Trojans44 wrote:The Athletes are Better Now Argument
This is so obviously true its staggering people deny it. Only in boxing do fans still seriously believe that competitors from decades ago could compete with today's guys. All the more ridiculous since boxing requires intense conditioning. No baseball fan thinks Babe Ruth would compete today, no tennis fan thinks Boris Becker never mind Fred Perry could compete today, no football fan thinks Stanley Matthews would have Ronaldo on the bench. Most obviously in athletics where records from decades ago are often unlikely to get you in a final. Yet boxing fans want to tell us that Robinson or Lammotta or Greb would dominate in any era. Sorry but that is clearly refuted by a mass of evidence to the contrary. Today's guys as a totality are extremely likely to be better athletes and therefore better fighters than their predecessors.
I enjoyed your post. I'd just like to pick up on the quoted section and, specifically, the excerpt I have highlighted.
Firstly, I agree that strength & conditioning plays an important part in a boxer's training regimen. I also agree that our understanding of how to realise the improvements strength & conditioning training can achieve has come on in leaps and bounds in recent decades.
I disagree though that if today's guys are better athletes, and they probably are, that it automatically follows that they will be better fighters than their predecessors. I would argue that Mayweather is so much better than the contemporaries he has boxed, in part, because of the growing focus on strength and conditioning training (S&C).
Why?
The Mayweathers have not forgotten that the development of boxing skills and tactics is by far the most important aspect of training and everything else is done only to enhance the efficient delivery of those skills.
In my view, a lot of boxers and trainers have shifted too far the other way and grossly over value S&C. There is only a finite amount of training time and if the balance is wrong, you end up with fit guys with poor skills. If the skill base is low, it is low. Being fitter, stronger and more powerful will enable a fighter to deliver his limited skills more efficiently but they'll still be limited skills.
If Floyd has got the balance right, and I think he has, it would figure that with his amazing skill-set supplemented by our improved application of S&C he would be better than fighters from decades earlier. Maybe, we don't know. What we do know is that 20th century fighters dedicated a far higher percentage of their training time on sport specific training that 21st century fighters do.
