Which Past Fighters Would Dominate in Today’s Era?

[Willie Pep 229]

Should we make it illegal for anyone to become a professional prize fighter until their 25th birthday?

This will force boxers into an extended amateur career and guarantee a shorter period as professionals.

Let's go further . . .

A boxer has to achieve a certain level of accomplishment in the amateurs or he is not allowed to be licensed as a professional.

This could be used to remove 2/3 of the boxers from the professional ranks, leaving only the top one-third available to fight eachother, multiple times.

It in the end this will give us less fights, but they will be more competitive (and exciting) fights, with more rematches.

The NFL today, in one sense, is a collection of (amateur) college allstars. Only the very best get to participate at the professional level.

Maybe this would be a good thing for boxing.

[Mr Mitts]

Should we make it illegal for anyone to become a professional prize fighter until their 25th birthday?

This will force boxers into an extended amateur career and guarantee a shorter period as professionals.

Let's go further . . .

A boxer has to achieve a certain level of accomplishment in the amateurs or he is not allowed to be licensed as a professional.

This could be used to remove 2/3 of the boxers from the professional ranks, leaving only the top one-third available to fight eachother, multiple times.

It in the end this will give us less fights, but they will be more competitive (and exciting) fights, with more rematches.

The NFL today, in one sense, is a collection of (amateur) college allstars. Only the very best get to participate at the professional level.

Maybe this would be a good thing for boxing.

Wait, shouldn't it be illegal to keep men from their chosen profession until age 25, not the other way around, sir? After all, these guys are not applying for a surgeon's license. You want them to work construction for 5 or 6 years while they fight in the amateurs and somehow retain a tiger's passion to turn pro. That extended amateur career works in communist countries where an athlete's expected duty is to glorify the state. That is why they all get the hell out if they can, to the land of milk and money..

I can see 16 for a driver's license, but 25 is a bit of, "Man overboard!" for a boxer to turn pro. Before long you guys will have golfers wearing helmets and boxers wearing sheet metal armor.

Excitement? Not something those over aged reds and their satellites and former satellite comrades produce very often. Why? Could it be those long amateur careers of state slavery already sapped their passion, leaving them listless automatons that punch? Taken as a whole, I see them as a remarkably unexciting bunch. Personally, I do not think the fights would be better. A longer amateur career is not going to make for better fights, the proof is already here in that it has not made for better fights already, but rather the opposite IMO.

[QueensburyRules]

- - Jess Willard was 29 as a range cowboy turning pro, and 33 when he knocked out JJohnson for the title. Dempsey beat him up badly, but Jess never suffered ill effects from boxing and lived to see his 86th year in an era of primitive health care.

Loma was more than a bit shop worn, hence multiple surgeries primarily on his shoulders such that he is no longer at the top of boxing.

Fresh Loma vs Pep, and so who you mugs got?