Why todays era is better than past eras. Discussion.

[ShoulderRoll]

Look, the boxing scene today is very different from the 50s. Back then everything had to do with the US. Take The Ring's heavyweight rankings from 1955: The world champ plus the top 10 contenders were ALL Americans! That's the top 11 heavyweights in the world all coming from the US! During the whole decade there were 21 heavyweight title fights... each and every one taking place in the US, and all but 3 all-American affairs. In The Ring's 2016 heavyweight rankings 6 different nations are represented.

The obvious difference between now and the 50s, is that boxing no longer is an almost exclusive American affair - but is spread out all over the world. Many Americans take the view, that this must mean a slump in interest, and that boxing isn't what it used to be. That sports such as baseball and NFL are taking away the attention from boxing. What they forget, is that there's a world outside the US. A world where 95% of this planet's inhabitants live. You know, those 95% that aren't interested in baseball, and have no clue who Tom Brady is! In that part of the world, boxing is not just doing ok; it has been growing rapidly over the past several decades.

Secondly the popularity of 'boxing' in the US in the first half of the twentieth century is often grossly overstated because really what was popular on the wider national scale was the heavyweight championship and therefore the heavyweight champion rather than boxing in general.

I think I'm starting to see what one of the stumbling blocks might be for you guys. Giving credit to past eras as being better would be giving too much credit to the good ol' USA.

But it is what it is, even Georges Carpentier wrote in the early part of the twentieth century that Americans were revolutionizing boxing with our developments in the art of infighting. And from there we just kept right on tinkering, the number of active fighters and trainers competing with each other back then resulted in a boxing IQ that eventually was very refined and at an extremely high level.

Once the popularity of the sport started to wane we gradually begin to lose a lot of that knowledge. We haven't regained it and I don't see anything from the international boxing contingent that makes me think they have either...although to their credit they do seem to have preserved some bits of it, see Golovkin and the lost art of shifting for example.

Do I think that boxing being practiced more and more on a worldwide scale will have an effect on the sport? Sure. Especially if the competition is fierce among a huge number of competitors. Because that's exactly why boxing flourished here in the States.

But while the ingredients for another golden age are there it hasn't happened just yet.

[Fury4daWIN]

Other than some weird scenario where a boxer has put money on his opponent, or his life has been threatened if he doesn't take a dive... give me one good reason why a boxer would enter a world title fight, and NOT wish he came out victorious.

Of course every boxer wishes he could come out victorious. They just aren't prepared to put in the effort to make that a reality, more times than not. How else do you explain the slew of apathetic slobs that have graced the world title stage in recent years?

Solis, Peter, Arreola, Charr, Stiverne, Chagaev, Molina, Martin, Breazeale, Ruiz... all of these fighters turned up to world title bouts in shocking condition, or in the case of Martin didn't show up at all. So how about you give me one good reason why a fighter isn't prepared to work their butt off to get their hands on a piece of the belt?

[Bundana]

So how about you give me one good reason why a fighter isn't prepared to work their butt off to get their hands on a piece of the belt?

Well, they are clearly not dedicated enough to put in the effort necessary to compete at the highest level. I thought that was obvious!

But that's not the same as not caring at all about whether you win or lose.

[BattlingNelson]

Well, they are clearly not dedicated enough to put in the effort necessary to compete at the highest level. I thought that was obvious!

But that's not the same as not caring at all about whether you win or lose.

Several challengers from the past has shown up in appauling conditions also. Think Duran, Douglas and many, many more just coming in for the paycheck. It's in no way a new phenomenon.

[Bundana]

I think I'm starting to see what one of the stumbling blocks might be for you guys. Giving credit to past eras as being better would be giving too much credit to the good ol' USA.

But it is what it is, even Georges Carpentier wrote in the early part of the twentieth century that Americans were revolutionizing boxing with our developments in the art of infighting. And from there we just kept right on tinkering, the number of active fighters and trainers competing with each other back then resulted in a boxing IQ that eventually was very refined and at an extremely high level.

Once the popularity of the sport started to wane we gradually begin to lose a lot of that knowledge. We haven't regained it and I don't see anything from the international boxing contingent that makes me think they have either...although to their credit they do seem to have preserved some bits of it, see Golovkin and the lost art of shifting for example.

