With some exceptions there are less men today with the savvy and expertise that you could find before. More so the charactor of men.

Before when I was getting interested in boxing I focused exclusively on learning the techniques, and looking for more and more to expand upon. Right now I've come to the point that the techniques by themselves are meaningless, I've found that there's a lot more to boxing than that. What I think it's important the history, what they've gone through, their battles and far they' had to go to in order to get there. Boxing has never been easy, but it has never been any harder than days surrounding Johnson and other past greats. I can only imagine what they drew upon to fire up their souls for such great challenges.

I remember in Joe Gans for instance fighting in blistering heat, struggling through unimaginable pain and fatigue, holding up against consumption (TB), puking blood through the ropes, holding his own against a great game fighter and through a miracle in human spirit winning through 15 miserable rounds, but even with all that heart, all that great boxing expertise he'd go down fighting until the point that the consumption was too overwhelming for any man to handle. His skin was was a pale grey as any dieing man, but the fight inside him was alive and strong as we can hardly imagine. Courage, bravery, perseverance, you couldn't ask for a greater man. And there were many other great fighters as well, all had there own hard fought challenges.

Now if a fighter of today could just feel a tiny bit of what great challenges even if it's just by imagination then there maybe no limit on how far they may really push themselves. I believe that's more important than all the training, techniques, boxing manuals and bag of tricks in the boxing. It's the full experience and feeling and understanding those who came before us.