What was the third best era for heavyweights?

[BattlingNelson]

Re the Burley remark I was speaking in the generic regarding your statement. Why a fighter might want to change his style. Not that it applies to the 'Russian.'

Yeah. Your comment was irrelevant as I said.

Yes Wald packed stadiums in Germany and I suspect the money was big. But going by the style of most European boxers over the decades it seems that European fans are easier to please.

Is it too weird for me to compare Tyson to American football as Wald is to soccer? Europeans seem to be a less demanding audience, or possibilty a more sophisticated one. But Americans bore easy.

Yes. its too weird a comparison.

What kind of money could he have pulled in if he had been exciting - a $100,000,000 a fight?

Yeah we can speculate how much more money he would have generated if he achieved mainstream popularity in the US. It would clearly have made him even richer.

[BattlingNelson]

You must have missed his corrupt decision win against Holyfield, and his arguable wins vs Ruiz and Donald. Value made Carnera look like Benny Leonard. The only reason he was top 5 is because there era was so weak. Thank for helping make that argument.

As if controversial decisions doesn't come to any top fighter tsk tsk....

And personally I don't care about your eye test and interpretation thereoff.

[BattlingNelson]

Ill number the points so its easy to see what I am responding to.

1. fighters fought more rounds, more fights, and generally started at an earlier age fighting for money (professionally). Just look at the amount of fights& rounds fought. Even crossovering age regarding amatuers, look at the amount of rounds per a fight. I would argue it is in the math. You could argue that amateur fights are such that fighters started at a similar age... perhaps, I can concede that point... But in those days given attitudes about children and such, there was no problem with youngsters fighting, as there would be today, so I tend to doubt fighters in the ammys started at the same ages, but... I can't prove it lol

I think a few of the very old-timers fought many, many times more individually than modern fighters that's for sure. A lot of those fights was against the same men over and over again though and by looking at the whole picture, you'd see that there's a gigantic leap in number of fights and professional rounds fought today than 50 or 100 years ago and that's without counting AM. That's not a debate.

Whatever. Basically your claim is, if I understand correctly, that fighters long long ago were better than modern fighters because they fought more often and the fights where longer?

If you are indeed correct, say the top 10 HW's of a certain era fought more times (or rounds?) than another era then the era with the most yearly fights (regardless of opposition), would be the better era. Is that your claim? If so that can be calculated.

2. At that time in history America was boxing central and there were many gyms and trainers. There simply was not as much of an international presence. The sport was relatively new, coming from England where you had fencing schools initially that cohosted boxing, then athletic clubs. The proof is in the amount of fighters that were second generation Americans as compared to Danes, Cubans, ect. Most fighters were from the United States... They were at different times; ***ish, Irish, Italian. but... the ***s were not from Israel lol,more like Canarsie Brooklyn.

Yes, but you claimed that there was more gyms in the old days than today. I beg to differ.

3. What if? what if the Chinese had developed Gunpowder for firearms? We might all be speaking Chinese to each other...Or if India had rolled out dough for bread, and it went through a shredder and by accident noodles were produced? india would have noodles in its cuisine! To me eastern European fighters were following the same trajectory as every other ethnic group... at any time in boxing some ethnic group would enter the mix, and produce professional fighters. but these fighters settled in and today they are training in the same gyms as other fighters traditionally did. I do concede that some talent was lost because of the Communist Bloc. That includes Eastern Euro and especially Cuba, but I don't think this hypothetical means that we would have had more talent in any more meaningful way than thinking "If the Irish potatoe famine didn't happen we would have never had incredible irish fighters... Boxing changes for sure, but what ethnic group moves to the top is imo purely random sociological hardships and their affect on people.

In other words, to say that the sudden influx of talented fighters from the globe produced better fighters does not make sense to me. The reason being boxing has always had influxes.

Clearly wrong. The fact that the eastern bloc didn't turn pro meant that the pro ranks didn't know the style of those fighters and they went on to pay for that lack of knowledge later.

]


4. U can't prove a negative...In other words, I cannot prove to you that having more people around does not improve talent.

In the capitalistic world we know that competion ensures better products than lack of competition. I see no reason why it isnt analogue to sports.

I can site to you what the mechanism for creating talented fighters does and does not do... Why is it that China and India do not dominate every sporting event? They have more people by far than any other place. Technically speaking because of genetic diversity India and China have the strongest, fastest, smartest people around... its because of the numbers... But there is a fallicy here; lets also tale Africa which has the most genetic diversity of any continent... Africa has some of the tallest, shortest, fastest, slowest people in the world. What the above tells me is that just having more potential does not equal automatic mathmatical odds demonstrated through superior athletes.

