Are Today’s Fighters Better Than The Great Fighters Of The Past?

[New England]

Is there any info out there as to how many registered pro-fighters there was in past eras compared to now?

there are about 10k-15k ranked pros today on the boxrec
not exactly sure on the number, but thats the ballpark the last time i checked.

in the past the general assumption is that there have been at least twice as many boxers
and many more times as many full time boxers.

many of them were heavyweights

during certain eras there were more fighters registered in new york than there are fighters registered as pros all over the world today

[JAB5239]

-Mike Silver

More stuff from Silver just not direct quotes:
In 1927 there were 2,000 licensed professional boxers residing in the state of New York, and that over 900 boxing shows were promoted throughout the state. In 2006 the state licensed 50 pro boxers and staged just 38 shows. Or that during the 1920ís and 1930ís approximately 8,000 ñ 10,000 professional boxers were licensed annually in the U.S., while in 2006 that figure had dropped to 2,850. And how about the fact that in 1925 a fighter had engaged in an average of 84 professional contests before fighting for the title, while in 2007 a fighter had fought an average of only 27 times before receiving a shot at a title.

Nice job digging that up.

[rorymac]

Excellent article. When I started to get into boxing I was one of those morons who thought today's fighters would blow the old timers out of the water. Of course my opinion changed and this piece of writing has cemented my new point of view.

[DeepSleep]

Great read thanks for posting the article up Poet.

[StarshipTrooper]

Bumped for people in the Benny Leonard Vs Floyd Mayweather thread.

Poet

[StarshipTrooper]

Funny how I posted these two articles over in NSB and got all of one comment (a snide one) between the two of them :hahahaha9:

Poet

[StarshipTrooper]

Bumped for the NSB nitwits that are starting to slither into the History Section again (not that I think they'll read the article) :rolleyes9:

[them_apples]

a lot of the heavyweights are blown up now too..thats why they get tired.

[them_apples]

Jesse Owens was shit. It doesn't matter he was running on a dirt track with no staring block and wore 6lb shoes they know use to keep scuba divers weighted down with today.

This is the thing no one likes to look at at. Records will always be broken, yes. But sports have advanced through technology, not physical evolution. In boxing there is very little to be improved upon. Gloves are different but still weighed the same for each fighter. Mouth pieces have evolved, thats a positive. Other than that there is nothing. Today we have 12 round fights instead of 15. We have day before weigh ins instead of weighing in hours before a fight. Guys fight 3 time a year instead of 6 or 8. Boxing has fallen off in my opinion.

I disagree with this completely Jab. There might be other factors as too why old school fighters could beat new school (such as toughness and determination - and even skill at times) but Boxing like every other athletic profession gets a dose of reality.

The thing is boxing requires a massive amount of mental strength which always leaves a huge X factor, but you can bet at the right gym they still have bountiful amount of boxing information gathered up through the ages.

For example, Nacho Bernstein probably knows more about boxing than a guy like Cus d'amato or Angelo dundee. Why? because hes probably taken what they both had to offer and added even more. This applies to anything. It's like natural selection almost.

But like I said, Boxing still has a huge X factor. A lot of other sports do too, but boxing has a HUGE one. Like you can't develop a better chin. You can't develop a better work ethic.

So I'm 50/50 on this topic, I got no problem putting Sugar Ray up against Floyd and pondering the outcome, but in general if you take really big steps back, Boxing has made advancements.

[Spartacus Sully]

track and field was first popularized in 1894 with the olympics.

42 years later jessie owens ran 201.2 meters in 20.3 seconds, 73 years later bolt ran it in 19.19 seconds.

1.1 second diffrence.

could an increased tack and field population and improved equipment account for this 1.1?

how much time would you lose on 200 meters running with these?



how much time would you lose on 200 meters running on this track?



how much faster would his competition have been had they started offering track and field programs in middle and highschool?

how much harder would he have had to try to beat out roided up competition?

id say the 1.1 second diffrence is more then excusable via the evolution of the sport, not the evolution of people and training.

in comparison, by the time track and field became popular, boxing had allready had more time to evolve then track and field has been around to this date.