Yup... they birthed the styles, created the mold and it just kept getting refined... Leonard is astonishing for 1923, yet he looks stiff and predictable compared to Willie Pep or Robinson... Dempsey, too, looks amazing in his prime, but by the 30s, guys are already doing the same thing far more smoothly... Jack Sharkey was a sulky, temperamental head-case who seldom kept his shit together, but he looks like a 200 pound Pernell Whitaker compared to "master boxers" like Jack Johnson... and it's all of 10-15 years we are talking about... There's never been a more pronounced leap forward than the early 20s
Dempsey was in so many fixed and shambolic fights it is nigh on impossible to say what he did or to whom. He crouched. Oh my God....its what animals do in most fighting poises. Its what most people do when expecting physical incoming......curl into a ball. Fucking Armadillos and hedgehogs will be getting props next. In any event.......I insist....being a big oaf can win you fights. Carnera stood on Tommy Loughrans foot and wore him out. Firpo effectively had Dempsey beaten before they helped Jack back into it. Was Firpo some sort of a stylist? Nah, just a big meateater from Argentina. Johnson in the footage I have seen at least....seems very adept at throwing punches moving backwards. He is very loose limbed. Catches stuff on the open gloves..........throws an uppercut too.
Are you really calling out Dempsey for supposed "fixed" fights and then using Carnera, who was owned by the mob and had more than his share of dubious wins, including his title winning fight against Jack Sharkey, as an example for your point?
Fireman Jim Flynn is almost certainly a fight he threw. The Charpentier thing was a sham, I could have knocked him out. Don't make me diss white heavyweights, C :nono:
I am using Carnera as an example of how a large oaf can win fights by being, basically, large. The Louis and Baer fights were not fixed, yet they went on for many rounds and many knockdowns more than any other fighter might have lasted......Baer and Louis were light years ahead of Carnera in terms of talent but would Louis have needed 6 rounds for a smaller unskilled opponent??? Would Baer have needed 11 rounds? Size does matter. Mass does count. James Douglas was a fat, recovering diabetic when his name was getting bandied about with that of Roy Jones, and yet Jones father nixed the fight on the grounds that it would be "Like putting a Golf in with a big MAC truck, just too much mass" Pedantry would lead us to suggest that Douglas was the man of course who KO'd Tyson, but a diabetic coma does a lot to erode skills.
Which means it has fuck all to do with assessing his skill-set How was the Carpentier fight a sham?? You suggesting Carpentier took a dive? Bottom line... Jack Dempsey changed the game... He was way better at fighting than Jack Johnson was and he would have kicked his ass... Guys like Johnson, Corbett, Jeffries, those guys were fossils
Carnera goes about two rounds with a modern ref in those fights, that should be pointed out... he couldn't fight at all... he was able to manage a draw with Loughran based on Loughran being a Light Heavyweight and by virtue of his stepping on Loughran's foot constantly (mostly by accident) Of course, Carnera wasn't really much worse at boxing than Willard was
You didn't actually prove that they are not bigger. You talked about average height and assumed that the difference in weight is only about fat. And while there are more fat heavyweights now than in 80s, it is not like fat % was the explanation in every single case. And even if it were, I have pointed out that people who train strength tend to be fat: just look at heavyweight weightlifters and wrestlers for example. Now it can be argued that training too much power and too little technique is the wrong approach. Or, that it only makes fights look worse. So my point stands: I think the guys now are bigger than in 80s and more powerful than in the 80s and have much more simplistic techniques because of these reasons. If your take was correct, that there is no difference in size between 80s and now, then I believe you also see that raising cruiserweight limit to 200 lbs from 190 was useless, since 190 lbs guys could do well now at heavyweight? Also I'd like to hear your explanation of why no slim guy has taken over and beaten up these fatsos. The same trainers are there, there are thousands of triers: why is there no change? And do you honestly think that no top fighter has any motivation to train, since it would only take a sixpack stomach to be more successful? With size difference here is how I see it: Jack Dempsey would have a shot of defeating Max Schmeling. Schmeling was able to beat prime or close-to prime Joe Louis. Joe Louis was big enough to perhaps beat Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier was stocky and strong enough to hang in there with Larry Holmes. Holmes could well hold his own against Klitshkos. Throw Dempsey in there with Klitshkos and see how size difference changes the fight. So, I do think the guys of 80s were big enough to beat most guys of now, and with their better skill they would probably do just that. But the change is going on, and in perhaps next 20 years or so we will face a time when the guys of 80s would be too small to compete. The fighters of them still might not look as impressive And please spare me from that "You just find any angle" bullshit. We can actually try to have a conversation here.
As I said, I use height as a proxy for size, cause I think it's more reprensatative than weight (james toney could be considered a big hw using weight). It's arguable, but unless you can come with a better proxy, it's pretty much the only way to compare size, cause without a scale, we can't prove anything. As for the bolded part, Well, the only dominant hw in the divisions are the one who are in shape, the Klitshko, and to a lesser extend david Haye, so I don't get your point at all, and most of the top hw are not really big (povetkin, Boistov, Chagaev, Adamek, Chambers), in fact they are much smaller than the average 80's hw, and they look pretty bad for the most part, at least not as good as the biggers 80's hw. And I don't see why you claim these big oaf are more powerful than the fighter in the 80's, most of them doesn't seem to crack at all (Valuev, Wach, Pineta), and even claiming that they have more physical strenght seems a stretch imo, or at least seriously arguable, and unprovable. And steroid was prevalent among athletes in the 80's (no test iirc), so I have no doubt that most of the HW boxer were using them, and were probable as strong as most of the fatso today. And I don't disagree that size doesn't make a difference, only point out that you're argument that the HW of today are bigger than the HW in the 80's is false, unless for you bigger in size means fatter.
What the fuck are we arguing about here? There are more 'superheavyweight' sized heavyweights now. Period. /discussion.
LOK, you think these supersized heavyweights are packing supersized dilzes? Or are they maybe a throbbing 3 inches?
There ARE more supersized heavies, that's obvious, all JOM is arguing is there is more deviation between the smallest and largest heavies, which puts the statistical average at a similar figure to the 80's.
exactly, so if you pick a random top hw from the 80's and a random top hw from the current era and match them against each other, theyr is as much chance as the one from th 80's being bigger than the current one, as the other way around wich means that the argument that hw look worst now cause they are bigger is not true
and JOM is talking about height only, assuming that difference in weight only relates to fat and lack of training
yeah cause guys like the 5 foot 11, 240 lbs Chagaev and the 6 foot 1 ,250 lbs and + solis are much bigger and stronger men than the 6 foot 4, 230 lbs Bonecrusher smith and 6 foot 5, 220 lbs tony tucker These guys would havee been so much better and stronger if they had engulf themselves in twinkie and gained a good 20-30 solid pounds of fat, like modern hw do, and move like sumo , while having the stamina of a lineman. but you can't really blame them, they didn't knew how to train back then, and tought that working your ass off was actually benefical.
