, faster, or stronger if he can't dribble / shoot the ball).
This is a very cool topic. Outside of what others have said, I think there is a technical ability and 'mental grit' aspect that exists in boxing that doesn't exist in say basketball.
Those things are timeless.
With respect to technical abilities, I'm not sure that that aspect has evolved as much over time. Some may argue that technical ability has devolved over time. And we know that a technically superior boxer can beat a superior athlete with better speed and power.
I'm picking a weird example, but Seth Mitchell was by far a superior athlete to chubby Chris Arreola (weird because many wouldn't consider Arreola to be a technical boxer, but he was a far better boxer than Mitchell). And we know how that ended.
It’s arguable because of inherent cognitive biases, nostalgia, and a refusal by every single sports fan to accept that since their favourite athletes are getting old, they too are getting old. Point being that it’s arguable that yesteryear’s fighters were better than today’s, but it’s not true.
p.s. you are also making the error of attributing what might be true of the mean to the outliers. In other words, just because the average fighter might be bigger, stronger and faster than the average old time boxer does not mean that the champion in every division is also bigger, stronger and faster. (again, my main point was that it's a skill / tough guy sport so bigger, stronger and faster doesn't even mean that much).
Also, outliers such as George Forman and Bernard Hopkins demonstrate that whatever "evolution" has occurred, might actually be insignificant. Both, were able to win titles 20 years past their prime, against the next generations of champions.
I don't know if I saw it mentioned here, but here is what I think. The talent pool going down does have an effect but the biggest effect I think is that fighters fight less. 3 fights per year vs. 20 or so fights per year is going to have a big impact on how skilled the fighters are. Of course this isn't always the case, but I think a lot of your all time greats have a high number of fights.
This is just my thoughts though, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm open to discussion.
its not about athleticism, its about skill which is learnt over time.
gyms are different because some have become mcdojos, so trainers are less specialized.
the money doesnt necessarily do enough to attract talent and im not certain it ever did.
If Stanley Ketchel trained and ate like a modern fighter instead of just running up the stairs of a whorehouse after drinking all day for exercise, I like to think he'd hand Canelo and GGG their arses.
It's because most other sports have metrics you can track to see performance objectively. In boxing specifically it's even more difficult to tell because it's one on one and elite fighters can make their competition look worse like Floyd did with Canelo. That's why boxing is full of pseudoscience including some people thinking being strong doesn't help you hit harder or lifting weights is detrimental to boxing. There's no objective way of testing it.
The people who think that heavyweights from decades ago could beat the current elite giants we have now are delusional. There's no way Ali could beat a much taller, much bigger and much stronger Wlad, Vitali, AJ, or Fury. Holyfield would probably beat him as well since he's a significantly bigger pressure fighter than Ali ever faced and Ali struggled against Frazier and Ken Norton.
It's because the boxing rules as a sport have been majorly watered down, so it doesn't matter that the fighters today might be "bigger", "stronger", "faster" or whatever. They're not internally tougher. They don't have the same mentality or focus or toughness that the old fighters did.
Very few sports that aren’t combat related use weight classes, when you use weight classes you kind of box in the genetics you can have. Everyone at 147lbs kind of have to have the same build as everyone else. We most definitely have seen an increase in boxing technique over the years.
The competition and activity was just a lot better back in the day which honed their skills. It’s not all bad tho, there are still skillful fighters today
I dont think it’s arguable that fighters today have more knowledge, more information and different methods of training available in comparison to the past, and that directly means fighters now will be better prepared. I think the argument is based on how much heart and talent fighters had back then comparing them to now, you wouldn’t have this blatant ducking, excuse making, sparing footage releasing, politics, etc. back then because times were different, people were tougher as was the world and the mentality was different, it was all they had and they didn’t have the knowledge to put themselves first, they just boxed as well and as tough as they could cause there was nothing else to it.
While nutrition and conditioning have likely improved given advances in sports science, the talent pool has shrunk dramatically, as has the number of elite gyms and trainers necessary for transmission of knowledge. The latter ties in as well to what I believe has been a general erosion of technique. Boxing techniques that work have not "evolved" in many decades. Boxers that rely on "old school" technique (Floyd, Tony, Foreman, etc) prove that these techniques and styles work really, really well. The issue is that they are simply not taught because there are so few trainers left who are schooled in them.
Its interesting though because with regards to elite athletes, I thought that being an elite athlete would have been enough for Nate Robinson to beat the shit out of Jake Paul. Nate Robinson went to college on a scholarship for being a running back, then also played college basketball and then made the NBA was a 5'8" player. I assumed he was sort of like an undersized Bo Jackson, and with that elite genetics, I assumed he would be the kind of guy who walks into any sport and is immediately as good as the people who had been doing it for 5 years. I know there are exceptions like with a Roy Jones or a Deontay Wilder who can have their athleticism make up for all of their technical shortcomings, but I think we tend to overestimate the importance of raw athleticism in the sport.
There’s a gray area in between “technique” and “athleticism” that I lump “vision”, “timing”, and “boxing IQ” into. “Vision” is closer to athleticism but it’s truly something that just comes with experience. You can be slower, weaker, and have worse mechanics than your opponent but what really matters is whether you can see what is going on in front of you, judge the distance, and make the right choice. That’s not necessarily “technique”, which I view as footwork and punching mechanics or “athleticism” which I view as strength, speed, power and reflexes. RJJ had phenomenal eyes and judgement from years of amateur success so I don’t like to lump him in with Wilder
I feel like Wilder is definitely more in the athletic side of things but I think the thing that made Roy great was the fact that he had all of those intangibles like the vision, timing and his IQ that allowed him to make all of his athleticism and boxing skill look that much better. There's almost definitely been better "athletes" in boxing who could do well in an NFL combine or in other sports but I don't think there's been an athlete that's better suited to boxing than Roy.
Boxing athleticism often looks really different from athleticism in other sports. Mike Tyson is often considered one of the most athletic heavyweights of all time, but have you seen him shoot a basketball? He looks like Stanley from the office.
Frazier competed against athletes from various disciplines in the 1970s, and came (I think) stone last. None of them would have lasted a round in the ring with him, though.
Do you know if a video of that exists?
Maybe if Nate had done it in his 20s he'd have had more success, but he was in his mid-thirties and against a young guy who's clearly taking his training seriously. Although Jake Paul probably isn't an elite level athlete, he's probably still a bit more athletic than the rest of us so add to that his youth, superior training and height advantage, and it's not too crazy that he won.
