Why aren't Boxers getting better ??

Soccer players.. Snooker players...Football players...Basketball players...Golfers are all much better these days than years ago...

Nutrition....Mental awareness...Tactics have all improved in the modern era...But Boxing seems to be worse than years gone by..

Let's take 2022 v 1982...

Pryor v Taylor.. 140
Sanchez v Cruz... 126.
Spinks v Alvarez..175
Holmes v Fury....Heavy
Arguello v Lomo...135
Pinter v Inoue... 118
Hearns v Anyone 154
Hagler v GGG... 160
Camacho v Anyone 130..

Inoue perhaps bucks the trend...But to all intents and purposes its 8-1...or 9-0.

Forty years is a long time but all these champions are more skilled than their 40 year juniors..

They shouldn't be because Sport evolves..

But obviously not Boxing....Why ?? My opinion too many titles...Not enough serving apprenticeships and too many meaningless undefeated records...

Is the talent there maybe... But kind matchmaking doesn't unlock it..

Boxing is no longer a great sport or treated as such it is a business. Therefore you don't need to be the 'greatest' or the most skilled to have a world title, you just have to have the marketability (is that the right word???)

Every other sport you tend to have to start from the bottom and work your way up against better sportsmen to move it up, boxing, you get a cherry picked career and if your lucky you don't ever have a real challenge and of course you get the luck of the judges.

We as fans are partly to blame as that coveted 0 is everything and as soon as it goes someone is overrated etc etc etc. The 0 needs to go and not be a big thing unless your record has a high win rate against people that have more wins than losses.

Journeymen should not be a thing, some of these guys are absolutely fantastic boxers and who knows how far they could have gone but no matter what is said, we all know they're paid to lose, you'll see them fight and lose week after week after week and then they get a win and suddenly they drop of the face of the earth for a month, trust me that is not what they want to do.

Hard Work should equal opportunities, sadly in boxing it's ticket sales = opportunity and we're at a point where i really don't know how that is ever gonna change.

Spot on Derby...

The first million dollar gate in Boxing was Dempsey v Carpentier.  Heavy vs Light Heavy champ.

Dempsey had four defeats..The French man eleven defeats..

Having an 0 is great but look at Benn...Hearn wants a past it Brook or Broner as a 'big' fight...Last fight was a 'big win' against a smaller pillow puncher who beat the worst 140 champ in history and lost to Khan years ago..Considering Maussa was a 140 champ that is saying something.

Should Crawford or Spence want a stadium fight over here soon...How will Benn have the resume to cope ???.

In 82 there were two titles you had to be schooled to win..

Leonard fought a decent Price and a tough middle in Geraldo before Benitez..

Promoters are scared to do likewise....Benn should be fighting domestics with the likes of the guy who won on Saturday night before he even thinks of progressing...

Tough fight which he should win but will test him....

Honeyghan fought the Don....Had Beaten future two time champion Rosi...A respected Horace Shufford and fought a  feature in the WBC rankings and tough fellow Brit Mittee..

He had form..

Just noticed that Roger Stafford past away some years ago...Was a quality Welter from the 80s that featured on ESPN regularly..

Beat Cuevas (upset of the year)-#...A Kevin Howard before Leonard and went on to fight all the best welters from the day (bar Starling)....Ayers..McCrory..Honeyghan.. Rodriguez..  Trujillo..Most when past his best.

Lost his crack at Curry after getting caught cold but was a proud Philly warrior who carried a pop.  

Been a Champ these days..

RIP Roger..

In my opinion, Pay Per View and the glut of titles has killed boxing as a spectator sport. Gone are the days of the early to mid-90s with ITV's "Big Fight Live" where people KNEW who the fighters were. The average guy on the street knew that Eubank and Benn were both Super-Middleweight champs thanks to the ITV coverage and the regular articles in the tabloids published about them.

As soon as they started the move to Sky, the average and casuals fans were suddenly unable to watch unless it was shown at the local boozer, and since the introduction of Pay Per View, it moves it even further away from the former target audience. Add into this the various different types of World Titles - the WBA had Super, Regular, Interim, In Recess and probably wanted to do a belt for "Special Champ if we can convince the sanctioning body to give them a one-sided fight to our favourite fighter". It's confusing and pointless. There's virtually no sports I can think of where there's more than one world title (other than darts, and there's an argument to be had whether it's a sport). And don't get me started about the TV companies.

As for the fighters themselves, nutrition is WAY better, as is fitness. However, I reckon that a lot of these theoretical fights are a bit pointless - the earlier guys are always looked at through rose-tinted glasses. Whilst the cream do absolutely stand out, more of the more regular champions may struggle against the fitter fighters of today. Big pants Larry would possibly struggle against today's big heavies - Fury's awkward and a half-foot taller for example, and he's a handful for anyone.

