Some recognize the value of a deep amateur career and its ability to prepare them for a lucrative and successful professional career. As noted US boxing olympians and amateurs you can count on one hand...
Overall, you still have people turning pro very young (Ryan Garcia, Gervonta Davis, "Canelo" Álvarez), and you still have your latecomers. A lot of people (Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder) came to boxing late(r) and became pros quickly because of their skill and to not miss out on prime years.
People turn pro early and late to this day, depending on their skill level and whether or not it makes sense for them as fighters. Maybe they can survive longer as amateurs now whereas it was a financial necessity to turn pro before.
I guess it depends individually on the boxers. For instance, Larry Holmes(who never came from any sort of athletic background during his youth before starting to box) started boxing at a late age of 19 and turned pro at age 24 with a short but good amateur record of 19-3.
No chance in the world that it'll go back to having one world title belt.
There's been a lot of fragmentation what with the multiple belts and adding all the new weight classes, but it's not all bad, and I don't think that is what has caused boxing to be what it is today. Seems to me it's in grand part a result of waning public interest, there are still excellent fights happening semi-regularly but not as many people watch them.
We all want the best to fight the best but politics gets in the way, I don't think that's a new phenomenon. And there have always been corrupt and greedy promoters.
Not sure how you define a "golden age" or if you'll ever know you are in one as it is happening, but we've had some really great fights in 2018 so far and things look promising for the rest of the year so I'll take what I can get! Not much we can do to change things.
When people think of the golden age of boxing, they think of the 1970s-1980s which is during the days of Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Duran, Leonard, Hearns, Holmes, and Hagler.
I'm sure there are plenty of other talented boxers that I may have missed out on, along with many other fights. I'm just hoping that the least boxing(as a sport) can do as of right now is concentrate more on The Ring world title belts and the lineal champions(to bring back the actual meaning of the word "Champion") and actually try to give many of these talented new generation of boxers more public exposure.
For instance, I think Mikey Garcia deserves the most credit and public exposure(in the same or similar level to Pacquiao and Mayweather) to the fans since he's pretty talented, has a good undefeated record and is actually ambitiously trying to fight the best competition available by trying to move up to Welterweight to challenge the top Welterweight fighters(Spence and Lomachenko) after he fights Richard Commey.
This is a golden age , MOST fans dont know when their in one until a certain time period is over .
Boxing fans do one thing best and thats criticise their own sport .
I was around in the entire 90's era and the fans were calling that era dead and boring , just stupid (not as bad as this era ) ppl .
When you look back throughout boxing history most eras were not great but anyone who actually knows boxing would this . juggernaut666 I suppose you do have a point. I think one of the real reasons why many boxing fans constantly criticize this current boxing generation is because Americans/The US doesn't dominate the sport(with only a very few world class boxers coming from the US) like they used to anymore(now it's dominated mostly by Europeans in the heavier weight classes) and many boxing fans you see out on the internet and social media happen to be American.
b.hop made a pro debut at 23 and didnt have much of amateur expirence other than boxing in prison and he went on to becoming great. if your friend aint motivated, hungry and an alien like b.hop tell him to sell ass and be a rent boy.
Actually, according to B-Hop's Beyond the Glory documentary video, he indeed started boxing at an early age with a good amateur record(before he was sent to prison) but grew bored of it very quick and never took the sport very seriously until he started boxing again in prison.
when americans couldn't handle Lennox being the champ.
I remember hearing stories from older boxing fans about many sorts of lame excuses that casual American boxing fans came up with regarding why Riddick Bowe got his ass kicked by Lennox Lewis in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and why Bowe flat out ducked him later on when they both became pro.