Modern Fighters Are Better

[Boilermaker]

Originally Posted by TheGreatA

I think fighters like Toney, Jones, Byrd (at their best) could very well compete against the majority of today's heavyweights by staying at 190 pounds and do it successfully.

With the cruiserweight division around and the ability to make weight more comfortably without the same day weigh-ins, fighters tend to stay at 175 and 200. The ones that choose to take a risk and fight at heavyweight (Jones, although a calculated risk), or simply can't keep their weight under control (Toney), have done fairly well for themselves.

Now it does seem that the number 1 ranking belongs to the "super heavyweight", atleast it has for the past 10 or so years with Lewis, Bowe and the Klitschko brothers reigning as the true champions.

There's still room for smaller heavyweights however due to the lack of talented heavyweights outside of Wladimir and Vitali. Most of them, recently Adamek, previously Jirov and many more, try to put on extra weight which usually only slows them down.

Eddie Chambers said it best, if you're a small heavyweight there's no use trying to get bigger and try to match their strength, just take advantage of being faster and more skilled than the big heavyweights and stay at your natural weight. Chambers still doesn't look to be in the best possible shape at 208 but it's without a doubt a more comfortable weight for him at which he performs better than above 220 lbs.

Lewis, Bowe and Klitchsko are the no1's of their time, that is true, but in between these 4 guys. You have Tyson (5'10), Holyfield - former Cruiserweight (less than 190), Moorer (former Light Heavy), Byrd (former light heavy). Lewis may have been arguably the best, but Tyson was easily the most dominant.

[PowerPuncher]

Originally Posted by Boilermaker

Lewis, Bowe and Klitchsko are the no1's of their time, that is true, but in between these 4 guys. You have Tyson (5'10), Holyfield - former Cruiserweight (less than 190), Moorer (former Light Heavy), Byrd (former light heavy). Lewis may have been arguably the best, but Tyson was easily the most dominant.

Being linear champ for 2 years before being ko'd makes you the most dominant, how?

And none of those figthers saw fit to fight as LHWs, they got bigger and stronger. If they are former LHWs then Charles/Patterson/Dempsey/Langford/Fitz are all former MWs. Whichever way you spin it HWs are getting bigger. Tyson was 5'11 1/2 and a freak of nature

[Boilermaker]

Originally Posted by PowerPuncher

Being linear champ for 2 years before being ko'd makes you the most dominant, how?

And none of those figthers saw fit to fight as LHWs, they got bigger and stronger. If they are former LHWs then Charles/Patterson/Dempsey/Langford/Fitz are all former MWs. Whichever way you spin it HWs are getting bigger. Tyson was 5'11 1/2 and a freak of nature

Bigger and stronger, or bigger and fatter? Some did get bigger and stronger, some didnt. Dont forget that even Muhammed Ali is a former light heavyweight Gold medal winner. MOst of the big heavyweights today even the giants have come in at weights which would surprise you.
The difference is that because they take so much time off between fights, and they dont train as hard, at least not in endurance training, and becaue in modern times, fast food is so easily attainable. Even the 245 lb Vlad who is probably the best trained modern athlete i can think about has weighed as low as 220 and used to regurlarly fight below 230 or even 225. The 250lb vitali started of as a 230lb fighter. The 230 lb Juan Carlos Gomez used to fight below 190 (and looked a hell of a lot better). 245lb Kirk johnson looked a lot better when he fought below 220. Chris Byrd was a 169lber like Fitzimmons, but unfortunately he took nearly a year off and his weight ballooned so that he soon came back as first a cruiserweight, then as much as a 220lb heavyweight. When he finally started training to take off weight, he came back as a light heavy and despite being a top 5 heavy, an average light heavy proved to hit to fast and too often and he was stopped, even though of all the big heavys he faced, who were much bigger and stronger than his light heavy opponent. Why is that? Oh that is right weight drain. I am not sure why weight drain didnt happen to Eddie chambers in his last fight, but i am sure it would have if he had crossed the mythical weight limit lines.

Incidentally, you seem to forget that while Tyson was a freak of nature, so was Fitzsimmons, Dempsey, Louis, Sullivan, Jeffries etc. People seem to forget that freaks of Nature did not stop and end with Tyson and Ali sometimes.

And by the way, if you dont think that Tyson was a dominant champ, there is something wrong. He cleaned out the division by fighting everysingle credible opponent of his time and beating every single one very easily. By the time he came to Douglas, he had beaten everyone and was just looking to boost opponents so he could get a credible opponent. That is the definition of dominant.

[ChrisPontius]

Originally Posted by Polymath

They cut weight because of early weigh ins. So, for example, Roy Jones would obviously beat all the great old middleweights who would be welterweights today.

True, many seem to overlook this.