Do I think that boxing being practiced more and more on a worldwide scale will have an effect on the sport? Sure. Especially if the competition is fierce among a huge number of competitors. Because that's exactly why boxing flourished here in the States.

But while the ingredients for another golden age are there it hasn't happened just yet.

Good post!

... though I can't say, I agree with the part about people not wanting to give the US credit for having influenced and revolutionized the sport over many, many years, more than any other country. That would be a very childish standpoint, and I like to think most posters here are more sensible than that.

[Fury4daWIN]

Well, they are clearly not dedicated enough to put in the effort necessary to compete at the highest level. I thought that was obvious!

But that's not the same as not caring at all about whether you win or lose.

I'd say it's pretty obvious that if you aren't prepared to put in the work in the gym then at some level you don't care about the outcome. It's not an either or thing. There are levels of desire.

[Humean]

I think I'm starting to see what one of the stumbling blocks might be for you guys. Giving credit to past eras as being better would be giving too much credit to the good ol' USA.

But it is what it is, even Georges Carpentier wrote in the early part of the twentieth century that Americans were revolutionizing boxing with our developments in the art of infighting. And from there we just kept right on tinkering, the number of active fighters and trainers competing with each other back then resulted in a boxing IQ that eventually was very refined and at an extremely high level.

Once the popularity of the sport started to wane we gradually begin to lose a lot of that knowledge. We haven't regained it and I don't see anything from the international boxing contingent that makes me think they have either...although to their credit they do seem to have preserved some bits of it, see Golovkin and the lost art of shifting for example.

Do I think that boxing being practiced more and more on a worldwide scale will have an effect on the sport? Sure. Especially if the competition is fierce among a huge number of competitors. Because that's exactly why boxing flourished here in the States.

But while the ingredients for another golden age are there it hasn't happened just yet.

I guess I could accuse you, and others, of wallowing in the past because the US had a far stronger position at the top of the boxing pyramid then compared to today. Another way to go is the racism and xenophobia that envelopes this forum in regards to the so called Eastern European boxers becoming stars on HBO.

Correct me if i'm wrong but you seem to think the 1940s and 1950s are the high point? In terms of numbers of fighters in the pro-ranks the peak in the US was probably in the 1920s and 30s. The number of shows in the US was in decline in the 50s, mainly because of television but that decline really was not necessarily a clear decline in competition, not the sort of competition that counts, it simply kicked out a lot of the poorer fighters who were only fighting on small hall shows for some extra income anyway. Television increased the money and therefore greater incentives to lace up the gloves.

The point is that the waning as you called it only took place in the US, if even there, not elsewhere. Look at British, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Japanese, Thai, Panamanian, Colombian, Argentinian, German, Russia, Ukrainian, French, South Korean, etc boxing in the 1940s compared to more recent decades. The high point of all these major boxing nations took place after the 1950s.

The idea of knowledge being lost in really very ridiculous. We are not talking about losing the notebooks of Albert Einstein or Nils Bohr. Look at amateur boxing and the Cubans, look at not only when they started their dominance (1960s, eschewing the American style and replacing it with Soviet methods and style fused with their own elements) but also look at the technical abilities of their fighters. The Cubans are the supreme masters of the art of boxing.

[Bundana]

Several challengers from the past has shown up in appauling conditions also. Think Duran, Douglas and many, many more just coming in for the paycheck. It's in no way a new phenomenon.

No, it certainly isn't!

Also, padding your record with no-hopers is hardly a new thing. It was actually much worse back in the "good old days". And the idea that the best not meeting the best, is something that characterizes this era more than any other, is also a fallacy. "Ducking" has of course been going on forever!

[The Old LefHook]

Humean, I think the idea that knowledge being lost is ridiculous, is ridiculous.

Does mankind make swords as keen and strong as they once did? How about casting bells, do we do that as well anymore? The truth is it took avid scientific projects to rediscover how the ancients did it. Neither are we sure how the great pyramids were constructed.

When referees no longer allow fighters to in-fight for more than a few seconds because it is not television friendly, a reasonable person assumes that knowledge of how to in-fight effectively will go into decline. Do you really have a problem with that? I can't believe you do.

