Twice as many fighters in 1955 than today?

[Ambling Alp II]

I do some work inputting fights for Boxrec, mostly fights from Oklahoma in the 1900-1935 range. Sometimes other places and times, but most come out of the Daily Oklahoman archives.
I can tell you this there were lots of weekends in that period where there would be 6-7 cards IN OKLAHOMA, I'm guessing today that's about the average for the country. Many of the old cards we don't have recorded, and may never be, because although the fact there were fights made the paper the results never made it.
You will find a newspaper mention like "Joe Opponent fought last week in Sapulpa" or " Big card tomorrow night in Ada" or "weekly show in Chickasha cancelled" and of course we don't have results from any of these so they aren't included in the Boxrec database.

If I had to guess, Chuck's numbers (which I found very informative) if anything are low as pertains to old time fights because we don't have all of these cards. There were definitely more even than those totals in the older days, and maybe significantly more.

Another way to see that there were way more fighters back in the day is their boxrec points. To a certain degree boxrec points are relative to the total amount of fights in the universe because every fight has the ability to create points. If you look at the '50's or '30's most decent fighters had more points than world champions do today. This doesn't mean they were better fighters per se, it just means there were a lot more fights and hence a lot more boxrec points to go around.

The biggest culprit of course was TV. If you look at any of the old Ring annual books Nat put attendance at the Garden and other places in the back (and I think even a number of shows) and with the advent of TV both numbers started to drop. Live entertainment went down in every industry with the advent of TV.

I agree with with except for the last line. In other sports such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and major college football and basketball, attendance has actually gone up since TV. TV promotes the sport at he highest levels.

On the other hand, Minor league baseball attendance has been hurt by TV.
It does make sense that smaller boxing cards would be hurt by TV. People don't want to spend money to watch no names in person when they could be watching big names on TV. So it is not surprising that there are many less boxing shows than there used to be.

[SaadOffTheDeck]

The casino and premium cable allowed promoters to make money without promoting. So instead of building talent with local shows they just fought on Vegas undercards.

[DaveyMac]

1000 BoxRec points is actually quite a lot! I don't think the norm these days are 6-9 guys at the same time with 1000 points. Right now, only 2 boxers have more than 1000 points: Canelo and Pacquiao. When did we last have even 6 boxers with 1000 points at the same time?

I would be surprised, if there were really way, way more than 9 boxers in 1955, who had 1000+ BoxRec points.

Also... as much as 95% of the fights in BoxRec's database for the year 1955 probably took place in the US? That's another figure I would be very hesitant to accept - in fact, I'm certain that must be very wrong!

There were 8 at one time within just the last two years. Some have retired or gone inactive like Mayweather and Klitscko, maybe Serge Martinez? Of course they keep changing the system so there is no way to go back and check. I did a "study" a couple of years ago where I figured out the career records of great fighters against 1000 point fighters and of course most of the new guys only had one or two fights at that level. Klitscko had none. I'll try to find that, I remember most of the old fighters had 20-40 fights against 1000's and Carlos Monzon was like 11-0 or something. Which I thought was interesting.

[DaveyMac]

I do some work inputting fights for Boxrec, mostly fights from Oklahoma in the 1900-1935 range. Sometimes other places and times, but most come out of the Daily Oklahoman archives.
I can tell you this there were lots of weekends in that period where there would be 6-7 cards IN OKLAHOMA, I'm guessing today that's about the average for the country. Many of the old cards we don't have recorded, and may never be, because although the fact there were fights made the paper the results never made it.
You will find a newspaper mention like "Joe Opponent fought last week in Sapulpa" or " Big card tomorrow night in Ada" or "weekly show in Chickasha cancelled" and of course we don't have results from any of these so they aren't included in the Boxrec database.

If I had to guess, Chuck's numbers (which I found very informative) if anything are low as pertains to old time fights because we don't have all of these cards. There were definitely more even than those totals in the older days, and maybe significantly more.

Another way to see that there were way more fighters back in the day is their boxrec points. To a certain degree boxrec points are relative to the total amount of fights in the universe because every fight has the ability to create points. If you look at the '50's or '30's most decent fighters had more points than world champions do today. This doesn't mean they were better fighters per se, it just means there were a lot more fights and hence a lot more boxrec points to go around.

The biggest culprit of course was TV. If you look at any of the old Ring annual books Nat put attendance at the Garden and other places in the back (and I think even a number of shows) and with the advent of TV both numbers started to drop. Live entertainment went down in every industry with the advent of TV.