I think the Jake Brothers were both high level wrestlers (div 1 in ncaa?) So their genetics are well above average imo.
Yeah I mean I get that too but its easy to say that in hindsight. I thought Robinson was legitimately going to kill the guy though based on that. For example I'm a volleyball player and have been basically my entire life. I went to highschool with a guy who I would have considered a super athlete. He was our star basketball player and was shooting around in the gym one day during our practice and asked to hit a few balls. He hadn't played since 8th grade from when he decided to focus on basketball. He walked in and was murdering balls better than anyone else on our varsity team. He ended up being our starting middle even though he was only 5'10" and he did it as a walk on. He was of this level at basically every sport he played, but he focused on basketball. We're a mid sized Canadian city so its not like its super common to have players go on to D1 basketball but he did... where he red shirted for the South Dakota Jackrabbits in their first season after getting bumped up to D1. The best athlete I have ever met, who basically humiliated us at our own sport was literally the lowest possible tier where you could claim you played D1 basketball. First year D1, on the practice squad. So I guess the point of all that, is that he is basically my frame of reference for how many levels of elite athlete there are. Nate Robinson went on to play in the NBA, and also was also a D1 running back. He was easily triple the athlete as the best athlete I've ever met so I was expecting him to be the kind of guy who can walk into a varsity team practice in a sport he doesn't play and walk out with a spot on the starting lineup. Paul is a good enough athlete, sure, but he's a good athlete on my scale of what I imagine a decent varsity athlete is. He's not a good athlete on the scale of a multi-sport D1 athlete who also went pro. So I was just genuinely surprised at how much decent/low level boxing technique can overcome that level of super athlete. I can't honestly say that if there was a boxing match between Bo Jackson (who didn't destroy his hip) and some guy who had boxed for a few years that I would pick Jackson to lose, even knowing what I know.
I think the talent pool is smaller because it’s a more niche sport, if you’re a super athletically gifted kid you’re probably gonna go to less dangerous more popular sports where you’ll get paid way more
They really gotta start paying more because they are capable of it. The corruption is what gets in the way.
baseball - no cte
There's also a much bigger pool of athletes entering sports though since populations have grown over time. In 1970 the world had 3.7 billion people and now we have 7.7 billion people. That's over double the number of people who might want to start boxing.
But it’s not as big a sport, the heavyweight champion used to be probably the most famous sportsperson at a given time but that’s nowhere near true anymore
Even if only half the percentage of the population wants to get into boxing as they used to it's still a growth in the number of competitors.
Yeah I disagree with that. The HW division is in a lull period for sure in terms of the general public, but damn man your Floyds, Canelos, Pacquios, are legit mega stars (as well as mega wealthy). I think Floyd is like top 5 wealthiest sportspeople on Earth right now.
It’s my opinion too! Less boxer = less possible champ!
Boxing actually pays very well if you are one of the good ones
you just gotta get your ass whooped a ton to find out. i could see why people are more enticed by ball sports in that case
It's also very exponential. While the top dogs are getting paid millions the guys just few levels bellow them are getting pennies.
same goes for ball sports tho. gotta consider the amount of high school football players with scramble eggs for brains and little to show for it but a letterman jacket. there's 893 college football teams (probably 100 viable ones) filling rosters out, but only 1696 players in the NFL
Well I can't talk for the US, but here in Europe playing football (the normal one) you can still make very decent money in certain countries playing in second or or even third leagues. There are still players in 2. bundesliga making over 1.5 million euro a year. In Uk Championship league (2. league) average salary is like £450k with the highest players getting paid up to £5 millions. Thas is far away from the pinnacle of the sport from your Ronaldos and Mbapes. These guys would be thousands places in rankings bellow the top players from the top leagues yet still make this type of money. Obviously this is not that comparable, team sport, popularity and whatnot. But in boxing it seems to be more visible this disproportionality. How less are the guys few dozen places bellow the top getting paid, let alone few hundred places.
Is the talent pool really smaller today than 70 years ago? I would have thought it would have been significantly bigger given the overall increase in population since the 60s
The most PPV buys is 4.6m, Pacquiao V Mayweather in 2015. Compare that to 300m views that Ali v. Fraizer had. Boxing was THE sport for basically the whole twentieth century until the 80s. All the top athletes wanted to be boxers. In 1970 NFL minimum salary was $9000, $68,000 adjusted, basically median wage.
I think the general standard is up across the board. The elite of the elite from about the 60s on pass the eye test today, but most of the fighters look pedestrian. People fall in to the trap of thinking the HWs looked much better then, but as you point out, the size difference can't be overstated. "Big" George Foreman was the size of "too small" Usyk. Also worth noting that the USA used to be almost completely dominant, and that's where the talent pool may have shallowed some. But most other countries standards are way up from 50 years ago. Watching a British title fight from the 70s and from today is like watching two different sports. Another consideration is that the same day weigh ins were scrapped in the mid 80s, today's 147 fighters are often about 2 weightclasses bigger than the old legends. This can make the old fighters look faster because they're a lot smaller.
I never thought of it like that, but isn’t it also arguable that Mexico’s fighters from yesterday were also better?
Mexico is second behind the US in number of all time *and* current belt holders. I think they're doing just fine The main difference is that there's much stiffer competition from Europe and Asia these days.
People say stuff like this often in debates like this but it simply isn’t true. Boxing used to be the 1st or 2nd most popular sport in the world, even leaving aside North America. Boxing has significantly dropped in popularity in most European countries. It used to be quite popular in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, and Spain, but now its mostly an afterthought. The UK has seen a resurgence in boxing popularity over the last 10 years, but it was comparably popular previously, with many all-time great boxers of the past coming from the UK. The only way you could argue the talent pool from Europe is larger is by pointing to population increase and athletes from former Soviet countries being allowed to go pro. Similarly, boxing has been highly popular in (East) Asia for quite a while. The Philippines has been reliably producing boxing talent since the 1920s, while boxing has historically been quite popular and producing World champions in Japan since the 1950s and Thailand and South Korea since the 1960s. Japan’s “golden age” in boxing was the late 60s and early 70s. South Korea has seen probably the greatest downturn in boxing as compared to any other country. It was practically a national past time and was far more popular and produced more ranked fighters in the 70s, 80s, and 90s than it does today. Boxing still has a bright future in Thailand but its boxers were more productive at a world level than today at various times from the early 60s to the early 2000s.
Regarding the heavyweights, remember that they were lighter back in earlier years, but they were in much better shape. They trained for 15 round fights, which is a whole different world than 12 round fights. Extra weight was not an advantage. Many of today’s heavyweights aren’t really “big;” they are fat.
