Some Thoughts On The Pioneers Of Pro Boxing

[BIGPOPPAPUMP]

It is said that you can’t compare eras in Professional Boxing. Most of us involved in the sport in one way or another agree. However, after watching Shannon Briggs win the WBO Heavyweight Title over Sergei Liakhovich in the snoozer of the year so far, I couldn’t help but think about how different it was during the Pioneer Days of Boxing. Or was it? [details]

[macman]

Comparing eras then choosing the best fights against an average one is a pretty pointless exercise.
If you're going to compare the modern bouts, ie. 1800's up, you've got to remember a lot of the boxers in the early bouts had little regular training, & the bouts were effectively unlimited
- If you've seen Jack Johnson versus Jess Willard, think of that as a major action bout compared to most of what probably happened.

Personally I'm quite happy with the modern era by comparison.

[Yogi]

- If you've seen Jack Johnson versus Jess Willard, think of that as a major action bout compared to most of what probably happened.

Why would somebody make a silly assumption like that?

Especially when the written fight reports from that era don't nearly describe the fight as being as action packed as others from around that era (e.g. Nelson/Wolgast, Ketchel/Thomas, Jeannette/McVey...to name a couple), and in fact, you can find fight reports from that one that describe the crowd being quite vocal in their boo'ing the lack of action for much of the last half of it when Johnson's workrate was much reduced.

Heck, if you can look past the grainy footage from them days from the fights that have made it through time, you can also find plenty of fights from around that era that were more action packed than Willard/Johnson.

[Isaac Jones]

You made a typo.

Shannon Sharp? Did you say that on purpose? Although I think Shannon Sharp could whip Briggs.

Isaac