I can't remember seeing a better fighter than prime Floyd Mayweather Jr

[Rantcatrat]

There were trainers, like Ray Arcel, who saw fighters from the 20's up to the 90's. They had the historical perspective to be able to analyze contemporary greatness. There are others like him.

dont know what you mean

He means that to analyse the best fighters you'd have to ask an expert who has been there through a long time period. A trainer like Ray Arcel would have seen it all. Hard to argue with that.

However, just because Ray Arcel says some dude from the 30s would whip all the current guys means absolutely nothing.

In this modern day, with the benefit of seeing every single fight take place, great trainers and fighters consistently get fights wrong. So why exactly should their "opinion" hold so much weight when comparing fighters from completely different generations?

Boxing is the only sport in the world that apparently stopped evolving and went backwards. Somehow, modern fighters lost the ability to correctly move their arms and legs ().

There were many more boxers/trainers/experts on boxing between 1920 and 1960 than there are now. There were many more places to learn the craft and refine one's approach. Think about it. In the worst ghetto of Chicago, a den of organized crime, in the first 40 years of the last century, boxing was the most popular sport. There were boxing gyms all over the place. There were fight cards multiple times every week. The biggest stars in the United States weren't football players or basketball players, they were boxers. When they held a lightweight tournament to see who would inherit Benny Leonard's crown in the twenties, 50 people from all over world showed up to fight in it. It only took 6 months to crown a new champion. So, yes, I actually believe boxing has regressed to an extent. There is just no way it couldn't.

To me it's a bit remarkable to think that someone like Jack Dempsey could author an intricate manual on boxing:

Championship Fighting : Jack Dempsey : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

There is just no way that someone who thought and experimented so much with boxing with the challengers he faced isn't a legend. How many guys that you watch on FNF, Showtime, or HBO even know half those tricks?

This is not to put down our generation of fighters at all. There are absolutely still great talents out there. I just think there aren't as many of them, and, thus,l it's harder to determine how good they really are.

I think that's a bit of an American-centric view that shows a decline in popularity in America and a viable way of earning quick money. With greater and safer opportunities to earn money I guess being punched in the head became less desirable. It doesn't mean the overall standard of boxing declined.

I know the argument is - more people were doing it so it had to be better. But the majority of those fighters would have been crap by any generations standard - separate the wheat from the chaff - unless we believe the old duffers that claim modern men lost the ability to fight.

The Jack Dempsey manual is a prime example. We are expected to believe that people stopped being able to emulate what Dempsey was teaching. His manual is so advanced that thousands and thousands of fighters and trainers just couldn't grasp it. Really?

We now get fight cards from every continent on a daily basis. In December last year, in Britain, there were 58 fights in one night, the highest amount in 60 years. There are still thousands of boxers, trainers and gyms all over the world.

I'm not saying the fighters from the past weren't great. I just don't buy that they were so advanced compared to modern ones. Floyd Mayweather could easily pad his record out by fighting ten "bums" this year. What would it mean in this day and age? Nothing.

I don't mean it to be American-centric at all. And @Fenster, I hope you don't think of me as some American centric guy. I love my country, but when it comes to boxing, I appreciate a good scientist from anywhere. You know that, I hope.

Quite frankly though, your point is is a solid counter argument. Where were the Russians and Germans between 1900-1960? I'm not sure its absolutely correct, but there is merit to it. Some of the best fighters at the time were NOT American. Ted "Kid" Lewis was a Brit who is in the Hall of Fame. Dai Dollings, arguably the best trainer in New York at that time was a Welshman. Pancho Villa was a Hall of Fame Filipino boxer from that era. Jimmy Wilde was another great fighter from your side of the pond. Max Schmelling was a German. These are just off the top. The list goes on.

It's like anything, baseball and basketball have got considerably better in the last 50 years because there are more people playing baseball and basketball. There is more to talent to choose from. Whereas the good pros from the 50's in basketball would have been good in any era, they might not have been professionals these days because there are so many more kids playing basketball. At least we can agree that in the United States at least, there were more people boxing between 1900 and 1950. There is no debate. It's not even remotely close. How many world-level boxing gyms are there in Chicago now? I'm not sure there is even one. It was harder to rise to the top because there were so many people gunning for it.

It's not just that either. There was more money in boxing for the average guy. The top guys from the era made more money than any other sports figure by far. Dempsey's salary during his prime dwarfed Babe Ruth's. But, even smaller figures in boxing could earn a living doing it. People didn't treat boxing as a second job. More time was spent in the gym as a result.

I'll give you an example. Back in the day, a boxer coming up through the ranks would ply his trade year round. They would fight every two or three weeks, with training in between. That was their only job. Typically, as I understand, a boxer would face certain styles over and over again in attempt to master it. So, Joe Schmo would start as a 4 round boxer, facing only swarmers, then when he mastered that style, he would move to counter punchers at four rounds, then to boxer-punchers etc. When he felt comfortable, he would move on to 6 rounds to do the same thing. If he lost, it wasn't a big deal. It was usually viewed as a learning experience. Fritzie Zivic, one of the craftiest/dirtiest fighters of all-time, didn't win a title until he had 100 fights.

Here's what I mean about the Dempsey manual. It's not like that knowledge completely evaporated. You are correct. It didn't. The same sort of methods I explained in the paragraph before are done today. For example, Golovkin has brought in Philly fighters to train for Rosado. But, there aren't the same number of people doing it. Fighters learn and develop by fighting other good fighters. If you've never fought a great defensive fighter, how can you do it well? It takes time. Today there just aren't as many other good fighters to show other good fighters lessons.

I'm rambling. Apologize for that. We can agree to disagree.