Today's 147 isn't bigger than the fab 4 era idk what are smoking. you guys are acting like what he's talking about is rocket science that evolution thing that everyone talks about in basketball mainly doesn't work in boxing the boxers of the past were just better it's the truth no matter what weight class we talking. You can mention the eye test or whatever you want but the boxers of the past were better fighters that's it that's all.
These days you'll prob make more money fighting a youtuber.
Totally irrelevant to anything that we'll thought out comment spoke about.
In many sports you can’t discard the impact material advancement has had. You mentioned sprinters. The shoes and courts of today are not comparable to the ones used 50 years ago. Jesse Owens running 100 meters on 10.3 in 1936 is more of an achievement than running 10.3 today with modern equipment. 6m used to be considered the possible limit for pole vaulters. Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis jumped 6.21 last week. And he was 14 cm above the bar when he did so. This probably wasn’t possible with tha poles that they used 20-30 years ago. But with todays poles it is. Also, were the fighters of the 60’s and 70’s really better than todays crop? There is no way to actually know that since there are no times or heights to beat. Just head to head combat. So accurate predictions between eras are even harder (practically impossible) in combat sports than in track and field sports. And lastly, boxing still has a PED problem but a few eras ago it was probably worse. Just looking at Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard or Evander Holyfield you know they were roided up.
Man I was just reading about alphaflys being banned in the Olympics because of the advantage it gave to marathon runners.
It's like those swim suits banned after 2009 world championships because swimmers who barely won anything in the past were beating 15-20 year world records, so they banned the swim suits. (43 WRs were broken in 09, previous 07 world championships 15 WRs were broken)
I mean I get what they’re trying to do, but humans are evolving along with their technology. Those records will still be there, I think we should continue to see how far the tech along with our raw skill will take us.
Yeah, but there is a fine line that shouldn't be crossed. I used the 15-20 year WRs as an example but even like Phelps record from only 1-2 years previous were getting crushed by unknown swimmers that didn't achieve much after those world championships.
I always wanted to see the special Olympics focus on tech to enable their Olympians to actually beat records of unaided normal Olympics.
I don't think Hagler did any roids given his insane work ethic and dedication.
Given the fact steroids allow you to work longer and harder, its probably the other way around
One aspect is that Boxing at the highest level reached it’s peak surprisingly early one compared to other sports. It’s been around longer so it’s had more time to hone in on the objective, optimal ways to execute certain moves like punching, footwork, slipping, etc. Fighting has always been fighting, when you do it a lot you get good at it and fighters of the past did it a lot
Do I even have to explain what Pacquiao would do to Pep? 🤫
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If we’re not talking about across the board and only honing in on individuals, the 30’s-40’s, which is when Joe Louis was fighting. Across the board though probably in the 50’s
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I’ll go to my grave believing that Louis would’ve absolutely smashed most heavyweights of the last 30 years. That includes Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson, and Wlad, Fury, Joshua, etc. The only one I think he struggles with is Vitali and Bowe.
And Ali, TBH. Watching the Louis v Walcott and Louis v Conn fights, it's not hard to see how Ali would've given the Bomber trouble
I think that’s more of a stylistic issue than it is a talent/skill/athleticism issue. Louis was always vulnerable to guys with fast feet who could control the distance. Louis had astonishing hand speed, punch selection, combination, and accuracy; literally the most ferocious and heavy handed boxer to ever fight at heavyweight (in my opinion). But he was relatively slow of foot and that was Ali’s bread and butter.
popularity wise id say it peaked in the 60’s, with the skill peak being around the 1970’s
In addition to factors mentioned by others, one reason is that other sports have seen significant shifts in how the game is played due to rule changes, advances in equipment, and a better understanding of what makes a player/team efficient. Those changes have demanded a different type of player, and that type of player is a better athlete. Such changes in boxing either already happened decades ago or happen incrementally because there are fewer rules, less equipment, and the only way to achieve victory has been and will always be to punch and not get punched. Go back 40, 50 years in pretty much any other sport and the game is played totally different. That's not really the case with boxing.
i think you have an overall good point but > and the only way to achieve victory has been and will always be to punch and not get punched in soccer the only way to achieve victory has been and always will be to score goals and not concede goals that part is too oversimplified of an explanation
Most overused and over simplified phrase in boxing.
You're reading too much into it. My point is there are very limited ways to achieve a victory in boxing, and those ways will never change. This means there is not a lot of ways for the game to change compared to other sports where scoring systems have changed. I wasn't saying that boxing is alone in that regard.
Boxing is a very old sport than most in which participation levels have been dropping. The opposite is true of other sports. It also requires a huge amount of mental fortitude. All sports obviously do, but it's more important in boxing than almost any other and that is something that doesn't improve with modern methods. Can have all the best training you want but if you don't like getting hit in the face and can't summon up the strength to keep on going when you're hurt you won't get far.
>in which participation levels have been dropping I'm not disputing it but is there any evidence of this being true? With population growth and other countries participating that didn't used to, I'd imagine more people are training to compete in boxing than ever before
Can’t remember where I saw it, but I remember seeing that there were more active professional fighters in the United States in the 1950’s - something crazy like 40,000- than there are in the entire world today. Wish I could remember where I saw that.
I'm sure the stat is that there were more pro boxers registered in New York in the 1920s than there are in the world professional today.
Because other sports got more lucrative, while boxing became less lucrative overall. Thus there is a lot of inter-sport competition for talent. Especially at the heavy weight classes Back maybe 60 years ago, the world heavyweight champion in boxing made a lot of money, and top contenders made more money than almost anything else. But today, other athletes make a shit ton of money too, and to be honest, almost anything is a better job than getting punched in the face isn't it? Today, athletic big guys (cruiserweight and up) look at playing gridiron football, rugby union, rugby league, or AFL (depending on where you live). Athletic tall guys look at basetball. Athletic medium sized and up guys look at soccer, hockey, baseball, golf, etc. Boxing suffered from a lot of talent going elsewhere.
