The misconception that past fighters fought more than 3-4x's a year

[B Phontain]

No it was like 9 I think , but I was talking once they reach contender status. Of course a young fighter will fight more at the beginning stages of a career.

Oh ok I gotcha

[Ray Corso]

In the 30's through the early 50's fighters had to deal with gate receipts and a flat fee, you needed to fight often even if you were a top draw!

Sugar Ray took a European vacation for 7 weeks and fought 7 times there! Once a week he took on the "popular" area fighter ending his vacation taking on a world class contender and dropping a decision to him (Turpin) A few weeks later he stopped Turpin in a competitive bout.
Television has stopped young fighters development for years going back to the New York borrows fight cards being on TV. People began staying home and watch TV instead of supporting the live shows. The non main event fighters suffered and the novice pro's pay remained next to nothing for years to come. A 4 rounder that paid 150 bucks in the 50's only paid 250.-300. in the late 70's. (northeast)
All the major fight towns had at least 2 shows per week, that's 5 to 6 cities running 30 to 35 shows monthly. That dropped in half in the mid sixties and then a monthly show in each city by the mid seventies.
If the shows aren't there it's tough to develop a fighter and that's a reason for less fights to a seasoned vet unless your a road warrior trial horse! The trial horse can work weekly all over the world if his matchmaker handles his record accordingly.

Nothing wrong with a Champ fighting a ten round non titled fight in between two defenses a year. Yes you take a chance of injury or defeat but a defeat gives you a viable opponent to fight adding the title in.
Today promoters, matchmakers, managers and fighters prefer the "safe" routine. It's all about the big numbers not much to do with sport or learning.

Ray

[Motorcity Cobra]

Interesting that you took Hearns and Leonard, but chose to exclude Duran and Haggler whose names belong in the same sentence. Why? Because the fact that they fought 3 or 4 times a year MANY times discredits your point.

I don't really have a dog in this fight but if you're going to prove a point, don't be so obviously selective because it kills your credibility.

A lot of it is due to money. Duran was horrible with money. Towards the end of his career he had to keep fighting to stay out of jail for non payment of child support. Hagler was fighting anybody and anywhere because he wasn't getting paid as much as Leonard and Hearns. I always go back to this video of Robert Garcia talking about when he was signed to Don King and he told King he isn't fighting as much as his contract says he should be fighting

[RSBonos]

I think you are looking at too small a sample size. I think if you looked at the top ten P4P from today, 15 years ago & 30 years ago you'd see more fights per year in their previous 12 month period the further you go back.

This was a years ago, but there was boxrec data which showed that there were more fights in the modern era compared to anything after 1960. That's when TV started becoming common and club shows suffered. But overall outside of the 40's and especially the 20's, we have a similar amount of fights, even when you count the info that boxrec might have missed from yesteryear.