Willie Pep and Henry Armstrong

[Anthony342]

haha yeah we might have super computers that absolutely predict things....able to consider every possible variable, down to what a fighter had for breakfast that morning! I can imagine my kids kids plugging in "Louis versus Lewis who wins?"

Seriously though the reason why anecdotal proof is relevant is that it is often the only proof we have regarding great fighters....because some of the great trainers were able to live a long life we can consider how these men compared fighters....for example, one may not initially see much when observing footage of Dempsey, but we are told somewhat unequocally that many experts considered him the premiere heavyweight of all time. Then we can start to look at methods and in fact, see if some of these observations can be confirmed.

it turns out that Dempsey was extremly literate. He wrote perhaps one of the most widely interpreted treatises on boxing ever written. This work explains what he did and the theories he developed.

I guess it would depend on whose anecdotes we're going by. If they're from trusted journalists and trainers who worked with and saw said old time fighters, or at least did a ton of research, then yes it's very good proof.

That's kind of what I love about MMA. I mean, the early NHB fights were mostly mentioned in newspapers and magazines, but my generation can at least say we were there for the early UFC fight cards and saw the progression of rule changes and skills over the years and how boxing, wrestling, BJJ all became important and viable fighting styles, proven by their effectiveness in real, full contact competitions. I love knowing that I saw top all-time greats like Anderson Silva, Fedor, GSP, Sakuraba and Hendo and that there's footage of all or most of their fights to watch. Too bad we can't say the same about most boxers before the '60s.

[billeau2]

I guess it would depend on whose anecdotes we're going by. If they're from trusted journalists and trainers who worked with and saw said old time fighters, or at least did a ton of research, then yes it's very good proof.

That's kind of what I love about MMA. I mean, the early NHB fights were mostly mentioned in newspapers and magazines, but my generation can at least say we were there for the early UFC fight cards and saw the progression of rule changes and skills over the years and how boxing, wrestling, BJJ all became important and viable fighting styles, proven by their effectiveness in real, full contact competitions. I love knowing that I saw top all-time greats like Anderson Silva, Fedor, GSP, Sakuraba and Hendo and that there's footage of all or most of their fights to watch. Too bad we can't say the same about most boxers before the '60s.

remember something though....technically speaking? there is a record in the universe from the past, of the complete life of every event in the past...If a computer could lets say, capture all the light photons that relate to marciano...everything on that unique print, record, up until the plane crash, then reconstruct the most logical probabilities versus the same process for oh lets say Ali....its possible. We already do that in a sense when we look through a telescope and catch photons (light) from distant galaxies. So we may have a view of a planet in another galazy but we are seeing it as it appeared hundreds of years ago (because of the speed light travels).

As we speak now, no doubt that there are aliens watching us and getting light from events that happened right around when marciano was fighting! To them Marciano just won a fight against Louis! My point is that its actually possible to do this, though we do not have the technology...