Why could past ATGs knock out guys 40 pounds bigger than them...

[Salardo]

what is also true is that back then it happened more often that fighters of different weight classes fought each other, whereas nowadays it barely happens. Back then light heavys were constantly fighting heavyweights, but today there is the cruiserweight division and you will basically never see a lightheavy fight a guy over 200 pounds.
But if it happens, it is possible today also: David Haye for example knocked out guys much bigger than himself.

[Salardo]

Futhermore TS: do me favor and tell me which exact fights from back then you are talking about. Because it did not happen often that ATGs from back then were knocking out top level fighters who were 40 pounds heavier. That is like a welterweight knocking out a heavyweight by pre-cruiserweight standards, which almost never happened.

[res]

To start with if you had read clearly you would have ascertained that I said that my point was obvious, not the truth of my point. If you haven't the decency and intelligence to actually read and understand what someone has actually said then how can you attempt to criticize that same thing? Therefore this entire post is predicated on a misreading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I'll offer a response even though most of what you have written is a gross misunderstanding of this entire topic.

1. At no point did I ever claim that just being a better athlete necessarily makes you a better boxer. That point is actually true of pretty much every sport.

2. I see I actually have to spell out my point about Jesse Owens and Usain Bolt. The point was that there has clearly been an improvement in sprinting over time but if we did not have a timing instrument then I suspect there would be plenty of people talking about Owens being faster. The reason being is that people seem to romanticize the figures of the past, act as if they are somehow better, greater and more perfect than currect people. Many of you guys and boxing writers engage in the boxing equivalent of Hesiod or Ovid's ages of man. How we have fallen from a golden age.

3. Let me re-iterate: athleticism is a necessary condition of boxing skill, how could any boxer master the various skills in boxing without athleticism? What do you think is one of the key differences between a mediocre fighter and a good or great one? That one trainer simply taught more skills to the good or great fighter? Sure there are many other factors involved, including mental ones, but they exist in other sports too.

4. Again to re-iterate that with population growth then ceteris paribus we should see an increase in quality. The world doesn't work under ceteris paribus conditions and there are a host of different factors that could easily counteract the effects of population growth. However with my eyes I do not see the decline in boxing quality.

Why did you bother to respond to Benny again, you had nothing else to add; or any rebuttals for him.

[Humean]

Why did you bother to respond to Benny again, you had nothing else to add; or any rebuttals for him.

I did, read again.