Did boxers fight more often in the past?

[_Maxi]

I mean elite boxers...

It's so frustrating to see your favourite boxer only twice a year... if you're lucky three times a year.

I wanna see them six times a year. It's possible.

[Larry the boss]

Duh,of course the fought more in the 50's-60's because they made so much less money, but they also fought a lot more cab drivers and goat herders.... Elite fighters now make big money and it takes time to set up big money fights. No elite fighter is going to fight 6 times a year nor should they

[Barcham]

Easy enough question to answer. Think of a fighter from the past and look his record up on Wikipedia. You will see how often he used to fight very easily.
Take Ali for instance. He was a very active fighter. He fought 4 times in 1971, 6 times in 72, 4 times in 73, twice in 74 and back to 4 times in 75 and 76.
That makes 24 fights in 6 years. Much more than just about any top fighter today not named Golovkin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali

But you will never see anyone in their prime today fight at that pace. For one thing, there simply are not enough opponents and top fighters demand too high a price to make it practical.

Not to mention that some of them have an overinflated sense of self importance and think they are actually corporate CEOs instead of someone who would probably have trouble holding down a job flipping burgers if he didn't have a talent for beating people up.

[AddiX]

Duh,of course the fought more in the 50's-60's because they made so much less money, but they also fought a lot more cab drivers and goat herders.... Elite fighters now make big money and it takes time to set up big money fights. No elite fighter is going to fight 6 times a year nor should they

You don't even need to go back that far though, James Toney fight 5-6 times a year in his prime.

[Larry the boss]

You don't even need to go back that far though, James Toney fight 5-6 times a year in his prime.

Lets look at who he was fighting

[IronDanHamza]

Is the sky blue?

[AddiX]

Lets look at who he was fighting

Go ahead, they were conteders. This is when Toney was a top 10 pfp fighter.

[pacmanis1]

I mean elite boxers...

It's so frustrating to see your favourite boxer only twice a year... if you're lucky three times a year.

I wanna see them six times a year. It's possible.

As others have said the answer is obviously so much yes. I also want to add in that back in the day there were more fighters. I don't remember the exact year but I wanna say I once read New York in 1920 had more registered boxers than there are in all the world now. That might have been an Internet lie, but it's something I've always remembered.

[boxingsupreme87]

Yes but they got paid way less. Plus, boxing is an extremely physically taxing sport. It's literally the only sport where point is to cause detrimental harm to your opponent.

[mathed]

Sugar Ray Robinson fought 14 times in 1942 and 16 times in 1946