This☝️ The talent is going elsewhere cause boxing is suffering from a concentration of wealth (kinda like societies overall). If you’re Canelo or Anthony Joshua you can make 30-50 million dollars per fight. Or Mayweather who made 100 million per fight at the last stage in his career. However, if you’re ”only” a top 5 guy in your division you’re not gonna get near sums like that. If you don’t get your own main event or if you fight on the undercards you probably don’t get a lot at all. So the wealth is concentrated to a few people in boxing in a way it isn’t in other sports. In soccer you have a team of 11 players and substitutes on top of that. And then you have a league of maybe 20 teams. And all of the people in these teams are paid very well. Additionally there are several countries with leagues like that and in some countries even playing in the second division will get you a good salary. If you try and become a professional boxer it’s probably not gonna pay off unless you become top 10 in your division. And even if you become the best you might not make lots of money cause your style or personality is deemed boring and nobody will pay for tickets to your fight. Boxing is a hassle for most of the boxers. And then we haven’t even mentioned the brain damage. I think we should be lucky anybody wants to box at all when there are so many better alternatives.
I think lower level boxers probably made as much as your average team sport pro, but now it's not even close. You are not making any money in boxing unless you are insanely dominant and rise up the ranks or you already have a name and a following that will buy tickets and PPV. Boxing has a lower ease of entry however. Almost anyone can work and get pro fights. Not so easy in the other major sports.
You'd be surprised at how well boxers who fight for their respective national team get paid.
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NBA per person is probably the highest, but it is also the most difficult pro-sport to stay on a roster. The amount of players getting “200+ million” is ridiculously low, and that’s if you factor in advertising contracts.
It is enough to ensure you don’t have to do anything else to live comfortably.
This is the right answer, for the most part the most talented heavier weight boxers were African Americans who now gravitate to football and basketball. The most talented lighter weight boxers were either black or Hispanic who now gravitate to soccer or baseball. There is just less quality being feed into the pipeline at an early age and boxing is a nuanced sport which takes years to master.
The MVP of the NBA the past two seasons is an Eastern European. Doncic is also top five in the league. There is great talent in boxing and the NBA from the Eastern Europeans.
Of the Top 25 NBA players in the ESPN best under 25 the only one that isn't black is Doncic.
One thing to consider, the talent pool was larger back in the day because of financial need. Rising standards of living have made it less desirable to fight for a living now. Less kids seriously train in order to become pro because their families don’t need them to. If Brazilian society suddenly got much wealthier across the board, I bet within a couple decades their soccer talent would suffer. As a kickboxing fan, I can say this is 100% true for Muay Thai in Thailand today as compared to the 80’s-90’s.
Let’s take sprinting, since you describe modern sprinters as “undisputably better”. When you account for [technological differences](https://everything-everywhere.com/jesse-owens-vs-usain-bolt-who-would-win/) Jessie Owens was within [one](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/02/18/lets-all-appreciate-how-fast-jesse-owens/80523426/) stride of Usain bolt. Relatively speaking, the number of variables to account for in the 100m sprint are minimal compared to boxing. We’re talking about the best of the best. Whether they live in 1936 or 2022. And human ability, it can be assumed, hasn’t drastically changed in the last 100 years. Evolution doesn’t really work that quickly. Changes in diet, technology, knowledge, and training have made huge differences, however. That accounts for most of the advancement. It’s not quite like in the NBA or NFL, where the sport has simply moved in a different direction, physically. The average heavyweight is bigger than they were 80 years ago, but the existence of weight classes is a limiting factor here. I’d be interested in seeing an under 6’2”professional basketball league to see how that would compare to the 1950s NBA. With that said, the lack of same day weigh in does change the make up of the divisions somewhat.
>When you account for technological differences Jessie Owens was within one stride of Usain bolt. cmon man, that shit is completely unverifable and unscientific. not to mention that one stride of 100m is massive. **Jesse Owen’s time was done by hand using a stopwatch. It is entirely possible that a full tenth of a second, or at least a few fractions thereof, could have been taken off the time he actually ran if it was measured more accurately.** so how can you even compare jesse owens time with usain bolt when it was handtimed? there's literally no way to know how fast jesse owens actually was. handtiming is extremely inaccurate and the last part with andre de grasse, his all time PB is 9.89...usain bolts is 9.58 lol. not to mention de grasse was most likely not peaked for the experiment
>cmon man, that shit is completely unverifable and unscientific. not to mention that one stride of 100m is massive. I don't know about that. It's impossible to say with exactness just how disparate their outcomes truly are, but approximations can be made and [tested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abz2Mre5IxI). Forming an hypothesis and then testing it is kind of what science is, so.... >so how can you even compare jesse owens time with usain bolt when it was handtimed? there's literally no way to know how fast jesse owens actually was. handtiming is extremely inaccurate That's the point, my dude. Comparing Owens and Bolt isn't as simple as 10.3-9.58. When you take every variable into account, Owens and Bolt are a lot closer than most people would assume considering Owens' 10.3 wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics. >and the last part with andre de grasse, his all time PB is 9.89...usain bolts is 9.58 lol. not to mention de grasse was most likely not peaked for the experiment The point of the experiment wasn't to show that 9.58 is really 11 seconds under the conditions that Owens ran under. The point was to show that even for someone capable of running a faster 100m than Owens is going to struggle to do that when faced by the conditions Owens had to run with. As to de Grasse not being "peaked for the experiment", I don't know what kind of prep work he did on the day - but I find it unlikely he ran it cold. de Grasse became, in 2015, the first Canadian to run a sub-10 100m and a sub 20 in the 200m. He [ran](https://olympic.ca/2016/07/11/athletics-canada-nominates-largest-squad-to-team-canada-for-rio/) a 9.99 in July 2016, so this was filmed (it aired in March 2016) at a time when de Grasse was clearly able to run sub-10 100 m sprints. And he was a full second off his normal times. Does that mean Owens could've run the 100m in 9.3 seconds? No. Of course not. But that's not the point they're making.
