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Right i was just thinking about this and was wondering why are the older fighters tougher than newer generation is it the training the jobs ?? take Heavyweights for example you would think with new technology it would be easier to get in shape but really and truthfully none of them really bother i want to here your thoughts.
Fighters years ago would have 15/20 fights a year (some much more) and Dempsey for one was tiny in comparison to some of todays Heavies.
The many different weight divisions,belts and of course the TV networks have all helped it get this way :)
This is just a small part of it but i think some of it has to do with the amount of rounds these guys get in these days......the older gen guys were fighting all the time...now a days guys fight once or twice a year and have the whole rest of the year to get out of shape etc....the guys in the past were tougher cause they had to be...i've heard of some fights where the guys spend damn near as much time marketing as they do training...
Simple really
You get paid $50 and shown the door,to go home to your tenemant,how hungry are you?
You get paid 2.5 Mill and go back to your mansion,how hungry are you?
I think Trainer Monkey is on the right track. In the older generations you either won or you went hungry. There was a time when boxing purses were based on who won. You won you got the bigger paycheck. If you have a family you needed to win.
Fights were longer. Gloves were smaller. You had no sign on bonuses with promoters. If you looked like garbage you might not get another fight. No fighting no eating. No need to debate that one.
It is like this. Back when my parents were kids. and probably everyone else who is on the form. They had to do chores. It was not an option. You did it or you got in trouble from Mom and Dad. Today you can hardly get kids to pass school with a B.
We do not have the work ethic that the older generation did. Why should boxing be any different?
Dead on! CCQuote:
Originally Posted by Trainer Monkey
Im not even saying these guys shouldnt get paidQuote:
Originally Posted by bcollins
Lord knows its their body on the line
But lets face it,hunger adds alot of hunger
You Got It! The money is the answer, how many fights does a champ in any division have in a year these days? Hatton for example will have one more fight before the end of the year bringing him a grand total of three for the year! Instead of fighting for a meal and a drink like the old timers did, he can buy the pub!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Trainer Monkey
yeah...you fight 20 times in a year you are one tough SOB.....1 time a year doesn't cut it....they need to drop the purses...that is why all the good fights are disappearing.....the fighters can afford to pick and choose instead of always fighting the #1 challenger....so we get stuck with sub par fights....Quote:
Originally Posted by Mar
harder lives, more fights, less money. Less defense so they got used to taking punches more, and a different mentality. It was more brutal back then, and now its more of a sport.Quote:
Originally Posted by ICE COLD BOXING
old boxers box for their legacy
new boxer box for money
also referres letting the fight to go on
They fought more often, and would grant rematches no problem. Plus those guys weren't stopped by the ref until they were unconscious or near unconscious.
A combination of what everyone has said. The motication with regards to money,the fact that they fought for their legacies rather than purely for $$$. Then other factors such as training for more rounds,fighting more often. Also,every fight used to be a war and they used to beat the shit out of each other. We get excited when we see Corrales v Castillo 1,whcih was amazing but those guys used to carry out wars on that scale all the time!
In alot of cases, fan nostaligia! I think alot of fans tend to favour older fighters.
On the flip side, I'd suggest the level of opposition is a big factor in testing how tough somebody is.
Not to sound like a stuck record for this thread, but the money had a big part to do with it, but also the fact that they weren't just doing it to get rich, but most fighters would have had to fight an awful lot of fights to get anywhere near any real money. And that means they would have been fighting on an evening, and then probably back at some backbreaking job the next day.
I see a comparison in rugby, where although the players are faster, stronger and more focussed since it went professional, the tougher guys were in the past. And the second thing that contributes to older guys being tougher is that they didn't have the option of backing out, or taking a few weeks off if they got injured, they had to do the buisness whatever, whilst today's top fighters can just take a few months off to try and keep themselves at peak condition.
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).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Punisher136
Did you read my post by any chance ::**
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smashup
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 :)
>: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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smashup
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