how did fighters back in the day go so many rounds

[Larry the boss]

After a particularly tough round, many seconds gave their fighter whiskey. No joke.

lol, i know, and some even smoked between rounds

[SlySlickSmooth]

They had to train hard enough to keep going through rounds while ringside gentlemen smoked their cigars.

[CubanGuyNYC]

The old timers was in terrific cardio shape. Battling Nelson for example, was seriously considering going to the olympics as a marathon runner.

That's pretty interesting. In the film "Tokyo Olympiad," about the 1964 games, the marathoners of the time were primitive compared to today's athletes. Many didn't even finish. Battling Nelson, who was born in 1882, would've competed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. I'm sure Nielsen was in terrific fighting shape; but, based on what I've seen, he probably wouldn't have performed especially well over 26.2 miles.

[Boxfan12]

I think they trained harder then some fighters today. There was so much science to it. It was basically work your ass off. I know some fighters before title fights would run up to 15 miles per day. Id like to see the amount of punches per round compared to today fighters as well.

It seems like today fighters don't have much of a arsenal. 1 or 2 maybe 3 punches at a time at most.

[CubanGuyNYC]

After a particularly tough round, many seconds gave their fighter whiskey. No joke.

lol, i know, and some even smoked between rounds

I think the main reason most of the old-timers performed so well was simply because they fought so often. Therefore, they trained almost incessantly. Being physically gifted, as most world class fighters tend to be, they could stand some cigarette smoke and booze, even between rounds.

[ColdBlooded]

I'm guessing the old timers didn't fight with the same level of intensity as today's top fighters.

[-Kev-]

You mean 15 rounds? Or just rounds fought in their entire career?

15 rounds was just for championship fights. For example, SRR didn't fight his first 15 round fight until his 75th fight, which was his first championship fight. I'll probably be off by a wide margin but I don't feel like Boxrec'ing right now, to say Robinson had like 20, 15 round fights, out of 200 pro fights. I know that a lot of people are under the impression that Robinson fought 200, 15 round fights.

How'd they go so much rounds throughout their career?

Let's pick on Robinson again. Well, first of all, the opposition was truly very, very weak for the most part, and to be fair, it had to be, because if you're gonna fight that frequently it can't be tough opposition day in and day out. Mostly tomato cans. Secondly, for the bulk of Robinson's career he actually fought 10 rounders. I would say roughly 90% of SRR's career are 10 rounders, and according to my calculations, that is actually pretty accurate, 87.5% of his fights to be exact, were 10 rounders.

I'm not discrediting SRR or fighters with 100+ fights, i'm just making sense out of how they could fight that much. A modern example would be Chavez Sr and Toney. And a contemporary example are Canelo and Chavez Jr. Canelo took about 40+ fights to fight a fighter that every one agreed was good, and he was 22 when he did it. GBP could have continued building up Canelo with 4-5 fights a year against weak opposition until like 70 fights, and then have a remainder 30 fights spread out against A and B level opponents, with the occasional journeyman tune up. Same with Chavez Jr.

[CubanGuyNYC]

I'm guessing the old timers didn't fight with the same level of intensity as today's top fighters.

They fought just as intensely. It's just a matter of conditioning. If you train for a twelve round fight, you'll be conditioned for a twelve round fight. If you train for a fifteen round fight, you'll be coniditioned for a fifteen round fight. It's really that simple. Yesterday's champs weren't any more physically gifted than today's stars. In fact, today's knowledge of training and nutrition should increase an athlete's stamina.

[TBear]

seriously

so little info on nutrition and s/c

how did they do it

Actually the nutrition was much better. It was before processed foods. Plus back then fighters walked places, did physical work without all the modern conveniences that we have to make our life easier. The majority of people grew up doing physical labor rather than playing video games and watching tv.

[hectari]

Good conditioning, old school diet, never ballooning in weight, they had same day weigh in so fighters had to fight at their natural weight only cutting like 5 to 10 pounds in the steam room before weigh ins is easy.

Many boxers were also very economical with their punches they knew the fights would go long so they would conserve their punches and picked moments when to recover.

If you look at fighters who moved up a division they usually fought only weighing two or three pounds above their original division.

Like a guy fighting at 147 if he wanted to fight at 160 he probably only weighed 150 but still fought the guy at 160.

Also they were allowed to use drugs at the time, I think meth was very popular and they had smelling salts and they could drink tonics inbetween rounds because their was no strict commission at the time, this was also around the time of mob rule so it was pretty corrupt.