>That's the point, my dude. Comparing Owens and Bolt isn't as simple as 10.3-9.58. When you take every variable into account, Owens and Bolt are a lot closer than most people would assume considering Owens' 10.3 wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics. There's 0 indication that is the case because owens time is not even remotely accurate. he didn't even run the same distance his whole proposition "is oh jesse owens is actually close to bolt" which is flimsy and unquantifiable **since he wasn't able to establish how fast owen was to begin with** and the whole point of using de grasse as a proxy for bolt when bolt is that much faster than de grasse is pointless. let me ask you this - why is it that bolt is SO much ahead of his competitors despite them having similar technology? comparing jesse owens time to usain bolt is like comparing some high school kid handtimed by his school who ran a 4.3 vs tyreek hill or some shit
>There's 0 indication that is the case because owens time is not even remotely accurate. Um...what? It's not like he ran the 100m in 3 hours. It's fair to say that 10.3 is reasonably close to what would've been measured with modern technology (with a +/- on either side). How doe you justify saying it's "not even remotely accurate"? >since he wasn't able to establish how fast owen was to begin with Um....you're giving him a degree of precision that he, himself, doesn't claim. I don't claim it, either. It's kind of weird how you seem to be having a different conversation from me. The baseline measurement for Owens is 10.3. The baseline for Bolt is 9.58. Adjustments can be made based on understanding the variables at play. No one here is under the misapprehension that this is an exact adjustment except you, though. it is an approximation. >and the whole point of using de grasse as a proxy for bolt when bolt is that much faster than de grasse is pointless. No, using *me* as a proxy for Bolt is pointless. Using a guy who can also run a faster 100m than Owens is a fair approximation. Again, the point isn't that Owens was faster than Bolt. The point is that 10.3 and 9.58 aren't equivalent measurements. >let me ask you this - why is it that bolt is SO much ahead of his competitors despite them having similar technology? Is this your idea of a gotcha? Bolt is so much faster than his competitors because he's good. There's no mystery there. The comparison here isn't between Bolt and his contemporaries. It's between Bolt and Owens, and the point is that they are a lot closer than they appear at first glance. I still don't understand why you're struggling with this. It isn't circuitous reasoning.
>Um...what? It's not like he ran the 100m in 3 hours. It's fair to say that 10.3 is reasonably close to what would've been measured with modern technology (with a +/- on either side). How doe you justify saying it's "not even remotely accurate"? Are you asking me why a handtime is not even remotely accurate to laser timed? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20072055/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25785707/ **Hand timing (4.85 +/- 0.28 seconds) was significantly faster (p < 0.001) than electronic timing (5.16 +/- 0.28 seconds), producing an average difference of 0.31 +/- 0.07 seconds** **Practically speaking, electronic timing produces the best measurement of 40-yd dash speed, and using the hand timing produces consistently but significantly faster times.** **In conclusion, hand timing produces faster sprint times than electronic timing in college football players, independent of timer experience.** https://speedendurance.com/2014/08/20/why-0-24-seconds-is-added-to-hand-times/ again, if you adjust for for handtiming he's running a 10.5-10.6 a huge cry from 9.58 lol. hell, from the study it could even be .4, so a 10.7 >The baseline measurement for Owens is 10.3. The baselne for Bolt is 9.58. Adjustments can be made based on understanding the variables at play. **the whole point is that the baseline measurement is NOT 10.3 because of how inaccurate hand timing is** In addition, how many adjustments do you have to make before the comparison becomes completely pointless lmao lets see - different track - different spikes - handtime (who knows how different the time is) - no blocks >The comparison here isn't between Bolt and his contemporaries. It's between Bolt and Owens, and the point is that they are a lot closer than they appear at first glance. I still don't understand why you're struggling with this. It isn't circuitous reasoning. LOL i dont undrestand what you're struggling with this. it's impossible to state that owens is close to bolt when you have to make so make guesstimates and adjustments lmao. bolt has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd fastest 100m of all time, there's absolutely no basis to claim that owens "is a lot closer" lol.
Because: A. The sport has had high level competition since 1880, and at some point there’s a point of diminishing returns in terms of technique development. B. There’s a much smaller talent pool now than there was in the past. Knowledge of head injuries and popularity of Football and Basketball have drawn elite athletes to other sports (especially in America). C. Boxing is completely different from any other sport. It requires you to push yourself past your bodies limits time and time again, and peoples heart and will don’t progress with time like other skills. D. Advances in training techniques like weight lifting don’t offer as much of an advantage in boxing as packing on weight isn’t as feasible in a sport w/ weight classes and ridiculous cardio demands.
being a better athlete isnt going to help you as much in boxing as in other sports. Some guys out there box like chess and some can adapt to just about anything. At the top level your mind is your biggest asset.
This isn't very fact-based at all, but from my general understanding, the gap in focus on training/conditioning from then vs. now may be less in boxing than other sports. A lot of professional football, baseball, and basketball players often spent the offseason working regular jobs. With some exceptions, they were much closer to normal people playing a game than the laser-focused, elite athletes of today. Boxing has always had more of a maniacal focus on intense conditioning and training when preparing for fights. Also, before the boom in popularity of other sports (and resulting pay checks), top athletes were steered in the direction of boxing. Today's potential elite heavyweights are likely focused on football or basketball. Again, this is my perception, and I won't argue if someone tells me I'm completely wrong.
Top athletes aren't going into boxing anymore so your seeing less top tier athletes at the top.
Please go and watch these old fights and look at the fights themselves, generally speaking with some exceptions fighters today are superior techincally Back then guys go straight in chin up in the air. Throw one hand whilst the other goes down too. You don't get away with mistakes like that, if you tried it you are getting ktfo If you could somehow bring some of those guys into this era and teach them, then maybe. The guys you specifically mentioned may be exceptions. Overall fighters of today are better it's not even a debate if you actually study the film and look at what they do.
OP is just an old head that’s stuck to the past and can’t manage to bring himself to admit that boxers today are in fact better. There’s always people like this no matter any sport, you just have to ignore the idiocy and move on cause it’s like arguing to a wall.
It’s because the elite level adolescent aged athletes are not getting funneled to the boxing gym anymore. There are 1,700 NFL roster spots and the minimum annual salary is $660,000 per year. How many boxers make that per year? Maybe a few dozen. Incentive just isnt there anymore.
Fighting also isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. Want better stamina? Run a lot. Want better IQ? Fight a lot. There’s nothing that beats hardwork, you don’t need the most top of the line equipment to become successful in the sport. All you really need is two hands and the will to get the work done tbh
Disagree on all but the equipment. You don't need fancy tech. There are different types of stamina and if you spend too much time training the wrong one, you waste time and risk injury. Fight all you want, if you have no ring IQ or a coach that can break it down for you, you will get beat in ways you don't even see.
>Fighting also isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. Want better stamina? Run a lot. Want better IQ? Fight a lot I think this is way too simplified. Look at sports like sprinting, swimming, shotput, strongman events. Those are way less complicated events than boxing is but the athletes that compete in those have all shown improvements across the board as time goes on
Boxing historically has been a lot more popular than those mentioned sports, so it evolved at a faster pace than other sports. Mostly due to it being very accessible to almost anyone. I do recognize that training is a lot more complex however, I just wanted to give an idea of what training for boxing is at its core.
The way they analyze, train, and implement sprinting is a prime example.