Originally Posted by Polymath

Also, with the big gloves and no fighting in the clinch, and the way the rules are interpreted now to allow fighters to 'jab and grab' and generally avoid fighting, you get a new breed of fighter, the super evolved pinnacle of modern boxing; John Ruiz and Wladimir Klitschko.

New breed of fighter? Ever seen how much Ali or Johnson held their opponents?

If anything, it's oldschool. And totally boring.

[Boilermaker]

Originally Posted by ChrisPontius

True, many seem to overlook this.



New breed of fighter? Ever seen how much Ali or Johnson held their opponents?

If anything, it's oldschool. And totally boring.

I find it interesting, that in modern times, we like to see spectacular knockouts and clean striking. IN oldern times, they preferred to see silky skills and fighters prolonging the fight for the crowd, so they could get their moneys worth. The crowd was happier to see a long fight where as today, we would prefer to see a fighter finish his opponent early.

Maybe this is one reason why today has bigger fighters. It is not enough with the public to simply win a fight without getting hit. Your stock raises best when you score the spectacular KO.

[cross_trainer]

I'm going to heat this up a bit...




Wladimir Klitschko and Lennox Lewis represent a new breed of superheavyweight that would be able to defeat the likes of Muhammad Ali relatively easily. Population AND weight-wise, they come from a larger talent pool than what existed in the 1960s and 70s.

When Ali won his gold medal against Pieterzykowski in 1960, he was facing one of the EARLY products of the "scientific" Soviet school of sports training. Unlike the West, where training was fairly haphazard until recently, the Soviets created an enormous infrastructure to break down boxing training into its component parts...at least physically. Only in the 90's, with the collapse of the Soviet system, did this information become available in the West. Coincidentally, Eastern Europeans now dominate heavyweight boxing. They were not permitted to compete in the professional ranks until recently.

Although Ali had over a hundred fights as an amateur, many of his contemporaries were not so fortunate. Norton had 26, Foreman had 26, Frazier 39, Lyle 29, Ellis 66.

Compare that to Wlad's 136+ fights, Vitali's 200+ (along with many more in kickboxing, apparently), Povetkin's 130+, Bowe's 120+, Holyfield's 160+, and so on. Even Lewis had over 80.

(I've heard that Quarry had around 200, however...)



Trainers know a LOT more about athletes physiologically than they did forty years ago. Yeah, some fighters choose not train and balloon up instead. But there were always lazy fighters, then and now. For a fighter who DOES want to put in the effort, modern trainers are better at telling him how to exercise to get the most out of his body. Even nutrition has improved (not for general population, but for those athletes who choose to use the latest diet tweaks). And yes, steroids help too. But note that "time machine" matchups seldom take steroids into account, so it's open season.




If Ali stepped out of a time machine against Lennox Lewis or Wladimir Klitschko, he'd get beaten. He wouldn't look as fast or as tireless as he did against Terrell because he'd be trying to clinch men who are 2-3 inches taller and 40 pounds heavier. And very fast for big men themselves. In Lewis, he'd be facing a man with Terrell's height, Mathis's weight (except no fat), Liston's skill, and Foreman's power. Think about that for a moment. And it's not as if the level of coaching is a mismatch either, since Steward and Dundee are roughly equal in ability.





Right, that should start us out. Let the games begin!

[MrMarvel]

I think in the heavyweight division it is a matter of a good big man will beat a good not-as-big-man. But a great not-as-big man can whip a good big man. It is difficult, though, for a 6' 185 lbs heavyweight from the forties, however good he is, to do well against a good heavyweight standing 6'4" (or more) and weighing 220 lbs (or more). I think that is obvious. And I want to emphasize the "good" part. They have to be good. The heyday of heavyweights was between the late-1950s and the early-1990s, with a relative weakening of the heavyweight division in the 1980s. I don't think heavyweights today compare to the 1970s. But I do believe heavyweights today clean house with heavyweights before the late 1950s.

However for lighter weight fighters, it is hard to argue that a lightweight today is better than Carlos Ortiz or Henry Armstrong. Same is true for welterweights. Those fighters fought all the time and where their skills/techniques were different, some of those skills/techniques were better. For example, the right hand to the body. Everybody loves the left hook to the liver, but the right to lower ribs and hip, a punch used a lot by fighters back in the day - Robinson, Charles, etc. - is devastating. When Roy Jones landed that shot on Hill everybody was like, wtf? But that shot was typical among the masters in the 1940s-1960s. Another example has to do with keeping one's eyes open inside and dodging and blocking shots without clinching. A few of those types come along every once in awhile - Chavez, for instance, who was a real throwback - but we're missing something a lot these days. (At the same time, the fighters I am praising could hold a lot, too, particular in the middleweights of the late-1950s/early-1960s, so I don't want to ovesell the point.) Fighters of today could learn a lot from fighters during these earlier periods, but I don't think they get the experience in the ring to pick up on that shit. The top-of-the-line fighter today is one who has studied the science of boxing for sure. These dudes were masters.