Yesterday's boxers (pre-1980) would not be competitive today

They wouldnt be competitive,they would be dominating!

This thread will prove that Pacquiao is better than Roberto Duran at welterweight

The one thing I;m not sure about is the yesteryear's having to come in sober. It sounds like (not confirmed) many previous champions used stimulants, drugs (coke, alcohol) sniffing salts, etc. which obviously wouldn't be acceptable today.

Pfft Benny, Rios makes Duran look completely foolish with his post 1980 super silky smooth skills, you just can't see it because you are delusional, Duran is pathetic compared to Rios. Duran soul crumbles after he breaks his weak pre 1980s hands on Rios titanium chin, Rios by KO round 3 or Duran quits after finding all of his attempts to hit Rios and all of his tactics are failing. Alright, fine. I give in. I admit that the modern conditioning, training techniques and nutrition would give Rios such an advantage of greater skill, strength, stamina, power, defense etc that Duran would simply have no chance. You're right I guess. What does he have that could keep Rios from beating him. Obviously Rios has all the skill of Duran, being a modern post 1980s fighter and also has the added benefit of nutrition, special highly scientific training techniques that would allow him to go fifteen full rounds and wear Duran down easily because Duran, being a pre 1980's fighter didn't have any conditioning to go fifteen rounds. The only reason him and Leonard fought the championship rounds of their 15 round title fight like they were the first rounds was because it had just become 1980 and they had suddenly gained the post 1980's modern training techniques, nutrition and conditioning that was lacking when he was a BW, FW and LW in the 60s and 70s.

Two of the great smaller division fighters, bantamweight, that were in their primes during the 60's. A fight between two perfectly contrasting styles of the offensive swarmer and the patient boxer/puncher. The skill of both fighters in each of their styles is easily as good as anything you'll see today and a hell of a lot better for the large part in terms of everything; action, conditioning, skill, styles, power, toughness, heart. Fifteen rounds fought at the same pace throughout. Conditioning of these guys just doesn't cut it like today's athletes and they look so amateurish in comparison too.

There's exceptions to every rule. Obviously SRR. Louis? Who knows. Would he stand a chance vs. the big guys? Lewis? Klits? But then, there are very, very obvious exceptions to the rule of fighters today being bigger (the only reason fighters today are bigger is because of weigh ins today; the couple of fighters who have weighed in recently as a WW on the day of fight; that being Pac and Mayweather are considered small for that class and yet they are quite obviously smaller than Robinson, Leonard etc), faster (who today is faster than Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Napoles, Robinson, Charles, Ali etc) better conditioned (this is just simply laughable) and more skilled.......Margarito, Mayorga, Shumenov, Froch, Stiglitz, etc etc etc etc. In every era throughout boxing history there have been exceptions to every rule. Boxing is all about the exceptions. It's what makes boxing boxing and what makes it unlike every other sport on earth which is why the usual sporting rules don't apply to it. If you go over the majority of champions from each other though, I think you'll find the '40s onward to be of an incredibly high standard that is simply missing today (I say 40's onward because it is much easier to find good tape of fights from then onward). Boxing's heyday of talent, depth, skill, numbers and great champions was, in my opinion, the 60/70s. The skill across the board from the lowest weights to the highest honestly shames 90% of fighters today and makes the depth of talent look like what it is. Very, very shallow. we talk about the champs like Louis, Robinson etc because they were the big names. Just the same though, we talk about Mayweather, Pac, Jones, Hopkins, Marquez, Hamed, etc from today because they are the big names. What about the rest of the champs though from today and previous eras? The champs from that era that aren't even thought about today, like FW champ Johnny Famechon (60's) was a greater 'slick' fighter (that term that everyone so loves to use now) than anyone today not named Mayweather and Hopkins etc. He is like Calderon is today, but he never got knocked out and he faced quite a few legends of the game. Incredible fighter with a beautiful jab, slick shoulder roll (What? B..B..But, but, but Mayweather invented that!) and his ability to slide off and use the ropes is unmatched by anyone today and yet I can't see ten people on NSB knowing the name or ever having seen him fight. If this ridiculous theory that because records are broken and that makes boxing better today holds true and that all knowledge of past fighters is gained by new fighters and thus new fighters know everything old fighters do plus have new modern training techniques, why does Margarito (the longest reigning 147 champion of the last decade or two) not have fast hands and use the head movement of Ezzard Charles and Moore? Why did Pac not have the two fisted skills of southpaw Vincente Saldivar from the start of his career and why doesn't he have the stiff, hard jab and counter punching skills of Marvin Hagler and the defensive wizardry of Whitaker? Why does Mayweather not combine his defensive prowess with the offensive prowess of Ray Robinson? Man.....NSB. New Stupid Boxingfans. A simple thing to do is just go look at some of the champs of early eras that aren't talked about as much as the usual ones. Lightweight champs from the 50's like Duilio Loi, Ike Williams, Jimmy Carter, Joe Brown and Carlos Ortiz. There's a good one. Carlos Ortiz. A guy that most should at least the know the name of here. He was a champ in the 50's at 140 and the unified LW champ in the early 60's. Great underrated champ. Easy to find lots of video of. Kenny Buchanan is another great fighter along with Ismael Laguna. All incredible HOFers of the 60's. At WW, you had guys like Curtis Cokes and Jose Napoles fighting for the 147 Undisputed title. Check out this vid of their fight from the '60's. The combination punching, slipping shots and countering, the boxing skill, the fighting skill. Both of these guys beat everyone today at 147. Just look at how beautifully slick and well tested they are in every department. Offense, defense, boxing, brawling, leading, countering......