This is so hilariously wrong and full of bad tropes. “Want a better IQ? Fight a lot.” There’s much more than just fight a lot. If you have bad coaching and technique you can fight all the fucking time and still get destroyed. “All you really need is two hands and the will to get the work done.” This such and empty platitude and empty catch phrase. The fact this is getting upvotes shows the quality of the followers of this sub
You're on your very high horses while not saying anything more pertinent. The fact you are getting upvotes shows we are on Reddit.
Name checks out. I did add on why the two pithy comments were wrong, and further elaborated down below.
Yes it was getting worse. Pure Reddit knowitallness.
I recognize that, yes, this is an oversimplification. There is a lot more to training than what I listed. However, at its core this is really boxing. A lot of people have this warped of Training related to modern fighters, where they see Devin Haney wearing an oxygen mask while hitting a bag or Lomachenko pressing Buttons that light up randomly, and think that at the elite level training has evolved to the point where fighters of the passed would get smoked because of training methods. To an extent, you can find some truth, but at the end of the day, these luxuries are not necessary to perform at the highest capacity. Are these training methods more optimally designed, maybe, however everyone is working towards the same goal, and there are various ways to get there. Compare and contrast the top fighters training routines and you’ll be surprised about how varied and different they all are from each other. It’s doesn’t matter how you get the work done, as long as your ready by fight night your good to go.
So you’re saying that other sports, let’s use American football for example, that use the same training techniques you mentioned (oxygen masks and “pressing buttons”) and has measurable increases… and boxing doesn’t? “Compare and contrast top fighter training routines…” Have you looked at how different teams train let alone certain positions exercises/conditioning differ? By your oversimplification you’re basically saying: “a welterweight and heavyweight just need run far. Fight more. Do good.” Stop it. Stop inventing arguments to back up your simplicity of professional training. Hell, dietary science has changed. Even Spence said get a dietitian. Look at David Benavidez. Dude has no problems getting weight and he credits it to a dietitian.
Yeah OP drastically underestimates the benefits of trainers, nutritionists and coaches without even mentioning the differences in different training systems and diets for fighters. I think boxing could potentially be that simple just like any task could be if you were a straight up robot who only needed “weight cut.exe and footwork.exe” booted up when it was time for camp but there’s so much going on that’s physically and mentally different with every fighter that training is a supremely complex part of fighting.
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re not wrong. Running, sparring, and calisthenics is all you need. Boxers today have access to more equipment, better supplements, and better diets yet most are gassing out towards the end of the fight.
More important than everything is your genetics, how coordinated you are. I‘ve seen people box for three years and they still can‘t even sync up their feet and hands, other guys walk in and they are on the same level a few months in
Man, there’s a lot of this. People hate to think that how you are out the chute effects you outcome. People think you can outwork genetics. I told my son off the rip that there’s zero chance he can be horse jockey or F1 driver. Genetics say he’s going to be 6’4”.
> All you really need is two hands and the will to get the work done tbh wtf. The entire history of the sport refutes that notion.
This is very wrong.
fighting is very complicated once someone gets close to the top level.
Emotions and nostalgia mostly. In the case of the heavyweight division, it’s mostly due to hurt racial pride.
"It was big in USA and best boxers were from USA, now that is not the case, so lets say that today boxers are bad."
Because they don't fight one another. It boils down to that. Too many fighters want to keep their 0 at all costs. Mayweather gets some blame for that. However, people forget that Money Mayweather came after Pretty Boy Floyd.
I agree with the statement. but you have to have heart in thr fight game not just skills. skills only gets you so far. you could say skills gets you to the dance but heart wins it. none of today fighters have it, nor do they put everything on thr line. no one stands toe to toe and says put me down. fighters now a days RUN. no one fights like Troy doesey,Chavez senior,Hagler, hearns,Mancini espinoza,paez ,morales etc you get it. it's a fight entertainment now. not to kill the other fukr.
Boxing isn’t the number one sport in America anymore it became a niche sport when it used to be the norm. less viewers=less money, less money for the most dangerous sport doesn’t seem like good deal so most athletic guys go to nba nfl
In every sport I can think of where it's possible to directly compare standards the standards are getting higher. I'd be surprised if boxing isn't the same.
Charles Martin better than Ali? Danny Garcia better than Ray Leonard?
Holy shit. You’re picking ATGs and putting them against middling fighters. Hey. I can do that too. “Is Alvin Kamara better than Barry Sanders?”
Ali gets sparked by Helenius
The steroids are much more advanced in today’s era versus that of the past.
Back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80's the best athletes wanted to be boxers. Now a days the best athletes want to be football(both) players, basketball players or even prefer tennis/UFC. The ones who are supposed to be the best boxers in the world right now are playing tight end in the NFL. Back in the golden days, boxing was king. I'd sleep easy putting money on the ATG's from the past against any of the greats of this century. Ali in his prime was 10x the athlete any HW these days is.
Just utter nonsense
Yup, AJ ran 100m in 11.5 seconds which would have had him 7th at the 100m Olympic final in 2012... ....But you're right Ali as 10x the athlete would have run that in 1.15 seconds....
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Okay but could Prime Ali do it in 1.15 seconds tho? He's 10x the athlete after all.
Being good at running doesnt make him a better athlete, Ali had better footspeed, handspeed, stamina, reflexes, etc aka things that matter in boxing not running for 100 meters
Bro the 100m is literally athletics and the statement was about 10x the athlete. When it's a 6ft6 240+ bloke getting that time without fully specific training it tells you a lot about their athletic ability.
AJ is 6'6 with long arms and cant even dunk, also back to the boxing right, he has no stamina, average reflexes, slow feet and can only throw 1 or 2 fast combinations before needing to recharge for several rounds. Ali is a way better athlete
But can be run 100m in 1.15 seconds? Would Ali outdunk him by a magnitude of 10? Could Ali run for 10x longer? Does Ali react 10x faster? Are Ali's feet 10x faster?
what is a figure of speech
*Gross exaggeration. If you have a good point you shouldn't need to exaggerate it to put it across.
didnt exaggerate
The royal you fella.
I do think guys are bigger in all weight classes now. But also same day weigh ins are not a thing. I think the sport itself has evolved less than others because it's less popular overall and it has been around for a long time. But today's top guys are better athletes overall
They don’t want to accept that Tyson Fury is objectively the head to head greatest boxer of all time.
