How do you rate fighters you've never seen?

[TheLeprechaun]

Poor question. You surely shouldn't be rating fights you haven't seen. I wouldn't really comment too much on fighters I haven't seen. I watch a lot of old fights so my thoughts come from actually watching the fighters. If you just listen to the concensus you will get it wrong. I've heard some fighters talked up over the years and then when I watched them fight I just thought they were poor. I thought Valero was very poor technically. I remember Celestino Caballero was being talked up and when I saw him he looked atrocious.

I hadn't seen any of Michael Spinks other than Tyson running through him but when I sat down and watched a few Spinks fights i was blown away. He had a very high ring IQ and ruled 175 for quite some time. His performance in the Holmes fight was awesome.

I've been watching some Carlos Zarate fights recently. Huge puncher and I'd pick him to beat Inoue no problem.

Sometimes you get disappointed though. Earnie Shavers gets talked up and yes he was a puncher but he wasn't really that good at all. Watching a few of his fights, I was pretty disappointed. I do love watching the old fighters though.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Why not just watch the bouts?

So many fights on Youtube that you’d think would not even be on there. You can see results and watch other fights the boxers had around that time, see what kind of role they were on.

We all saw Foreman demolish Frazier, we saw Frazier beat Ali and the other way around, but then we saw Ali beat Foreman. Styles make fights.

[PredatorHayds]

With the really old fighters that don’t have any/many footage I do a couple of things.

I study their record and also study the records of high profile opponents to gauge the results.
I tie that in with extensive reading of articles of the time or judgements not long after.

I’ve found it’s normally best to read as many reports as possible as some reporters/newspapers weren’t the most impartial.
Quite a fun past-time especially with fights with no official result.

[Grilling Machine]

Carnera would still be an absolute unit, and Willard still tall. But heavies their size have become the norm rather than exception, and the biggest difference is that they're not as Lurchlike. The one constant with modern fighters is improved access to quality food from birth (mostly) and PEDs.

The constant with old fighters is that they were seriously tough, reliably so, even when they were chinny. But you can't compare the eras directly because the old guys wore thin gloves that forced them to work the body more, and their repertoire lagged as a result of that rather than low intelligence. If you time-travelled Armstrong to this decade he might lose a couple of his first few fights, but after that...

I think most old non-heavies would adapt to the modern style and do pretty well across the board, some more than others with a few dominating their divisions. The heavies would evolve their styles, but someone like Marciano would simply be too small. Not for cruiser, though, which is where he'd be!

Louis wouldn't be undersized per se, but you have to be more athletic at his size nowadays. Ali had that, and he'd still be a champ in today's era.

Anyway, the gist is that old-timers were incredibly fit, tough, and lacked finesse only because it wasn't the most useful tool for the job back then. They'd mostly be able to refine their craft and take PEDs if they were around now. And with the heavies we'll just never know, but it's as daft to write off those old-timers entirely as it is to eulogise them, because they were playing a different game and they weren't exactly tiny on average. Tommy Burns wouldn't compete as a heavy any more, sure.

[Onetimeonly]

There's usually at least a decent amount of footage of others they faced, but that old film is tedious to watch anyway. I used to read a lot of newspapers.