The Past vs the Present - different arguments

[them_apples]

If you look at some of the olympic records you can easily see that a large portion of them haven't been broken since the 90's, 80's and even as far back as the 60's. On top of this how many of these records were broken with different / updated variables? (aerodynamic suits, lighter equipment etc) Here's a good example where Jesse Owens sprinting record is actually a great deal superior than Andre De Grasses' IF they both wear the same equipment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jas9ff0hdFI)It kind of bothers me how great athletes get forgotten with time yet if they were around today people would be singing a different tune. I can see how a sport can evolve etc and skills can be improved (some sports more than others depending on how old they are). Just about everyone I know writes off past athletes automatically on the simple fact that they think time improves everything. This generation has grown up with the easiest most distract ridden environment to date - who are we to write off athletes of the past that may have worked twice as hard and grown up under far worse circumstances.

Furthermore, because this is a boxing forum, let's find an example here.

Let's take GGG and his last fight. He just squeaked out a decision against Jacobs. Is there nobody here that would look at that and say even a guy like Michael Nunn would make a fool of GGG? James Toney? Hagler? Hopkins? All these guys were far superior in skill and ability then a guy like Jacobs. You are all saying Jacobs is better than those guys if you were to pick GGG over any of them. This is the only era where a 50 year old Bernard Hopkins, well over his natural weight limit was still competing or even beating younger fighters with half the speed and stamina of his youth and running on pure skill.

[Humean]

If you look at some of the olympic records you can easily see that a large portion of them haven't been broken since the 90's, 80's and even as far back as the 60's. On top of this how many of these records were broken with different / updated variables? (aerodynamic suits, lighter equipment etc) Here's a good example where Jesse Owens sprinting record is actually a great deal superior than Andre De Grasses' IF they both wear the same equipment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jas9ff0hdFI)It kind of bothers me how great athletes get forgotten with time yet if they were around today people would be singing a different tune. I can see how a sport can evolve etc and skills can be improved (some sports more than others depending on how old they are). Just about everyone I know writes off past athletes automatically on the simple fact that they think time improves everything. This generation has grown up with the easiest most distract ridden environment to date - who are we to write off athletes of the past that may have worked twice as hard and grown up under far worse circumstances.

Furthermore, because this is a boxing forum, let's find an example here.

Let's take GGG and his last fight. He just squeaked out a decision against Jacobs. Is there nobody here that would look at that and say even a guy like Michael Nunn would make a fool of GGG? James Toney? Hagler? Hopkins? All these guys were far superior in skill and ability then a guy like Jacobs. You are all saying Jacobs is better than those guys if you were to pick GGG over any of them. This is the only era where a 50 year old Bernard Hopkins, well over his natural weight limit was still competing or even beating younger fighters with half the speed and stamina of his youth and running on pure skill.

An important factor, but certainly not the only factor, for why the performance levels in sport has improved over time is the technological advances in the equipment. So for example in sprinting there have been major improvements in the track, shoes, suits and blocks. What improvements in the boxing equipment that has been made have at best only had a very small improvement in the quality boxing (mostly it has just made boxing safer and fairer). This is why the improvements in boxing have been significantly less pronounced than in most other sports.

As to your claims about Olympic records, the oldest Olympic record is from 1968 set in the Long Jump by Bob Beamon. That was an extraordinary jump, way beyond Beamon's previous ever best but it was also helped significantly by the Olympics being at high altitude. Anyway the vast majority of the records were set in the 2000s. As for world records I think maybe 1986 is the oldest world record and again the majority of the records are from the 2000s and almost all the rest from the 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_in_athletics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._athletics#Men

For all the best athletics times go to this website
http://www.alltime-athletics.com/men.htm

That video you posted was interesting, I love that sort of experiment but as an experiment it was far from conclusive but I do like how it does highlight the advantages that modern athletes have over their ancestors.

I would not at all be surprised if a prime Nunn defeated a prime Golovkin but no way would he make a fool of Golovkin. Again you are using poor evidence, you are comparing a prime Nunn with a 34 year old Golovkin. At 30 years old Nunn was losing to Steve Little, at 31 to Frankie Liles and at 34 to Rocchigiani.

[them_apples]

An important factor, but certainly not the only factor, for why the performance levels in sport has improved over time is the technological advances in the equipment. So for example in sprinting there have been major improvements in the track, shoes, suits and blocks. What improvements in the boxing equipment that has been made have at best only had a very small improvement in the quality boxing (mostly it has just made boxing safer and fairer). This is why the improvements in boxing have been significantly less pronounced than in most other sports.

As to your claims about Olympic records, the oldest Olympic record is from 1968 set in the Long Jump by Bob Beamon. That was an extraordinary jump, way beyond Beamon's previous ever best but it was also helped significantly by the Olympics being at high altitude. Anyway the vast majority of the records were set in the 2000s. As for world records I think maybe 1986 is the oldest world record and again the majority of the records are from the 2000s and almost all the rest from the 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_in_athletics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._athletics#Men

For all the best athletics times go to this website
http://www.alltime-athletics.com/men.htm

That video you posted was interesting, I love that sort of experiment but as an experiment it was far from conclusive but I do like how it does highlight the advantages that modern athletes have over their ancestors.

I would not at all be surprised if a prime Nunn defeated a prime Golovkin but no way would he make a fool of Golovkin. Again you are using poor evidence, you are comparing a prime Nunn with a 34 year old Golovkin. At 30 years old Nunn was losing to Steve Little, at 31 to Frankie Liles and at 34 to Rocchigiani.

You make some good points but there are other factors as well. A lot of records may have been set in the 2000's but once again how many of them were due to technology improvements? some sports are also very new so it makes sense that every year they improve. If you look at boxing, the sport was already experienced even in the 1940's. Compare a 1940's basketball player to a top level boxer from 1940. The basketball player looks like a total amateur compared to a modern day player or anyone after 1980 even.

