Would Joe Louis be too small to be successful at heavyweight today ?

[Primo Carnera]

This is exactly the point of comparing fighters from different eras. Not only size, but technological advancements in Training and nutrition enabling guys to be quicker and stronger all have to be taken into consideration when making comparisons.

Size I agree with, but I said this before and I don't like repeating myself but to me (and this is just my personal opinion others may think different) there has be no technological advancements in boxing training in the last 100 years

1. Jogging
2. Jumping Rope
3. Lifting Weights
4. Bag Work
5. Sparring
6. Maybe Rowing Machines And Cycling

That's it. That's boxing training.
Yes , but I think you're being a bit simplistic here. for example Rowing Machines and Bicycles are better and you can train better on them . Also nutritional and conditioning information is better, meaning people can get fitter by working smarter not harder. Heart rates while training , GPS etc.etc. Even the machines for lifting weights probably mean that the way they are set up targets the muscles that need to be worked on better.

And all those have been around since the late 19th century.

And even boxing trainers where better in the past. There is no way that Shane McGuigan, Ben Davidson, Boom McIntrye knew more about boxing than
Cus D'amato, Charlie Goldman, Angelo Dundee, Eddie Futch, Jack Blackburn, Manny Steward etc

Honestly I think these old school trainers took a lot of their secrets to the grave. Inside fighting is starting to become a lost art. That's why we see a lot more clinching because people don't know what to do


No, not for one second do I think that the modern day trainers know as much as D'Amato, Futch, Dundee, Steward etc. And that is probably why Fighters probably aren't as skilled as those from bygone eras. But with the technology that the modern day trainers have at their disposal , they can improve fighters .

So basically , give the fighter of the old days all the advantages and attributes of the modern day fighter he’s being compared with and then the question is fairer, and the answer very different.

I just want to know what advantages (apart from PED's) do modern day fighters have ?
as above , but also the fact that they can concentrate on training for boxing only and their muscles aren't tired from a hard day's graft , because as you quite rightly allude to below, all jobs were a lot more manual then , but machines do a bit of the work now. So today's fighters can put more into their training.

If anything fighter from the past had the advantages because of their lifestyle which made them tougher.

Want water to do, well, anything? Grab a bucket and walk to the well. Haul that heavy bucket back. Wash all the clothes by hand. Hang the laundry on the line by hand. Make every bite of food, by hand. Dirty carpet? Drag it outside, hang it, and beat it clean.

My great grandfather used to work the docks in Liverpool n the 1920's. Bk then, the bags weight in ships weighted 100 kg or 200 lbs.

That was the normal weight.

And people like my g.father, could carry them all day long. And compared to modern men he was a tinny guy. Now a days, bags can be no heavier then 25 kg or you'll have Health & Safety on your case

They could build cathedrals and get all these heavy stones 100 metre high and had no cranes, only muscles. Nowadays EVERYONE and his momma is depressed and has "mental health issues"
i Agree with that.

Give me a break. Our pansy Millennial boxers born in the last 40 yrs would be trampled to death by their predecessors.
Probably not , cos these old guys were probably knackered when it came to fight night, while the modern day guy is fresh as he has been training only for this moment.

I said it before that Boxing is different to ANY OTHER SPORT

A boxer who has less than perfect technique can be a great fighter whereas almost every other sport requires perfect technique to excel. No one will break sprinting or swimming records without near perfect technique, nor power lifting records or high jumping records.

So boxing, unlike basically every single other timed, individual sport on earth, does not rely on being bigger, stronger, faster

In boxing, it really makes no difference. We only need to look Andy Ruiz - AJ in the first fight. Even Mayweather or Ali wasn't big and strong. It's not a team sport, so an entire team of bigger, stronger, faster guys might mean something...but boxing doesn't work that way. It's just you and someone else punching each other.

Yeah , Boxing is different , of course it is , and no other sport relies on Heart as much as Boxing does. But there are sports where some guys can get to the top with imperfect technique.(Michael Johnson for example), but i don't want to labour the point, because it makes no odds to the point we are debating which is modern day versus previous eras.