It's about tradition. If these countries have no tradition for a particular sport these countries have no chance of dominating. Take badminton for example. Nobody plays in the US. In denmark it's a huge sport and denmark would whip the best yanks any day of the week. That's simply because there is a tradition for that sport.

I fact the talent pool for men who can punch in the face well enough to be a great fighter is such, that there is a lot more to it than simple numbers. Having great fighters depends on how fighters are trained, what expectations are held for performance and a system that is able to secure the most talented individuals. Its much more than just more inclusion.

As far as being skewed... The skew for me is in watching performance and seeing what skills are displayed. I tend to think that the amatuer style is a hindrence to fighters developing as professionals. But I say this with some real caveats: Amatuer skill is great, if a fighter is able to transition to developing a more well rounded approach as a professional. But fighting for most of one's career as an amatuer, even a great one, and not changing, making a transition to professional methods is a hinderance. YOu see it because you see a lack of many fundamental skills fighters had in the past, and that so called throw back fighters maintain.

Hmmm... Are you now saying that its what you see that determines which era is the best? Your eye-test? Really?

[BattlingNelson]

you have to consider the quality of the opposition.

What about that quality opposition. Please elaborate so I can understand your point.

[BattlingNelson]

What does Wlad shutting Byrd out have to do with Vits not rematching him? This goes right back to the argument that it's a weak era because the Klits had to tag team it instead of cleaning up their own unfinished business. Shoulder surgery. 7 months later he was fighting Hoffman. A month later Wlad fought Byrd for the first time. Are you telling me Vittles couldn't have gotten that rematch had he wanted it?

They didn't HAVE to tag team. It was about business. The money was in germany where the klits recided. Byrd got good money fighting Wlad and the public loved it. I'm sure that Vitali 3 months prior to the Hoffman bout didn't know if he could ever fight effectively again hence ruling out a return against Byrd on the date you suggest.

And how you get this to be 'evidence' of a 'weak era' is beyond me.

[QueensburyRules]

You live in your own world... it is called crazytown.

- -Sweet species bonding to see U resident swine coalescing for a good wallow in U sty, but I'd add Big George was 12-3, 8 KO for the 90s from ages 41-48, a 53% KO%, a better overall record than Tyson.

The Boxrec world. Ever hear of it amidst U grunting and squealing and soiling U wallow?

[JAB5239]

They didn't HAVE to tag team. It was about business. The money was in germany where the klits recided. Byrd got good money fighting Wlad and the public loved it. I'm sure that Vitali 3 months prior to the Hoffman bout didn't know if he could ever fight effectively again hence ruling out a return against Byrd on the date you suggest.

And how you get this to be 'evidence' of a 'weak era' is beyond me.

Ok, you say they didn't need to tag team and Byrd got good money fighting Wlad, right? So why did Wlad need to rematch Byrd after he clearly dominated him the first time, yet Vits never rematched him after quitting? The money was there as you've said. They were ranked closely for years after. It's beyond me why Wlad needed to rematch him but Vits didn't. Why wouldn't a fighter who lost seek a rematch, but a fighter who dominated sought one instead? That really makes sense to you?

[Willie Pep 229]

Yeah. Your comment was irrelevant as I said.

Yes. its too weird a comparison.

Yeah we can speculate how much more money he would have generated if he achieved mainstream popularity in the US. It would clearly have made him even richer.

That was an unnecessarily rude reply. I guess politeness just isn't popular any more. Mocking people is the really cool thing to do today; do you have a Twitter account, it seems you should?

[BattlingNelson]

Ok, you say they didn't need to tag team and Byrd got good money fighting Wlad, right? So why did Wlad need to rematch Byrd after he clearly dominated him the first time, yet Vits never rematched him after quitting? The money was there as you've said. They were ranked closely for years after. It's beyond me why Wlad needed to rematch him but Vits didn't. Why wouldn't a fighter who lost seek a rematch, but a fighter who dominated sought one instead? That really makes sense to you?

Plenty of top fighters didnt fight rematches to avenge losses, so I don't put much weight on it myself. I cant remember the timeline and cannot be arsed to check out whether a return made sense or not at any particular point in their careers. Furthermore it's not relevant to the topic at hand.

Unless of course you somehow see this lack of a rematch as a proof of a weak era. But surely you dont?

[BattlingNelson]

That was an unnecessarily rude reply. I guess politeness just isn't popular any more. Mocking people is the really cool thing to do today; do you have a Twitter account, it seems you should?

Accept my apology. I didn't mean to come out rude. I may have faultily taken offense to what I read as mocking and ridiculing of european sports and fans.