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Reserves of will power cannot immediately lift a sprinter to run the 100 m dash a second faster, but indomitable will can immediately assist a boxer bent on an errand "thought to be impossible." Even with less than perfect technique this can be done by a boxer, whereas almost every other sport requires perfect technique to excell. No one will break sprinting or swimming records without near perfect technique, nor power lifting records or high jumping records. In the roughest sports will power can still prevail over perfect technique. A chess player with heaps of will power and an I.Q of 100 can never win a world chess title. But a man with bad technique can win a boxing title, where immediate reserves of will can and often do make the final difference.
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As to the question of the thread, no modern fighters are the weakest overall than fighters from any other era, no doubts at all, they don't even come close to those from a century agoComment
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Of course I am for scientific investigations of all kinds, as long as they are legitimate, not junk science, and data and methods are available to the reader in addition to an author's prosaic musings on a subject. For there is also such a thing as scientific extrapolation. At exactly that cue, guesswork and opinion enter stage right again after a brief banishment.
Salesmen always reach a little. For me it is not obvious that modern athletes are better at mentally preparing themselves than their older counterparts, or that they are somehow more adept at pushing themselves through limits, though most other points that Epstein mentions in his info-mercial for whatever he is hawking, I happily concur with. Transcendental meditation and sports psychologists to baby them, positive thinking tapes to listen to in their sleep, fans bolstering them on Facebook--where is this advance in mentality? A guy meditates with his guru or visits his psychologist, then slaps in his earbuds again for some rap. I don't buy into that part. I like the work ethic of an old time training camp. Instead of texting all day from camp to loved ones, friends and supporters, the nearest phone might be a mile or two away down at the dusty turnoff. The fighter worked hard, slept, ate healthy, grew lonely, mean and isolated, until fight time.
I still believe drugs and technology account for most of the advances in sports record books. It is not chicken nuggets, rice krispies or sports psychologists.
Epstein makes a great point about body types, which he then tries clumsily to dress in genetic clothing. The point about short-legged swimmers was particularly poignant, I thought. Still, the argument is there that all athletes across the board have somehow benefitted from a "new" selection process. No fake categories as afterthoughts are needed to see that tall lanky men always did better than their squat counterparts in high jumping. No selection process was needed, because that is how things turned out most of the time anyway. In boxing, this process has had nil effect, other than perhaps among the heavyweights, where its results are still hotly debated.
The illustrations of Epstein's graphs seem perfectly plausible. In fact, one could easily make up the spreads he graphically illustrates, they seem so intuitively true. The hope, of course, is that he actually collected data, rather than intuiting and mentally extrapolating what he felt to certainly be the truth and what would certainly be the case if he did collect data. Not being previously familiar with him, I can only hope that he is less interested in his agenda than the truth, and does not falsify or even inflect his results with preconceived beliefs. In other words, a good scientist.Last edited by The Old LefHook; 08-18-2015, 12:33 AM.Comment
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To me it's like guys today who insist Mayweather is the best p4p fighter ever and the best WW and LW ever and all that garbage. They can't use resume to back it up, if resume is the ceiteria he ain't top 50 let alone #1. It comes down to this... "oh I have seen most of his fights and he looks great so I reckon he beats everybody ever... easy) and that;s all they have to their argument, pretty thin eh.Comment
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If both sides did not have access to some heavy artillery, this would be a trouncing instead of a discussion. I am moved only by what I consider to be quality evidence. I have very high standards. Unless informed otherwise, nearly all of us would look at the world and still believe it was flat. Sometimes, what one feels he "already knows," is a false guide. Yet we use our eyes most. Eyes before memory, is a good rule. Strong impressions gathered under an emotional load are not trustworthy. Many folk are carried upwards in a tornado of emotions from their impressions at the time a thing happened. That is what lives on for them, not analysis and review under less biased conditions. So be it. We can religiously ignore the type of post you paraphrase above.
The way I see it, in the 1920's, 30's & 40's, the only other American sport that was a significant talent drain was baseball, and it was segregated. By contrast, there were several black champions already in boxing, wealthy idols of world renown. The funneling of all black talent into either the guaranteed pauperism of black baseball leagues or professional boxing, is in itself an argument for the superiority of boxing during that 30 (actually 27) year span, and must have been a no brainer for a colored man with the highest ambitions in sport. You want to talk genetics? Boxing had a near lock on black genetics in the 20's, 30's & 40's. I am not politically correct, and sometimes the obvious is the obvious anyway. The best black athletes of all sizes and shapes could compete on the world stage in boxing and nowhere else. Yes, I think it made a difference. It is one of the components I can point to in my argument for that era of boxer being superior, but not the only one or the one I consider most significant.
Even today, the most highly skilled fighters use small variations on the classic stance. I feel the superiority of the classic stance as opposed to fighting squared up is amply explained in the Burley video. More modern fighters per capita fight squared up than in the sample era. Rather, I feel data collection would bear this out. Many subtleties of the stance have nearly disappeared from the art. Feinting would be a premeir example, power jabbing another. In-fighting is a different lost art.Comment
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The example of the 40s as the high point is a strange one though in some respects because of course the sport was affected quite significantly, especially in Europe, by the war for half the decade.
Well any comparison of post 1959 welterweight divisions should include the junior welterweight division too if comparing with the welterweight division pre 1959.
Surely that is counter-balanced by the increased influence of amateur boxing? If you are a talented young fighter, in the US and many other places, then you are going to be kept very busy training and fighting during your younger years in the amateur system.Comment
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My comment were for the 40's Welterweight's, not 2010's.
Can understand logic, but those pre-1959 were not allowed that same luxury of being separated in 7-pound increments.
For example, across the board, can boxers post-1959, who flourished whilst weighing 138-pounds against opponents 140-pounds be fairly compared to boxers, pre-1959, weighing the same 138-pounds against 147-pounds opponents?Comment
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Technique wise yes,toughness no.Comment
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Yes of course, They know better than in the olden days. even mental toughness, nutrition,training etc.etc.Comment
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