There's exceptions to every rule. Obviously SRR. Louis? Who knows. Would he stand a chance vs. the big guys? Lewis? Klits? But then, there are very, very obvious exceptions to the rule of fighters today being bigger (the only reason fighters today are bigger is because of weigh ins today; the couple of fighters who have weighed in recently as a WW on the day of fight; that being Pac and Mayweather are considered small for that class and yet they are quite obviously smaller than Robinson, Leonard etc), faster (who today is faster than Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Napoles, Robinson, Charles, Ali etc) better conditioned (this is just simply laughable) and more skilled.......Margarito, Mayorga, Shumenov, Froch, Stiglitz, etc etc etc etc. In every era throughout boxing history there have been exceptions to every rule. Boxing is all about the exceptions. It's what makes boxing boxing and what makes it unlike every other sport on earth which is why the usual sporting rules don't apply to it. If you go over the majority of champions from each other though, I think you'll find the '40s onward to be of an incredibly high standard that is simply missing today (I say 40's onward because it is much easier to find good tape of fights from then onward). Boxing's heyday of talent, depth, skill, numbers and great champions was, in my opinion, the 60/70s. The skill across the board from the lowest weights to the highest honestly shames 90% of fighters today and makes the depth of talent look like what it is. Very, very shallow. we talk about the champs like Louis, Robinson etc because they were the big names. Just the same though, we talk about Mayweather, Pac, Jones, Hopkins, Marquez, Hamed, etc from today because they are the big names. What about the rest of the champs though from today and previous eras? The champs from that era that aren't even thought about today, like FW champ Johnny Famechon (60's) was a greater 'slick' fighter (that term that everyone so loves to use now) than anyone today not named Mayweather and Hopkins etc. He is like Calderon is today, but he never got knocked out and he faced quite a few legends of the game. Incredible fighter with a beautiful jab, slick shoulder roll (What? B..B..But, but, but Mayweather invented that!) and his ability to slide off and use the ropes is unmatched by anyone today and yet I can't see ten people on NSB knowing the name or ever having seen him fight. If this ridiculous theory that because records are broken and that makes boxing better today holds true and that all knowledge of past fighters is gained by new fighters and thus new fighters know everything old fighters do plus have new modern training techniques, why does Margarito (the longest reigning 147 champion of the last decade or two) not have fast hands and use the head movement of Ezzard Charles and Moore? Why did Pac not have the two fisted skills of southpaw Vincente Saldivar from the start of his career and why doesn't he have the stiff, hard jab and counter punching skills of Marvin Hagler and the defensive wizardry of Whitaker? Why does Mayweather not combine his defensive prowess with the offensive prowess of Ray Robinson? Man.....NSB. New Stupid Boxingfans. A simple thing to do is just go look at some of the champs of early eras that aren't talked about as much as the usual ones. Lightweight champs from the 50's like Duilio Loi, Ike Williams, Jimmy Carter, Joe Brown and Carlos Ortiz. There's a good one. Carlos Ortiz. A guy that most should at least the know the name of here. He was a champ in the 50's at 140 and the unified LW champ in the early 60's. Great underrated champ. Easy to find lots of video of. Kenny Buchanan is another great fighter along with Ismael Laguna. All incredible HOFers of the 60's. At WW, you had guys like Curtis Cokes and Jose Napoles fighting for the 147 Undisputed title. Check out this vid of their fight. The combination punching, slipping shots and countering, the boxing skill, the fighting skill. Both of these guys beat everyone today at 147. Just look at how beautifully slick and well tested they are in every department. Offense, defense, boxing, brawling, leading, countering......

