Were fighters of the past really "unskilled" and "overrated"

What are your thoughts on the idea that fighters back then were overrated and have no skills? Nowadays you'll have people saying that fighters from the past dating back to Dempsey/Johnson/Louis/Pep/Robinson era were primitive and that they would stand no chance against today's fighters.

I recently came across a thread on Boxingscene and felt compelled to make a topic and ask here. It's threads like these that really make me SMH at these so-called boxing "fans" of today. It's also one of the reasons why I just seldom go to that forum anymore. So many immature and toxic people over there.

Will people ever STOP OVERRATING old primitive era boxers with little skill? - Boxing Forum

 

I stopped reading after the BoxingScene link. That forum has never been for serious fans IMO. Never wasted a day in my life posting there.

There's nobody on THIS forum who's gonna question the skill level of Robinson, Pep, and Louis.

Johnson and Dempsey? That's a bit different. They were primitive by today's standards.

Robby/Louis/Pep still hold up to any era in terms of skill and ability.

 

You have people on that forum that actually considers Willie Pep, Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles and Robinson sloppy, I'm dead serious. It is truly amazing how far boxing "fans" have stooped to that level.

I do agree that the Dempsey, Greb, Johnson, Langford era is an entirely different story. But again, as primitive as that time was you can't tell me that there wasn't any amount of skills and science involved in that era. They still helped pave the way to modern boxing and they were considered great for a reason.

 

Boxing is a sport that's been figured out for quite awhile now.

It's not like basketball; a sport where ball handling and shooting ability weren't optimized until the last 10-20 years or so. Where you can watch a game from the 80s and it looks primitive by today's standards. Whereas a fight from the 70s/80s holds up perfectly today.

For about the last 100 years or so, boxers and boxing trainers have understood the optimal way to "box". Proper technique on each punch, proper offensive variation, how to defend, infighting, changing levels, feinting, parrying, it's all been understood many years before any of us were born, and there isn't much more to add. It's a fist fight, it's not a game.

That's what makes our sport very unique, and why it's a bit easier to compare fighters of different eras in our sport than it is to compare Steph Curry to Bob Cousey.

 

Louis and Robinson are "to this DAY" the gold standard to watch for power punching brilliance. Any "fan" who considers them primitive is literally retarded.

Pep's defensive footwork and upper body movement are still the gold standard.

 

Wholeheartedly agree. People can still study their technique and implement them to modern day boxing. They were way ahead of their time and their and skills are timeless.

 

Every sport has its freaks that were so insanely gifted and skilled that they could hang in any era. They were special enough that they transcend time.

Pele and Maradona would still play football (soccer) at an elite level today.

Wilt and Kareem would still be elite centers in the NBA today. Mike would still be the best player in the NBA today.

Jim Brown would still be an elite running back in the NFL today. Joe Montana would still be an elite QB in the NFL today.

There's just certain guys whom I would call "era proof."

The three boxers in question were era proof.

Ali, Duran, Leonard, ect, these guys were so gifted that they transcend eras.

 

If today's fighters were using the same gloves and same shoes that Jack Johnson was using they would fight very differently. They would have to.
Those old gloves weren't much use for blocking punches close to your body or head. But being able to open your hands facilitates parrying and all of a sudden those long arm defensive moves- deflecting punches away from you- start to make sense.
Those guys fought with barely any gloves, and they fought a lot. If you look at a guy fighting with those gloves and fighting 30 times in a year and think that there is no skilled...just because you are not educated enough to see it does not mean that it isn't there.

 

There's a faction of fans in every sport who have the misguided few of: "Old time boxers/players are unskilled bums, new and shiney is best!"

 

If Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were playing today they'd be chucking a million 3's

 

Ehhh, that's a debate for a different topic. Like I said, basketball has changed a lot. Boxing hasn't.

Magic and Mike had transcendent talent/skill though.

 

I think there skills were just fine, at least when it comes to louis, robby and pep (dempsey and johnson do look primitives, but as said by Grey, the gloves and rules weren't the same). I sometimes wonder if these old timers would be competitive (or toy) with current guys, considering the use of PED and modern training. To my eye, they sure look like they would, but it would be a bit weird for boxing to be the only sport unaffected by them.

But to be honest, its a tired debate at least for us old boxing fans

 

Floyd fans will have you believing that the best fighter of this generation was clean of the gear...

Ray Robinson would feast on this crop. Gear or not.

Much as I'm a fan of Spence and Bud, neither would cut it against Ray. I don't think Bud has the chin, and Spence is too slow.

Louis, I fully believe could carry 220-225 just fine if he was around today. Joe was a big guy. There's pictures of an old Louis next to a young Foreman, and Joe doesn't look like a dwarf.

Pep, well featherweight is pathetic right now, so it's not even much of an argument. You'd have to compare Pep with great featherweights.

 

I'm just curious what is it with everyone's obssesion with romanticizing the fighters from the old days? Is it unthinkable that today's fighters could beat fighters from the past? Why do we need to put them on a pedestal? The Ali's, the Sugar Ray Robinson, the Duran's ect.... lets try to analyze this objectively. In other sports athletes have gotten better. In track and field, swimming ect.. even combat sports like mma have evolved In the Last 30 years. But god forbid someone even hints today's fighters could whoop old timers because of their better training methods, diets, supplements ect. As if the fighters of yesterday were made of a different cloth and didnt bleed and shit like the rest of us mortals. Gtfo.