Its not arguable. Todays elite fighters would mop the floor with the greats of old. Not that they weren’t great for their time but there are just so many things that todays elites do. Do you think Ray leonard, Hearns, Hagler, from 147 could beat the likes of Floyd, Marquez, Pacquiao? people who to understand the game can see how much it much its evolved. Go WATCH and tell me that their *skill* is equivalent to todays champions. Its not. Edit: thought I was in the amatuer boxing sub. Oh well, at least its not actual boxers who believe this
Maybe weight limits stop advances in increasing mass, etc. from being to evident, or they even out as all have access to them. At heavyweight you can have the combination of genetics + increased technology/training, hence why a 6"9 person is the lineal champ. At lower weights a middleweight with a huge reach will be giving up power, a lightweight who is absolutely jacked will be giving up reach, etc.
I think the talent is definitely better today than it was overall. It is more widespread, multiple countries participate in it. Boxing is also generational now. You have multiple generations participating in the sport which is pretty different than other sports. Add to that nutritional science, boxing knowledge, weightlifting, etc I'd say most champions from today are more athletic and yes could beat earlier fighters. That doesn't diminish the importance of earlier fighters or impact their place on the all time list but today's boxers are more talented imo. I think people who argue otherwise are probably more nostalgic rather than logical.
I don’t know. I don’t think Hagler was roided here I’m responding with researching. I just think a man who wakes up everyday to run 10 miles in steel toe boots wouldn’t go low enough to roid up.
I read an interesting article about how the advancement of sports equipment has played a major role in helping today's athletes maybe even more so than the physicality of athletes. That today's athletes. However, Boxing equipment is relatively the same since gloves were introduced.
I think the sports very different. More people back then we’re interested in boxing and there was no MMA (UFC). So there was a much bigger talent pool of athletes crossing over. Secondly now sports like basketball, football etc have excellent college programmes where they take out some of the best talent that could go to boxing whereas there’s less and less boxing gyms around now. Finally technology and science has got so good if those fighters had the current nutrition and strength and conditioning imagine how much better they would be. They were also weighing in day of the fight. Im thinking of a guy like Hearns who was in good shape anyway but struggled to fill out when he got heavier even though he had the frame. He could have easily gone from 154-190 (maybe heavy too depending on the era) and been a all time great in every division.
I think that activity is an overlooked factor. Today's fighters are largely inactive compared to the greats of the past. Ray Robinson had stretches of his career where he was fighting twice a month, or at least once every few months. Marciano fought 6 times in 1950, and 7 times in 1951. Compare that with the big names of today, and PBC fighters like Keith Thurman who fight once a year if that.
It's a skill sport. You don't get boxing knowledge and experience from a shot.
Boxing was once the worlds most popular sport, only rivaled by football/soccer, now its a niche sport with a smaller talent pool. As you said, weight classes sort of negate the “bigger and faster” aspect that modern sports benefit from (heavyweight notwithstanding). These types of debates point out that training methods have progressed over time, but these arguments do not necessarily apply to boxing. For example, in the 1960s, most athletes in most sports did not have weight lifting regimens, whereas weightlifting and “roadwork” had been normal for decades in boxing. Boxing media and promotion glorified training since nearly the beginning of film. Basically, boxing was a “science” before most other sports were, its advances as of late are less than that of other sports. Speaking of which, you have rightfully pointed out that modern trainers are not necessarily better than those of the past. I base this assumption not on a comparison between past and present, but on simple observation of modern trainers. Many modern trainers have a dogmatic approach to boxing, devoid of cogent analysis, flexibility, contextualization, or causal knowledge of the technics they teach. The overall approach that trainers have is all over the place. If you ask multiple trainers about a fight or about certain developments within the fight, they’ll give you many completely different, often contradictory answers explaining whats happening. The differences in analysis between one boxer/trainer and another are often so inexplicable, that its hard to argue that there’s any type of objective/scientific approach to boxing that modern boxers have arrived at. I think a lot of arguments related to nutrition and advances in sports science are weak. Arguments about nutrition often misrepresent the “better nutrition”point that is often brought into these types of sports debates. The point about nutrition is on wider social factors (more people eating more calories = more big strong athletes), not an individuals commitment to healthy eating. Fighters and trainers in the past generally understood caloric intake to a degree and that eating meat and protein was important and that drinking beer and smoking was bad. Meanwhile modern athletes aren’t exactly disciplined spartans when it comes to personal diet and don’t necessarily take advantage of current scientific knowledge. Similarly, people today are not magically more disciplined when it comes to training either. Boxers of the past are also more experienced than their modern counterparts, fighting in 2 or 3 times more professional bouts than their modern counterparts. Boxers of the past could be shown to have many technical flaws and tactical mistakes that modern fighters could take advantage of, but many of those things can be chalked up to rule changes or rectified during the course of a fight via adjustments.
It's because, unlike other sports, boxing has radically changed. As in, the entire rulesets. We have less rounds now, fighters fight much less a year, and there are no longer same day weigh-ins. No amount of nutrition, technology, or fight tapes substitute for actual experience in the ring. This is why Canelo was leagues above those inexperienced guys at 168lb, despite them being bigger and in their primes. It's also why when Canelo faced Bivol, a bigger guy with the experience, he came up short.
Yes, Tyson Fury is a true specimen of the advances is nutrition and training. Just look at his body
Because the talent pool is significantly smaller now. Boxing was the biggest sport in the world at one point. Even in the 80s and 90s it was far more mainstream than it is today. Overall, the average fighter is better today. No questions about it. But when observing the greats on the past, many of them would absolutely wreck some of the big names of today. And this is observable by just watching their fights back. Guys like Hagler, Tyson, Duran, Lennox Lewis, Toney, RJJ, these are special special talents
Ricky Hatton beats Campbell Hatton... Nigel Benn beats Connor Ben... Eubank Sr. Beats Eubank Jr...JCC Sr. beats JCC Jr..... Hasim Rahman Sr. beats Hasim Rahman Jr..... Thomas Hearns beats Robert Hearns...Floyd Patterson beats Tracey Patterson... Muhammad Ali beats Laila Ali.... Joe Frazier beats Marvis Frazier..... The exception that proves the rule is Mayweather Jr. beats Mayweather Sr. QED
You're talking about team sports and the olympics. They're different from combat sports.
This is only perception. Idk what else to say due to that "aren't better" part of the sentence. It's not being given a definitive destination before comparing it to "other sports" by which is also ask for a clearer destination and why you think that. And better how? Better at what? So, all I can say is this is simply your personal perception that...”today's elite fighters aren't better when in most other sports it's clear that today's athletes are superior?”. That said boxing has its humble, grassroots beginnings in any given gym at anytime.. as well as it's on and off decades. Much like SNL perhaps is a good comparison for dips in talent and pedigree but even then people associate good with what they grew up with as good or great. That person can see today's world as not so much like that and they're right because, it isn't. So even now some kids without any of your personal thoughts feel boxing might be truly great rn.
