This Six: Versus TODAYS {as in right now tonights} 6 Best Welterweights. Make any matches you want. Then call them. For example: Gavilan vs Spence Basilio vs Pac {if Pac be top 6 and if he's not he shouldn't be fighting Spence} Bud vs Saxton etc. Personally, if you make all the possible combos, I think todays boys win fewer. Graham is really the only weak link in the above 6 and he might be able to beat Porter.
Gavilan would outclass Spence, and a 40+ Pac sure as fuck is not beating Basilio. Pac had some issues with Horn's physicality, and that was what, 4 years ago? Basilio would mug him.
Pac might cause facial damage. He has that possibility. I think people forget what a tall, rangy strong SOB Ray Robinson was. What about pathetic whiteboy Billy Graham? I think he did 10 rounds with Gavilan, might he be able to do something with Run Time? It's a pity that Ennis is just outside the cut cos I'd like to see him in there with some of these guys.
Why hasn’t boxing evolved like other sports? As much as I like the NBA of the 80s and 90s, I don’t honestly think the average player then is better than those today. Likewise for the NFL, today’s guys on the LOS are monsters. Boxing had its major evolution in the 1930s/1940s and just seems to be peaks and valleys since then. Lack of growing popularity? Is it just hard to come up with new ways to beat someone up?
Good question. I think it's a question of numbers. We are playing with diminished pools of talent in boxing today- generally speaking. There used to be 10,000 registered pro boxers in England alone. Today it's got to be far less, maybe 1000? Boxing Monthly used to rank the domestic fighters by the top 20, to give fighters an incentive to break into that bracket. But for some divisions, the #1 guy and the #20 dude might be WORLDS apart. I mean the #1 would be like 14-2-1 {8 KO's} and the #20 would be 15-45-9 or some shit.
Boxing has evolved but i would agree that it hasn't evolved to the same level as most main stream sports. (in western countries) There's a myriad of reasons but go to the usual suspect. Money. I don't buy the "all the good athletes are playing other sports" line but it can't be dismissed entirely. The 200th best baseball or basketball player is probably a millionaire. The 200th best boxer in the world? You've never heard of him and chances are you never will.
Benchwarmers weren't millionaires (or equivalent) in those days. Pro athletes often had side jobs. No pro player today needs to make ends meet in that way. If you see the backup of the backup at Walmart they are shopping. Not pulling a shift.
Boxers, like all athletes, have evolved athletically. Sure, you had a fair amount of athletic freaks in the 40-60s like Robinson, Ali, Gavilan, but the overall pool is more athletic today. The thing is, athleticism is less important in boxing than it is in most other sports. Skill, stamina, smarts, and toughness is more important in this sport than raw athleticism. The other thing is that the SKILL level in boxing hasn't evolved in recent times - one can even argue that skill has regressed. So yeah, Kid Gavilan would still be the best welter in the sport right now. He was physically more talented than Spence/Bud, in addition to tougher and more skilled. He was a good bit taller than both, as well.
I think there's only so much you can do with a sport that involves the fists. And because its a solo sport, theres no room for team tactics, which could be used to give different effect to unchanging styles or skills of an individual. Rejects like Plunkett and Alzado or Stabler could be repackaged into a winning formula at the Raiders despite being failures elsewhere You can't do that with a boxer. He's a bum today, but a champ 10 years ago or 10 years from now.
Agreed. I've considered that also. There's only so much that a fist fight can evolve. Even Floyd made a career outta using an "old time" style - that should tell you a lot.
Problem is that there is way too many division, so the talent is diluted. Guys like prograis and Taylor should be fighting at welterweight, amd would.make the top 6 much better. But yeah, boxing is probably the sport that has seen the less evolution (if any). When you watch the older guys, you don't get the feeling that they would be overmatched by today's boxers, like in most other sports. Quite the opposite in fact. As other said, boxing is a sport that involves not only athleticism, but also skills and toughness. So drugs and weights training probably doesn't make as much as a difference than in most other sport. And also, the equipment used doesn't really improves your performance (contrary to hockey and tennis for example).
Im pretty sure a journeyman boxer could make much better money, relatively speaking of course, back in these days. Rebember, tv wasnt widespread, so people were probably more willing to move their ass and go see a live match, even if it didn't involved top fighters
I think the reason is two fold. 1) Individual vs team sports. System cannot be implemented as is the case in team sports which is a big reason of the improvement we've seen in the laters. I saw that Irish already covered this point so no need to expand). 2) And this is the main reason: Boxing was already super popular ar the turn of the 20th century, meaning the leap and bound improvement that happens at the start (when quality athletes and trainers get into it) had already passed by when tv got ''good''. Look at the improvement between the early 1900s guys vs mid 1900's. The difference is staggering. This, imo, for boxing, was the big jump in quality other sports experienced much later. After a while, elite athletes and coaches figure out what works and what doesn't. The ''improvement'' afterward are only incremental if so. Just like NHL today seemed to have plateaued and is not much different than NHL of the early 2000 Edit: JOM, good point about the equipment, this is also a big reason why athletes in other sports seem to have improved
BTW, today's ''average '' athletes might in fact be less athletic (PED not taken into account) than previous ones. Sure the talent pool is bigger (so more exceptional talent relative wise) and the search yo find those talent is also much greater. Still, the average testosterone level of man has decreased tremendously compared to previous generations.
Back to the skill regression point I made, I specifically would note infighting - its a largely lost art nowadays compared to 30-40 years ago. Even some of the P4P elites of right now like Inoue and Canelo, aren't effective infighters. They're killers at midrange, but nothing special in close.
I would like to see if it affects young men also (as the researches I found where mostly about middle age men) and, even more so, active young men. This would give great hindsight on whether it's mostly due to social or environmental effects
Gavilan vs Crawford - Gavilan UD Spence vs Basilio - Basilio UD Pacquiao vs Graham - Pac UD Bratton vs Porter - Bratton SD Turner vs Thurman - Turner TKO Saxton vs Garcia - Garcia KO For me, the 50s was a deeper era than now. The two at the top ten were better than they are now, and the rest of the pool was deeper. Saxton's the weak link, but Turner, Bratton and especially Graham were top, top fighters. I've no doubt they'd out-class the Thurman/Garcia/Porter trio. And obviously back then you had Sugar Ray Robinson lurking up at middleweight for anybody willing to make the step up.