Also, GGG turned pro later. his prime is right now. age doesn't mean everything. Tysons prime was 21. Hopkins prime was probably 38-39. The best version of GGG isn't 23 years of age.

Another huge factor is that olympic records are often just numerical scores. All a person has to do is compete with that number. There are a lot less variables involved in beating a sprinting record for example.

lastly I could easily see a peak nunn making a fool of GGG. who has GGG even beat, let alone fought?

[GhostofDempsey]

I would rate Danny Jacobs on the same level as Jermain Taylor. Of Taylor's two wins over Hopkins, one can be disputed, it was very close and could have gone either way. At 160, GGG vs. Hopkins is close, a 50/50 fight.

Michael Nunn's initial success was wins over blown up welters like Curry and Starling. His best win was Iran Barkley. Once Toney beat him, he never had a big time win after that. At 160 I think I favor GGG, since Nunn was a big MW and his biggest wins came against much smaller guys.

In my opinion, Hagler and Toney would have beaten GGG rather easily. They knew how to fight on the inside and were better counter punchers. Toney had a far superior defense.

[them_apples]

Jermain taylor would kill Danny Jacobs. IMO. even if he got in shape today he might win lol

[Humean]

You make some good points but there are other factors as well. A lot of records may have been set in the 2000's but once again how many of them were due to technology improvements? some sports are also very new so it makes sense that every year they improve. If you look at boxing, the sport was already experienced even in the 1940's. Compare a 1940's basketball player to a top level boxer from 1940. The basketball player looks like a total amateur compared to a modern day player or anyone after 1980 even.

Also, GGG turned pro later. his prime is right now. age doesn't mean everything. Tysons prime was 21. Hopkins prime was probably 38-39. The best version of GGG isn't 23 years of age.

Another huge factor is that olympic records are often just numerical scores. All a person has to do is compete with that number. There are a lot less variables involved in beating a sprinting record for example.

lastly I could easily see a peak nunn making a fool of GGG. who has GGG even beat, let alone fought?

Technological improvements in the equipment certainly played a big part but it isn't the only factor, there are also technological improvements in training techniques and nutrition too, although I am largely sceptical about those 'improvements' over the course of the past couple of decades. I think perhaps the biggest other factors are increases in world population and greater and more efficient attempts to find superior athletes and the ploughing of vast resources to train them into elite athletes.

Boxing certainly had quite a long development already by 1940 but it was also still very amateurish in many ways, practically all sport was in 1940 compared to today.

Pinpointing a fighters prime is difficult because the evidence that a fighter is not in his prime is often that he lost a fight and you can always state a fighter is still in his prime as long as he is winning. I don't really want to get much into yet another series of posts about the merits or otherwise of Golovkin. My own view is that both Nunn between 1988-1992 and Golovkin in the past five years or so were/are great middleweight champions. If you want to criticize Golovkin based upon his opponents then I hope you will be consistent as it is largely a prerequisite that long-term dominant champions fight in mediocre to poor eras.

[ShoulderRoll]

"Boxing, in my opinion, is the only sport where the participants haven't gotten better since the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Football players today are better than the ones who were playing in the '50s. It's the same with basketball and baseball. The fighters of today couldn't even hold a candle to the fighters of the 1960s and 1970s. They just couldn't do it.

They were too tough, and too strong and too savvy and too skilled. Part of the reason is owing to the fact that they fought more frequently. You have champions today who fight once a year or twice a year. Anybody who applies his craft to any trade or profession and performs it only twice a year can't be good. You just cannot develop that way."

-Wilbert "Skeeter" McClure, winner of the light middleweight gold medal at the 1960 Olympics

[ShoulderRoll]

"If you didn't know how to fight in my day you couldn't survive. There were too many hungry fighters in my time.
It was a 'live or die' situation. Before I turned pro I had maybe 150 amateur fights. Three years later I had 25 professional bouts but I was still in 'high school,' so to speak, not in college. I got my higher education from guys like Joey Lopes, Tommy Tibbs, Kenny Lane, Dave Charnley, Len Mathews, Dulio Loi...

You cannot become a good fighter without fighting other good fighters. You can't. And there are not that many good fighters today to allow you to become a great fighter. That says it all. You also have to have a lot of fights. How could you be a great fighter just fighting 20, 30, 40 fights? You've got to have 70, 80, 100 fights.

To call a fighter with 30 fights a 'veteran'--you hear it all the time on TV--means that whoever says it has never seen yesterday's fighters or hasn't been in the sport a long time. People think the champions today are great fighters. It's because of lack of knowledge on their part."

-Carlos Ortiz, 3 time world champion

[Bundana]

Isn't it funny, how oldtimers always believe that THEIR time was the best - and that the present sucks?

[Anthony342]

"Boxing, in my opinion, is the only sport where the participants haven't gotten better since the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Football players today are better than the ones who were playing in the '50s. It's the same with basketball and baseball. The fighters of today couldn't even hold a candle to the fighters of the 1960s and 1970s. They just couldn't do it.

They were too tough, and too strong and too savvy and too skilled. Part of the reason is owing to the fact that they fought more frequently. You have champions today who fight once a year or twice a year. Anybody who applies his craft to any trade or profession and performs it only twice a year can't be good. You just cannot develop that way."

-Wilbert "Skeeter" McClure, winner of the light middleweight gold medal at the 1960 Olympics

I kind of disagree on the football point though. I remember reading a quote from former Eagles legend Chuck Bednarik that said that everyone praised Deion Sanders because he played both offense and defense, but said in his day, everyone did that and as a result, players of the past were much tougher. Plus you had to have a player completely pinned down for a tackle to count.