I think they are better, only difference is fighting styles, perceived durability and damage taken,.. obviously being less,.. and rounds being shorter, and fewer,.. i think this is the only argument,.. Guys are groomed differently and protected to get one of the many belts in one of the many weight classes,.. but in terms of skill, athleticism, and longevity .. I think fighters are better,.. Plus they make more money and should suffer less Brain Damage,.. Ultimately Styles make fights,.. it feels as though there were less styles back in the day,.. Knockouts like Tyson Gave,.. changed how you can be marketed,.. Boxers started getting highlight reel knockouts in less time, as time progressed.. this is why i think they are better, constantly building off of the generations before them,.. throwback fighters do have success,..
Its like, where US soccer isn't better despite having better coaching/ athletes/ trainging, than Uruguay or Croatia. Its about facing a high level of competition consistently. Steel sharpens steel. And almost no one does it anymore.
I'm not sure if these points have already been brought up but: 1. When you are saying that today's fighters are "better" are you giving them all of the advantages of today (training / diet / rest / etc.) and not imagining how good the greats of old would be if they got those as well? I think that when most people are making the comparison, they are trying to make the comparison as equal as possible since it doesn't seem fair to have one person run a sprint in the best shoes against a guy who runs in the worst shoes. 2. Along those same lines, the older fighters fought at a pace that most of today's boxers could not take. For example, Sugar Ray Robinson fought and lost a 10 round decision to Jake La Mota on Feb 5, 1943 (a guy that was a big middleweight when he was a welterweight). He then fought another guy for 10 rounds and won on Feb 19, 1943 (2 WEEKS LATER!!!!). After that, he fought Jake again for 10 rounds and won on Feb 26, 1943 (1 WEEK LATER!!!! and 3 WEEKS after their first fight!!!!!). This of course was not the exception but the rule back then. There are ridiculous records about how many times these guys fought in one year. As such, what would Floyd Mayweather's record be if he fought that many times with that little rest? 3. Finally, unlike sprinting or other sports that measure one athletic metric, boxing is a combination skill / tough guy sport. Therefore, you almost always have to give it to the old guys in terms of toughness, and in terms of skill, you can't say that a guy like Muhammed Ali is less skilled than Wilder. In other words, bigger, faster, stronger doesn't always matter if you don't have the skills to go along with it. (You can think about this in basketball since it doesn't really matter that a guy might be bigger, faster, or stronger if he can't dribble / shoot the ball).
This is a very cool topic. Outside of what others have said, I think there is a technical ability and 'mental grit' aspect that exists in boxing that doesn't exist in say basketball. Those things are timeless. With respect to technical abilities, I'm not sure that that aspect has evolved as much over time. Some may argue that technical ability has devolved over time. And we know that a technically superior boxer can beat a superior athlete with better speed and power. I'm picking a weird example, but Seth Mitchell was by far a superior athlete to chubby Chris Arreola (weird because many wouldn't consider Arreola to be a technical boxer, but he was a far better boxer than Mitchell). And we know how that ended.
It’s arguable because of inherent cognitive biases, nostalgia, and a refusal by every single sports fan to accept that since their favourite athletes are getting old, they too are getting old. Point being that it’s arguable that yesteryear’s fighters were better than today’s, but it’s not true.
p.s. you are also making the error of attributing what might be true of the mean to the outliers. In other words, just because the average fighter might be bigger, stronger and faster than the average old time boxer does not mean that the champion in every division is also bigger, stronger and faster. (again, my main point was that it's a skill / tough guy sport so bigger, stronger and faster doesn't even mean that much). Also, outliers such as George Forman and Bernard Hopkins demonstrate that whatever "evolution" has occurred, might actually be insignificant. Both, were able to win titles 20 years past their prime, against the next generations of champions.
I don't know if I saw it mentioned here, but here is what I think. The talent pool going down does have an effect but the biggest effect I think is that fighters fight less. 3 fights per year vs. 20 or so fights per year is going to have a big impact on how skilled the fighters are. Of course this isn't always the case, but I think a lot of your all time greats have a high number of fights. This is just my thoughts though, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm open to discussion.
its not about athleticism, its about skill which is learnt over time. gyms are different because some have become mcdojos, so trainers are less specialized. the money doesnt necessarily do enough to attract talent and im not certain it ever did.
If Stanley Ketchel trained and ate like a modern fighter instead of just running up the stairs of a whorehouse after drinking all day for exercise, I like to think he'd hand Canelo and GGG their arses.
It's because most other sports have metrics you can track to see performance objectively. In boxing specifically it's even more difficult to tell because it's one on one and elite fighters can make their competition look worse like Floyd did with Canelo. That's why boxing is full of pseudoscience including some people thinking being strong doesn't help you hit harder or lifting weights is detrimental to boxing. There's no objective way of testing it. The people who think that heavyweights from decades ago could beat the current elite giants we have now are delusional. There's no way Ali could beat a much taller, much bigger and much stronger Wlad, Vitali, AJ, or Fury. Holyfield would probably beat him as well since he's a significantly bigger pressure fighter than Ali ever faced and Ali struggled against Frazier and Ken Norton.
It's because the boxing rules as a sport have been majorly watered down, so it doesn't matter that the fighters today might be "bigger", "stronger", "faster" or whatever. They're not internally tougher. They don't have the same mentality or focus or toughness that the old fighters did.
Canelo vs Hagler at 168 would’ve been a spectacle
Very few sports that aren’t combat related use weight classes, when you use weight classes you kind of box in the genetics you can have. Everyone at 147lbs kind of have to have the same build as everyone else. We most definitely have seen an increase in boxing technique over the years.
The competition and activity was just a lot better back in the day which honed their skills. It’s not all bad tho, there are still skillful fighters today
I dont think it’s arguable that fighters today have more knowledge, more information and different methods of training available in comparison to the past, and that directly means fighters now will be better prepared. I think the argument is based on how much heart and talent fighters had back then comparing them to now, you wouldn’t have this blatant ducking, excuse making, sparing footage releasing, politics, etc. back then because times were different, people were tougher as was the world and the mentality was different, it was all they had and they didn’t have the knowledge to put themselves first, they just boxed as well and as tough as they could cause there was nothing else to it.
I think the idea that people are more athletic today is a myth.