 

Boxing is subjective, you can think that one era is better than the other. It's just like listening to music from another era and comparing them to today. At the end of the day it's apples to oranges and people will disagree with you.

People have more appreciation and respect for fighters that fought in an era that was tougher for them because they fought more often with less pay, whereas you have fighters today only 1-3 times a year for more pay.

The sport has progressed in terms of training methods, nutrition, and more resources but it has seriously devolved in terms of risk taking and more politics involvedSure there's been evolution in technique over the decades but whose to say that athletes of those times were not as great of an athlete as today? Boxers from back then laid the blueprint out on certain techniques that would be pass down to different generations.

Think of it this way, 20-50 years from now you'll have people saying the same thing like today, that fighters during Mayweather/Pac/Canelo/Crawford/Fury/Usyk/Loma era had a style that were primitive, overrated, and wouldn't be able to handle fighters of that current era. You would probably be saying a different tune. It's the same shit.

 

it's a good point about risk taking - not only as far as opponent selection but also strategy in the ring. it's rare to see fighters these days actually "go for it." fighters are so afraid to lose or get knocked out because they know that an undefeated record is so important to promoters and tv networks. espn and the rest will tout a guy as undefeated (using that very word) who only has 5 fights. it's absurd. these guys need a new strategy for hyping fighters - the fact they may be undefeated doesn't mean shit and we all know it.

 

No. The best fighters ever are in the 40s. Like literally, arguably four of the five best technicians ever were in the forties.

And even before the 30s, those fighters weren't unskilled or overrated. They just fought to their rapidly changing ruleset. Especially prior to the Walker Law.

 

40s-90s were the golden age of boxing talent.

There's been greats produced in the last 20 years or so, but overall that 50-year span produced a bunch of fighters we'll never see duplicated again.

 

Agreed. It is asinine to believe that fighters in the 30s had no skill at all. You have fighters from way back that had to fight for 20+ rounds. Boxing has had to go through changes over the years because of the change of the rules in the ring. The sport itself has evolved over time when we're talking about the ruleset, number of rounds, training, nutrition, etc. But the science has always been around since the beginning of the sport.

Fighters from the 40s-80s would still be extremely competitive over today's crop of fighters, there's no denying that. At this point it just seems like a fad for casual fans that only know Mayweather, Pac, or Canelo to rip on fighters of the past and think that the shoulder roll is the best and only great form of defense.

 

The main changes in boxing over the last 40 years that are specific to the sport are the reduction of world title fights from 15 to 12 rounds and same day weigh ins. The former hasn’t had as significant impact as the latter. That’s where it becomes a little tricky comparing fighters from earlier decades with modern fighters who are weight draining.

The rise in PED use is another one, but that’s across all sports, not specifically boxing. The only area of actual improvement that you could pinpoint is in the field of sports science but how much that has impacted boxing is up for debate. Some think it’s the difference between a modern fighter being able to beat a fighter from an earlier era but fighters were able to do 15 rounds before at a high pace so not sure how sports science is really giving boxers any specific advantage. As X has already said, ways of fighting were figured out a long, long time ago and a lot before anyone even heard of sports science.

 

I think Dempsey was an odd blend of total fraud on one hand and legitimate revolutionary boxing figure. Both elements went hand in hand. The fraud was stuff like the probability that his gloves were loaded vs Willard. The greatness is that he got rid of Willard, too though.

Willard was just a big strong man who outlasted an older smaller Jack Johnson. That era had to end and it did.



He wasn't this unbridled savage that people like Bert Sugar says he was, but he wasn't a windmilling bum either.

He did have a stance, a style, and an affinity for actual training and working out.

He might have won the old 190lb Cruiserweight title but that's it.

 

No they were definitely better look at this dude here.

 

In fairness, that's a horrific photo of an older fatter Sullivan.

This guy looked the business, though.

 

Lol

"Fought John L Sullivan. Got badly beaten,"

 

These photos of these farmers make me think.... when did they start using shorts in boxing?

 

Around 1915 or so.

We've never looked back!!!

 

I think heavyweight is where the big difference lies.

Boxing is similar to golf and tennis in this regard, alot of the old all time greats would be competitive across eras, but as understanding of what is good and bad increases, the general talent gets better.

Boxing to me is the only sport where guys from the 70s (bar heavyweight) seems better then they were before. But nowadays the guys are 30% stronger at the same weight and also can intelligently cut 20 LBS so they would be bigger than the old school fighters.

Similar to chess, Capablanca would lose to any modern day IM and above, but given a few years to learn modern theory may be a world champion contender.

At heavyweight though it is a different story, the guys now are much bigger and stronger. Unfortunately I am of the opinion that this actually is a big difference. Hard to say though, guys like George Foreman and Ronnie Lyle were 220 with virtually no fat, no weight lifting, and minimal if any PEDs.

I recently watched John Mugabi and 'Hard Rock' Green on YouTube. Hard to tell me Brian Castano beats either one of those guys...they were fucking good and not even the best of their time.

I'm also of the opinion that in the late 70s to early 90s heyday there was alot of unsupervised PED use that could explain the abnormal quality of boxers from that era.

 

I think the early 1990s was PED heaven as the crossover began from Cold War sideshow into mainstream availability.

 

I remember Tyson saying if Jack Johnson was alive today (in Mike's era) he wouldnt make a dime as a Prize fighter. His skills were too primitive. I believe a guy like Andy Ruiz would beat a lot of these all time greats like Ali just because of his Mexican Style. Remember there was no Mexica HW champs in those days.