If boxing really does evolve as you and so many others insist, then certain traits would decline and disappear. This is what happens in evolution, so if boxing evolves, then some kind of analogous phenomenon occurs in boxing.

THE PAST

1 More clinching and in-fighting allowed, and therefore specifically trained for.

2 Championship fights 25% longer.

3 Smaller gloves.

4 Fighters fought at least three times as often.

5 No Steroids

6 A middleweight was a middleweight

THE PRESENT

1 More emphasis on movement as defense.

2 Ersatz scientific training.

3 Fighters well rested and healed.

4 Reduced time in-fighting.

5 Fewer fighters can cut off ring effectively, but more runners!

6 Nearly all middleweights are super middleweights or small light heavies.


Do you really mean that larger gloves do not alter blocking and punching technique as well as punch placement?

Do you really mean that fighters across generations will retain their abilities to in-fight skillfully despite hardly ever doing it anymore?

Talent is talent, however, and some talents either rediscover lost arts in isolation or have direct access to the repository through an old practitioner.

Let's look at a line of poetry from Yeats.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

Things do get lost, overlooked, neglected in the ever-evolving consciousness.

Einstein's notebooks may not be lost, but there are still major scientific conferences every year devoted to investigations of unresolved problems arising in papers written as far back as 101 years ago!

Knocking someone's head off is not equivalent to finding the graviton, you are right about that. Still, I maintain things do get lost or go into remission, if evolution (as a metaphor, really) actually does occur in boxing, and I happen to believe evolution occurs in almost everything universally. Evolution is the way of the universe. Things can of course evolve negatively.

Over in the world of poetry the debate is between Metered Poetry with Rhymes versus Free Verse. The latter is more modern, and some traditionalists still feel it is not real poetry at all but more akin to prose. Not as many great poets write in traditional verse forms anymore. It follows they are not as adept at those aspects of poetry as their ancestors but have found a new way to write altogether, which they have decided to call poetry too.

I will bet on the ancients in a rhyming verse contest. But in the new form I will naturally go with the moderns.

By the same token I have serious doubts that today's junior middleweights could significantly prevail over yesteryear's middleweights under yesteryear's conditions.

In my opinion the ancients stand a slightly better chance against moderns under modern conditions than vice versa. The major techniques of the sport were already known to the ancients. Anything added along the way after the 30's was ancillary except for a few innovations. Count them on one hand of an ex-sawyer. The peek-a-boo was installed in the 50's, which is not modern. To my way of thinking, the moderns can claim the territory from about 1987 to the present, 30 years. That's good enough.

It is hard for me to see the superiority of boxers from the last 30 years. I cannot think of any reason for it. Perhaps you can help.

[Bundana]

LefHook, just a few things in your long post, I'd like to comment on:

Now I know absolutely nothing about sword-making, but if you say, there were ancient practitioners of that craft, who used superior techniques, that today have long since been forgotten... well, then I'll take your word for it. Sounds very reasonable to me.

But what about the superior skills, techniques, nuances from the 50's, that are supposed to be lost today? If we have footage, where we can study these things, they haven't actually mysteriously vanished into thin air, have they? So nothing is really lost. Just like the old pre-1968 high-jumping techniques. They are still there for all to see, but are just not used anymore. Maybe there's a reason for that!

You have said earlier, that if we make H2H comparisons between eras, we shouldn't use heavyweights as examples - because it would be unfair to compare the huge SHWs of today with the much smaller (generally speaking) heavyweights of the past. I couldn't agree more!

Also your point about a middleweight today not really being a middleweight back in the day - can't say, I disagree with that either. Though I do believe someone like GGG could actually make middleweight if same-day weigh-ins were still being used, without weakening himself too much. He's not that huge for the weight. Also someone like Rigondeaux could probably easily make weight the day of a fight... and there may be others as well. But they are most likely exceptions rather than the rule. In general, you would probably have to compare today's champions with the old champions from a weight class higher, if you want to make a fair match-up. But I'm not sure, how this could be seen as an argument for or against anything, when the relative strengths of different eras are being discussed.

15 rounds vs 12 rounds? Other than we of course all would like to see title fights again being contested over the "real" championship distance, I'm not sure how it would affect the era as a whole?