I agree with with except for the last line. In other sports such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and major college football and basketball, attendance has actually gone up since TV. TV promotes the sport at he highest levels.

On the other hand, Minor league baseball attendance has been hurt by TV.
It does make sense that smaller boxing cards would be hurt by TV. People don't want to spend money to watch no names in person when they could be watching big names on TV. So it is not surprising that there are many less boxing shows than there used to be.

True about NFL and NBA but I guess I'd argue they didn't exist before TV in any meaningful way. Baseball was initially hurt by TV as well but you are right has rebounded in a big way.
Interestingly, what TV wiped out in baseball was the minor leagues, which would be sort of an equivalent to club shows, before TV there were far more minor league teams than there are now and most were very vibrant. Minor league teams in the states were in a totally downward spiral from 1955 until probably the late 1980's when they had a big resurgence.

[DaveyMac]

The casino and premium cable allowed promoters to make money without promoting. So instead of building talent with local shows they just fought on Vegas undercards.

Sadly, nothing could be more true than this statement.

[Chuck1052]

I do some work inputting fights for Boxrec, mostly fights from Oklahoma in the 1900-1935 range. Sometimes other places and times, but most come out of the Daily Oklahoman archives.
I can tell you this there were lots of weekends in that period where there would be 6-7 cards IN OKLAHOMA, I'm guessing today that's about the average for the country. Many of the old cards we don't have recorded, and may never be, because although the fact there were fights made the paper the results never made it.
You will find a newspaper mention like "Joe Opponent fought last week in Sapulpa" or " Big card tomorrow night in Ada" or "weekly show in Chickasha cancelled" and of course we don't have results from any of these so they aren't included in the Boxrec database.

If I had to guess, Chuck's numbers (which I found very informative) if anything are low as pertains to old time fights because we don't have all of these cards. There were definitely more even than those totals in the older days, and maybe significantly more.

Another way to see that there were way more fighters back in the day is their boxrec points. To a certain degree boxrec points are relative to the total amount of fights in the universe because every fight has the ability to create points. If you look at the '50's or '30's most decent fighters had more points than world champions do today. This doesn't mean they were better fighters per se, it just means there were a lot more fights and hence a lot more boxrec points to go around.

The biggest culprit of course was TV. If you look at any of the old Ring annual books Nat put attendance at the Garden and other places in the back (and I think even a number of shows) and with the advent of TV both numbers started to drop. Live entertainment went down in every industry with the advent of TV.

I agree with with except for the last line. In other sports such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and major college football and basketball, attendance has actually gone up since TV. TV promotes the sport at he highest levels.

On the other hand, Minor league baseball attendance has been hurt by TV.
It does make sense that smaller boxing cards would be hurt by TV. People don't want to spend money to watch no names in person when they could be watching big names on TV. So it is not surprising that there are many less boxing shows than there used to be.

The attendance of Major League Baseball took a massive hit during much of the 1950s. The main culprits appeared to have been outdated MLB ballparks located in the declining inner cities and the advent of television. Notice that the Braves moving from Boston to Milwaukee (at first) and the Dodgers moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles were attendance bonanzas for both teams. After taking such big hit, MLB attendance made a gradual recovery before undergoing a boom starting in the 1970s.

In the United States during the late 1940s, there was a boom in professional baseball and auto racing at all levels, Professional boxing also did relatively well during that time. After World War II ended, the number of minor league baseball teams and auto racing tracks was staggering in the United for about five or six years before decreasing in precipitous manner.

- Chuck Johnston

[Bundana]

Just thought I'd mention, that a couple of days ago BoxRec made their first update since 2013 of their annual fights list:
http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f ... 7&start=50

As can be seen, in 2016 they registered 26.873 fights, worldwide... a doubling over the past 25 years! The argument that the downward trend in US numbers somehow overrides the increase seen elsewhere around the world, doesn't seem to hold water!

[Ambling Alp II]

You don't really think that every four-round fight from 50, 60, 70 years ago has been counted, do you? There were probably tens of thousands of fights in Europe, Mexico, South America, Africa, Asia that were missed.

Since there are less fighters from the United States, and so many more from others countries, you would expect the United States to have very little influence in the sport. Yet even today, if you look at Boxrec's Top 40 Current fighters, 60% are from the United States.