BoxRec

Damit Wouter, you had me lookin up all the Buck Smiths....I'm assuming the Oklahmoa Welterweight? Or did you have another in mind.

Decagon wrote:Really? So, you think that Willie Pep could beat Rocky Marciano?

No pound-for-pound bullshit. What fighter with 200-300 fights could beat Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston and Evander Holyfield?

I’m sorry I made you feel foolish. You said what fighters are BETTER than Liston, Marciano, etc.? Perhaps you feel Liston and Marciano were more skilled than Pepp? Anyway, I guess that since even you know that Pepp, Robinson, Greb and Langford were highly skilled and experienced fighters you now feel compelled to change the question. Perhaps you would like to ask which one of them can beat Hulk Hogan since you seem to be much more knowledgeable about wrestling than boxing?

If you read my post again I didn’t say anything about HWs. Historically, the HW division ha less active fighters, and therefore there were less HW fights. This means there were less HW fighters with a great deal of fights. This is probably no longer true since the average size of people in the US is comparable to a small car, but in the past, 200 lbs was considered quite large. Have you ever wondered why the MW division limit is 160 lbs? Since you haven’t been a boxing fan for very long, it may be hard for you to imagine, but long ago boxing was actually a main stream sport, probably surpassed in popularity only by baseball and horse racing in the US. Top news stories were often fight results of fights involving fighters who actually weighed less than 200 lbs!! Therefore, I try not to limit my comments to the weight class with probably the least number of skilled fighters.

The Great John L wrote:And how can anyone possibly think a “modern” fighter with 40-50 fights can be a better fighter than someone with 300 fights? Especially when many of the 40-50 fights are against setups? While it’s not true of all early 20th century fighters, many of them fought 20+ fights a year and ended up with 200-300 career fights. And of lot of the fights were against fighters they had never seen before and who probably presented them with challenges and styles you can never get with a modern engineered career.

Totally right. But many people do exactly these kinds of comparison - for example "Langford lost to [x] and you dare to put him above Holyfield". Allthewhile Lanford fought X 15 times and was 9-1-4 against him (or something similar).

P

pundit wrote:

The Great John L wrote:And how can anyone possibly think a “modern” fighter with 40-50 fights can be a better fighter than someone with 300 fights? Especially when many of the 40-50 fights are against setups? While it’s not true of all early 20th century fighters, many of them fought 20+ fights a year and ended up with 200-300 career fights. And of lot of the fights were against fighters they had never seen before and who probably presented them with challenges and styles you can never get with a modern engineered career.

Totally right. But many people do exactly these kinds of comparison - for example "Langford lost to [x] and you dare to put him above Holyfield". Allthewhile Lanford fought X 15 times and was 9-1-4 against him (or something similar).

P

Thanks for posting this. I’ve started to respond to this very thing several times and just didn’t want to get involved.

Decagon wrote:

dempseyfire wrote:I've seen the Corbett-Fitz film and James J looks fairly modern to me-JUST like ALi . . .dancing footwork, hands down, double jabs, some combos.

Funny how you lambast Corbett for "only fighting on the outside" while a main criticism of that era is too much infighting and clinching!

Corbett pulls straight back. Ali never did that. Also, Corbet comes forward with his hands down. It's silly to compare the two.

Have you seen many Ali fights? Ali fought differently in different fights depending upon the opponent. There were fights when he moved forward with his hands down. And he did pull straight back on occasion. Corbett also did show side to side movement as well. Keep in mind that you’re seeing a few minutes of Corbett’s career. Would you judge Ali on just a few minutes from his fight against Young? Or perhaps selected highlights of his fight against Blin?

There have been some good arguements from both sides here.


Just want to make a few comments.

There simply isn't enough film of Corbett. Factor in poor quality of the film that does exist and seems unfair to judge him by film.

It's also not smart to judge every fighter pre 1910 by Corbett. Fitzsimmon, Jeffries, Johnson and guys in the lower weight classes had different styles and abilities from each other.

I agree that just because some fought 200 or more fights that it doesn't necessarily mean that he was any better than someone who fought say 50.

On the other hand, its a good point that if someone like Langord fought someone several times and only lost once, it shouldn't considered be used against him as if he only fought that person once and lost to him.

As a rule sports do improve in the first couple of decades since they started. New ideas and techniques are used. (Corbett himself was responsible for accerlating some of the improvements in boxing) However, after a certain amount of time, almost everything has been done and as a whole the sport doesn't improve, atleast that much.
With boxing, it seems that the sport did improve in the 1890's and early 1900's. However, it seemed to have leveled off by roughly 1910.

One reason why I believe that one believe that boxng dramatically improved in the 1920's was they see Dempsey destroying Willard and think boxing had moved on to a new level. However, it should be pointed out that although Willard the champion for several years, he was never close to being the best.

Probably a bigger factor is the quantity and quality of film. If people saw Gans, Corbett, Dixon in high quality film (better yet in color) they would be more impressed.

So as far as the original poll is concerned, boxing seems to be close to modern standards by 1910. Standards is the key word. The level was roughly the same.

It just doesn't seem plausible that the level of the sport got much better when the film got better. That just seems to be too much of a coincidence.

Good post Alp

The Great John L wrote:Good post Alp

Yeah, far too balanced and reasonable...

If Corbett was fighting now, he would've had a more extensive amateur career and would have come up through the pros learning all these great modern techniques taught by super-brains like Teddy Atlas and Roger Mayweather. He'd be six foot five in his stocking feet and weigh 235 pounds. He'd be able to throw a punch, hug, paw with his left, clinch, butt with his head, grab, huff and puff...another great Hall of Famer.

Cap