What Makes Older Fighters Tougher Than Newer Fighters ??

Sorry people but money has f*ck all to do with it ;)

Example?

Dempsey v Carpentier 1921 Dempsey was paid $162,000 and Carpentier was paid £105,000 (so the huge purses have been there for nearly a century.
Ali was raking in multi millions per fight in the 70's too!

Put that into todays terms and it's serious money (even by today's standards).

They simply fought more in those days,sometimes as much as 30 times a year and there weren't silly amounts of weight divisions and belts with different sanctioning bodies etc.
they fought more so were in better shape and always fighting fit which means on the whole they were tougher by far imo.

The older fighters didn't make much money and often they were fighting for their own survival. One fight hardly made you anything. They fought a lot more often and being undefeated wasn't stressed as much so they fought anybody regardless of skill. Today you have boxers declining fights saying the bullshit line "high risk low reward" while older fights pretty much considered that the point of boxing (taking the hardest fight available). How boxing ever became a "pretty boy" (not taking shots at floyd here its just the words i chose to express this thought) sport where money/fame is more important than legacy/competition is beyond me. Records don't mean anything if you're not fighting the best out there and if everyone was fighting the best out there, their records would closely resemble those of the older fighters where win percentages were 80% or less (and those were the good fighters).

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Originally Posted by Punisher136

The older fighters didn't make much money and often they were fighting for their own survival. One fight hardly made you anything. They fought a lot more often and being undefeated wasn't stressed as much so they fought anybody regardless of skill. Today you have boxers declining fights saying the bullshit line "high risk low reward" while older fights pretty much considered that the point of boxing (taking the hardest fight available). How boxing ever became a "pretty boy" (not taking shots at floyd here its just the words i chose to express this thought) sport where money/fame is more important than legacy/competition is beyond me. Records don't mean anything if you're not fighting the best out there and if everyone was fighting the best out there, their records would closely resemble those of the older fighters where win percentages were 80% or less (and those were the good fighters).

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Did you read my post by any chance ::**

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Originally Posted by Smashup

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Originally Posted by Punisher136

The older fighters didn't make much money and often they were fighting for their own survival. One fight hardly made you anything. They fought a lot more often and being undefeated wasn't stressed as much so they fought anybody regardless of skill. Today you have boxers declining fights saying the bullshit line "high risk low reward" while older fights pretty much considered that the point of boxing (taking the hardest fight available). How boxing ever became a "pretty boy" (not taking shots at floyd here its just the words i chose to express this thought) sport where money/fame is more important than legacy/competition is beyond me. Records don't mean anything if you're not fighting the best out there and if everyone was fighting the best out there, their records would closely resemble those of the older fighters where win percentages were 80% or less (and those were the good fighters).

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Did you read my post by any chance ::**

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bates made 20,000 for fighting holyfield awhile ago. you realize that a journeymen made more in that fight than some people make in an entire year? Big fighters were always gonna get paid wether legitely thru the sport or under the table but i'm talking about all the fighters in general. You can make atleast a couple thousand a fight as a journeymen whos not going anywhere. Fighting atleast 10 times a year at that rate will get you an income thats upper middle class, that kind of money could not be made by journeymen of a previous era.

Did you by chance read my ENTIRE post ::**

Of course but the only part with any relevance to the thread title is the part i have raised :)

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Originally Posted by Smashup

Of course but the only part with any relevance to the thread title is the part i have raised :)

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>:mad Everything after what you highlighted in my post is COMPLETELY relevant to this thread. I said they fought more and didn't duck anybody because they weren't as worried about records, how is that not relevant? If everyone fought the best competition available they'd have records like the older fighters too.

I guess there was a box fashion trend in the early 90's which was that a great fighter had to have great physical looks so many of our present veterans experienced over-charged training techniques before with different fitness gurus - Evander Holyfield is a striking example of that - they all payed in the ring for disregarding sparring that much too but ( and there's always a but) on the flipside, they over-developed the ability to survive punishment more... Then, there's this matter that most of our brand new or rising stars feel intimidated to trade toe to toe with veterans cause they have the pictures of these tough veterans in the back of their minds and they tend to make best use of their youth and just out-land their elders, the problem for the youngsters is that they can get in trouble if they don't learn how to overcome difficulties before and put on a 2nd gear - just to finish with, Miguel Cotto took best knowledge of the R. Torres ( and so did Ricardo) and D. Corley fights to overcome Zab Judah now.

that's easy, they didn't get paid much, and they didn't have the advancements in training methods and health products as they do now, so it was good old fashion bust your ass, to get into fighting shape