But Trussy's right about the decent fights for the up and coming fighters; it's all about the "0" for the promotors - it's a real hindrance for the fighters. It certainly didn't harm Haye when he was a cruiser. He lost against Thompson and it was probably the best thing that happened to his career as it turned him into a better fighter.

Some good points there.......Certainly Fury would have a chance against Larry but we can't really tell with a 40 year old Wlad and Wilder.........Holmes did beat taller guys Cooney...Smith...Williams to name a few but no one in the 6ft 8 bracket.....But with Fury's pace over 15 and his chin....Couldn't pick him to beat Larry.

Haye losing to Thompson is a good call......I'll raise you Steve Collins who went from Journeyman to big selling fighting...

A lesson off McCallum didn't do him any harm..

Can be difficult to measure and evaluate across eras but in general the level of competition is lower now as a result of too many divisions and titles. It spreads what talent there is too thinly. Some divisions are so shallow that a top ten ranking can be obtained without any noteable wins. This gives the impression that there is a dearth of talent relative to bygone years.

In the US - the traditional powerhouse of boxing up until the turn of the century, the sport has declined badly in terms of participation rate and public interest. It lags far behind other sports in terms of providing a pathway to financial security or education. Few if any US colleges offer boxing scholarships and the transition from the sport to almost exclusively ppv has meant a really top down model of finances where the only a small percentage of fighters in big money from a career. Most talented athletes would pursue other sports. This in turn leads to fewer big name US fighters which leads to less public interest in the US. Thats quite a seismic shift to where the sport was up until 80s / 90s in the traditional supplier of boxing talent. Whether or not thats been compensated with an increase in talent from the likes of Eastern Europe is difficult to say and depends on how you rate the post Soviet era pro boxers.

The fitness / diet / nutrition factor is a non factor of an argument for me. Its an individual sport so that will come down to the individual in question. Top end fighters now only fight a couple of times a year so base their training programmes around two fights a year. In other eras they fought 15 rounders more often annually. So I dont think they were less fit in general. You see some fighters these days who are extremelly fit and others who are out of shape. Was similar in all eras. I dont think training regimens have changed significantly either. They still do cardio, sit ups, spar, hit heavy bags, jump rope etc. Maybe access to more nefarious substances has been a key difference...

I'm not sure Holmes beats Fury. Holmes built everything off off his jab, and I don't think he establishes that giving up 50lbs and half a foot. Fury isn't unbeatable, but I think he probably loses more to either someone flat out faster than him, so maybe a young Ali or seek and destroy missile, because his chin is always there to be found.

To answer the question - I'm sure some divisions have gotten worse, but I'm also sure rose-coloured glasses often tint really well. It's no coincidence that you think boxing was at its best when the best fighters were in the North Western quadrant of the earth.

kingraf wrote:I'm not sure Holmes beats Fury. Holmes built everything off off his jab, and I don't think he establishes that giving up 50lbs and half a foot. Fury isn't unbeatable, but I think he probably loses more to either someone flat out faster than him, so maybe a young Ali or seek and destroy missile, because his chin is always there to be found.

To answer the question - I'm sure some divisions have gotten worse, but I'm also sure rose-coloured glasses often tint really well. It's no coincidence that you think boxing was at its best when the best fighters were in the North Western quadrant of the earth.

Pretty redundant jibe at the end......We are all biased including your good self..but sometimes being biased still wins the argument.....Look at the matches at the top of the thread...

Speak for themselves..

You had Chisora knocking Usyk out in six, then having got that wrong you doubled down and had AJ knocking him out in 2. But sure big boy, your opinion of how fights between two fighters forty years apart is all the evidence we need

kingraf wrote:You had Chisora knocking Usyk out in six, then having got that wrong you doubled down and had AJ knocking him out in 2. But sure big boy, your opinion of how fights between two fighters forty years apart is all the evidence we need

Why stop there....I had Lacy beating Calzaghe and Tyson beating Holy...

Always keen to amuse but Consensus would have the class of 82 smashing today's fighters and however much you smokescreen won't change that..

Have a good weekend and keep laughing...It's good for you.

You beat who's in front of you and that's all you can do. Boxing fights are generally easy to call because most fighters take build-up and tune-up fights for 80% of their career. But I've yet to meet a single person either here or on YouTube or on the television who can get big contemporary fights right often enough for their mythical match ups to mean anything. Teddy Atlas trained 18 world champions across 40 years and he thought Tony Thompson of all people would beat Wladimir Klitschko.

If it's a question of why don't modern fighters fight often enough, or whether the change from 15 to 12 rounds foundationally changed the sport - Sonny Liston was the first world champ in a generation to to come in at around 100kg, and that was the general weight for heavyweight Kings until the switch in '82 and within a decade the undisputed champion Riddick Bowe was about 110kg - there's a discussion to be had. But "the 80s era was better because I think they go 9-0" is boring, not an interesting discussion, and again, yet to meet anyone who can accurately predict major fights well enough to think they can predict mythical match ups with any level of accuracy.