Agree or disagree, as time goes by the fighters become more and more effective?

[Humean]

I've fairly recently been watching the best middleweights from the 30s to now and I have definitely not seen a decline in skills as such, simply a difference in circumstances that to some extent give the illusion of decline. The most obvious factor in regards to the middleweight division is that the super and junior middleweight divisions have taken some of the talent away from the middleweight division. If you take around half of the super middleweights and half of the junior middleweights and add them to the middleweight division then the quality of that division increases quite considerably.

In general the supposed decline in boxing is really a relative decline in American boxing. If you look at the nationalities of world champions throughout history you would see a real sea change occuring around the sixties. The American strangehold of the championships starts to loosen somewhat. The supposed golden age of boxing (roughly 1930-1960) was the golden age of American boxing but there has been a great surge in the rest of the world since then.

[Sugarj]

I think it is important to compare like with like so in a question like this I'd tend not to focus on the heavyweights in my answer.

But weight for weight / division by division I'd be lying if I didn't notice a clear evolution in fighter's skills between say 1910 and the mid 30s. I put this down to the filming of contests and the improvement in film quality for the study of the elite fighters.

But thereafter; at least to my eyes......the world class fighters of the 40s, 50s and 60s onwards look every bit as good as those of today. Ross, Pep, Robinson, Cerdan, Sadler et al look like they'd be every bit the match for the likes of Mayweather, Ward, Marquez or Pacquiao for example.

[Ray Corso]

Boxing is close to the end of the Methods & Techniques that the old school trainers taught. The trainers today are from the amatuer ranks and they don't know how to work inside or defend inside so that style will soon be eliminated! You'll see fewer and fewer power punching, the concept of hit and not get hit will become more common place.
You hardly ever see top teir championship fights finish with both fighters exhausted from giving their all! There are no more hungry fighters o0n top, once their there they try to coast their way in and out of fights picking and choosing carefully who they fight.!!!
Thats why when you do come across a great fight its usually two guys trying to elavate themselves to the money fights.
Boxing has changed so much over the past 25 years, one thing is constant one out of three judges sucks all the time! HA!! Ray

[Humean]

Boxing is close to the end of the Methods & Techniques that the old school trainers taught. The trainers today are from the amatuer ranks and they don't know how to work inside or defend inside so that style will soon be eliminated! You'll see fewer and fewer power punching, the concept of hit and not get hit will become more common place.
You hardly ever see top teir championship fights finish with both fighters exhausted from giving their all! There are no more hungry fighters o0n top, once their there they try to coast their way in and out of fights picking and choosing carefully who they fight.!!!
Thats why when you do come across a great fight its usually two guys trying to elavate themselves to the money fights.
Boxing has changed so much over the past 25 years, one thing is constant one out of three judges sucks all the time! HA!! Ray

Such nonsense. The worst kind of nostalgia.

1.You talk as if the American trainers from the 30s,40s,50s were the only people who could train boxers. There are plenty of fighters today who fight on the inside, some competently, others incompetently, it was always thus.

2. I have seen both fighters exhausted at the end of a championship fight having given their all, all the time, I saw it in the last 24 hours!

3. You do realise that there are a lot of fighters from extraordinarily poor countries that have experienced poverty far greater than the level of poverty experienced from a typical American fighter from the 30s,40s,50s,60s etc? Therefore the hunger they have for success in the sport it hardly a devalued one relative to boxers of the past.

4. Boxers would pick and choose in the past too, the difference now is in the circumstances that allow it to happen to a greater extent, those boxers of the past would behave in exactly the same way if they fought today.

[Sugar Adam Ali]

Depends on style

pressure fighters like hatton, tyson, frazier peak early but dont have a long shelf live, by late 20's they are usually done,,, rios is a great example today...

"pure" boxers like floyd, pernel, trout, etc they build up experience thru tough fights like floyd learned from JLC 1, dawson learned from johnson 1, Jones learned from hopkins 1, winky learned from the julio ceaser, and vargas fights, trout probably learned alot from the canelo fight, etc,,,, These guys peak later in career but have a much longer longevity, and overall better careers

but in the end, father time tames all fighters, hence why you dont see many 40,50 year old champs, or even guys that age fighting at a high level...

its as simple as that