While I do agree with the blanket statement that training, nutrition, etc. has improved over decades of time, boxing has not always been a part of that evolution. You have to understand also that all these "superior athletes" that are a result of these improvements are playing in other sports: Football, Bball especially. The talent pool of athletes that boxing draws from has gotten much smaller since the 70's and 80's because of the growth of other sports combined with the fact that you can make so much more money and take less damage on your body shooting 3 jumpers than you can getting ktfo. Therefore the "better, faster, stronger" argument holds far less weight in regards to boxing. Boxing technique and strategy has not changed much either. A strong jab was just as important 50 years ago as it was today.

There's exceptions to every rule. Obviously SRR. Louis? Who knows. Would he stand a chance vs. the big guys? Lewis? Klits? How about men of his own size? There are so many expections to this supposed "rule" to prove that such a rule doesn't exist. Floyd Patterson at 168-175?

boxing is about the brain we def aint getting smarter, and i can tell you that just by being in NSB

Such a stupid argument, there are still good fighters with varying nutrition and training, there are so many fighters with much less money for training and still win, how did Pac beat Ledwaba? How did Martinez almost decision Williams in the first fight?

Take out "pre-1980" and add "pre-1960". Then I would agree. Pre-1960's still includes the 50's and the 40's. Sugar Ray Robinson? Archie Moore? Joe Louis? Ezzard Charles? Harold Johnson? I wouldn't be surprised if a Lloyd Marshall did a job on most of today's middles:

Please. Everyone knows that on New Years Day 1980 a phenomenon happened and all boxers suddenly completely changed, they were much fitter, their speed became super human as did their strength, they became more technically sound and just overall better, you wouldn't see none of that in 1979, no no no, everyone pre 1980 were cavemen. Great example in Hopkins, someone who prides himself on being an old school boxer who learned his trade from studying boxers from the past. Because you say so though, forget everything Hopkins said, it's definitely the nutrition of today, not the techniques, ring IQ and such he has learned that allowed his style to still be compatible in his ageing body. "I'm cut from the cloth of Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore those guys" But surely he can't be, Hopkins is a post 1980s super athlete, he can't learn anything from them because they're hopeless and he is superior. Exactly, the true old school fighters never weighed more than a handful of kilos above their fight weight. That's why Hopkins is always in shape......same with Mayweather. They had same day weigh ins back then......how the **** are you not going to be drained if you didn't have the discipline to be in shape between fights.

With the possible exception of defensive wizards, I must say (Nicolino Locche, for example). Thats easy to say, but boxing isnt track and field. Saying boxers of today are the greatest of all time is like saying chess players of today are the greatest of all time, or painters, or say, musicians. Boxing is way more than pure athleticism. Watch old boxing, the average fighter of old was much craftier and much tougher than the average fighter of today.

A big statement, but there's just too much that goes against it. Take today's top fighters in each division or the pound for pound list and pit them against pre-1980's fighters and you'll find out that the fights would be very competitive and the old time fighters likely favoured by a neutral observer. Today's bunch of fighters just isn't very strong aside from a select few.

Who at 147 today could get close to beating either of these guys? This is pre 1980. Cotto? Margarito? Pacquiao? Clottey? Mosley? :lol1: It's quite funny but all of these guys, Duran, Leonard, Benitez and De Jesus have slicker head movement just while standing still than just about any fighter today while someone is punching at them and they are trying to avoid punches. :lol1: Try actually watching a fight properly. Look how slick both Leonard and Benitez are. How few punches land from either guy and how close each punch is. Such subtle head movement, just an inch this way, then that and the punches miss. People think of Duran as an aggressive brawler. He was pure counter puncher. Nearly everything he does is based off the opponents missed and slipped shots which he uses to then get off his shots. No one does this stuff today apart fro guys like Hopkins, Mayweather and Toney. It's why the only person that Duran like today is Hopkins. It's because he says Hopkins studied him a lot of uses many of the same moves and fights like he did. Duran was also a master of feinting with his head, hands and feet which no one uses today at all. Even Hopkins doesn't use feints that much in comparison. It's laughable when you actually know the history of boxing that people compare it to a sport that is timed and all you have to do is try and beat that time. The boxers don't stand at one edge of the ring and then run across it as fast as they can to the other side. That's not the end of the round. :dunce:

