Quote Originally Posted by Max Power View Post
Quote Originally Posted by greynotsoold View Post
There is a lot of stuff that Roach teaches that is not 'old', for example, turning over punches. he tends to the pick them up, turn them over then throw them school of thought.
And a great many skills are lost (Miller did not teach Roach, by the way. You must be thinking of Eddie Futch). A lot of this is because great trainers did not pass on their skills. A lot of it is because guys take the easy way out- I think that is just human nature. You can see this in the the footwork modern fighters use, the way they throw their punches, their defensive liabilities. For example- the essence of boxing is counterpunching. Today the emphasis is on keeping one's hands high is a position that makes it hard to punch back, but that is easier because of the larger gloves.
You see many fighters doing everything off the front foot- by that I mean, powering their left hand punches by pushing off and never getting the weight onto the rear foot- or with thier feet too far apart. These things affect your ability to move, to defend, to throw good combinations, to move after you punch. In the ring, with me wearing punch mitts and catching your punches, if your feet are like that, I can move you off your balance, keep you from moving. Yet it is taught that way.
Yeah I appreciate some of the points your saying here but a lot of those things are present today and it's your pure speculation that it's because these skills are lost.

Vitali Klitschko has a back foot style, he was taught by a German trainer!

There are countless counterpunchers.

And don't tell me about defence because it is only in the last 30 years that boxers REALLY learned HOW to defend properly.

A far more likely scenario, is that the sport has evolved and that some of the previous skills have been emphasised which are more important and some of those skills have been de-emphasised because they were not!
Can we agree that Mayweather has been the top defensive boxer of the last decade? the staple of his defense is rolling the right hand off his shoulder, is it not? In this day and age that is treated like it is some elusive art form that only the most gifted can pursue. Take some time and find some old boxing training manuals, back from when colleges in the US had boxing teams. Teaching the shoulder roll was standard- back in the day that was how it was taught. My dad boxed in the 1930s in Pittsburgh and that is how he taught me in the early 1970s.
What changed 30 years ago...Gloves got bigger, they attached the thumbs. Before that, you didn't use the ear-muffs defense because you still got hit. You had smaller gloves which covered less of you and he had smaller gloves to slip through the openings. So you slipped, you parried, you deflected; all of these things lead to counter punch opportunities. or, you stayed out of range unless you had a reason to get within punching distance. Also, with smaller gloves, you threw better punches. You paid attention to where they were going because hitting a guy on the elbow hurt your hands, so did hitting on top of his head, and you could break your thumb in a number of ways.