No that is just nonsense. I truly believe the fighters of yesteryear could compete with today's fighters. I actually think the boxing talent pool has watered down. Yes. The Irish, Italians and Jews aren't sending nearly as many contenders to the ring as they did in yesteryear.

How is the hell is swimming like boxing? You're not trying to beat a time in boxing you ****ing stupid tool. It's two men fighting each other. The simple repetitious demands of most sports have no bearing whatsoever on boxing. Take Brandon Rios today for example. I can just about guarantee that he would be pretty ****eful at most sports, but he can take a punch, give it back and hard and he has heart. You don't need to take a punch to run a race quickly, you don't need to have some amazing heart to get in a pool and swim as fast as you can, like you do in boxing when you have to get off the floor to win a fight. This is the single most moronic argument ever made from the modern boxing is better morons. It is just so inane. Explain how someone today at 135 would beat this? Pfft Benny, Rios makes Duran look completely foolish with his post 1980 super silky smooth skills, you just can't see it because you are delusional, Duran is pathetic compared to Rios. Duran soul crumbles after he breaks his weak pre 1980s hands on Rios titanium chin, Rios by KO round 3 or Duran quits after finding all of his attempts to hit Rios and all of his tactics are failing.

Too many advances in modern sport training and nutrition have rocked athleticism. If you check the athletic olympic records at wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics#Men.27s_records ) all records, but one, have been set from 1980 onwards. To think boxing as a sport, and boxers as athletes, have not improved with time would require some argument personally I have not considered. Maybe if Ali was born today, with today's training methods and nutrition, he would be #1. Maybe not. But comparing old timers to fighters from around the 80's till now is not fair to the athletes of old, nor to boxing. It would be as saying boxing has stood still while athletic ability in other sports flourished. Feel free to disagree. Alot of people theorise that this simply doesn't apply to boxing. Maybe we have better athletes, but the boxers of today (bar a few) lack some basic fundamentals and suck at defense. Offensively you prob have a point, but today's guys lack defense, and even basic footwork.

1500 meters freestyle (swimming) 1960's record: 16:04.5 - Michael Burton, USA (1969) 1980's record: 14:54.76 - Vladimir Salnikov, Soviet Union (1983) 1990's record: 14:41.66 - Kieren Perkins, Australia (1994) 2000's record: 14:34.56 - Grant Hackett, Australia (2001) How is the hell is swimming like boxing? You're not trying to beat a time in boxing you ****ing stupid tool. It's two men fighting each other. The simple repetitious demands of most sports have no bearing whatsoever on boxing. Take Brandon Rios today for example. I can just about guarantee that he would be pretty ****eful at most sports, but he can take a punch, give it back and hard and he has heart. You don't need to take a punch to run a race quickly, you don't need to have some amazing heart to get in a pool and swim as fast as you can, like you do in boxing when you have to get off the floor to win a fight. This is the single most moronic argument ever made from the modern boxing is better morons. It is just so inane. Comparing boxing to sports in which you have to do nothing else other than run/swim/throw/etc a short or long distance without anything getting in the way as quick or far as you can.....how is it at like boxing? There isn't a record you are trying to beat in boxing. Mayweather doesn't have some record for the fastest punch which every other fighter has to beat by hitting a bag. You have to go into a ring, across from some guy who wants to kill you and fight him. In most 'record time' sports, all you do is run. All you do is swim. All you do is throw something. All you do is jump as high as possible. In boxing you have to be able to take a punch. You have to be willing to hurt someone. You have to be able to deal with adversity with a foggy, exhausted, adrenalin ridden mind and body while some psycho is attacking you. What the **** does that have in common with swimming up and down a pool as fast as you can? ****ing cunts. The people that make this argument have to be the biggest, stupid, goddamned, retarded, ****ing douche bags on earth. Think you cunt. Use that thick head of yours for something. Explain how someone today at 135 would beat this?