style change in boxing around late twenties - yes or no.

[man]

i'd like to know how many people here think
that such style shift took place.

[Ambling Alp II]

You had fighters of various styles fighting before and after the 1920s. I'm not sure how things were so different overall. I think some people think fighters got more aggressive in the 1920s, but I think that is due tomany people having Dempsey in mind when they think of the 1920s.

[King Carlos]

From 1920 (when the Walker Law first came into play) until around the late 30's/early 40's it went through a real transition period. Which is what makes the era in between one of the most fascinating.

[JC]

From 1920 (when the Walker Law first came into play) until around the late 30's/early 40's it went through a real transition period. Which is what makes the era in between one of the most fascinating.

Interesting, I'd recently been thinking there was a transitional period around that time but I didn't realise what caused it.

Anyone know when gloves were standardised to 8oz/10oz? And what size gloves were used before then?

[dempseyfire]

Anything boxers did style-wise in the 1920s was done prior in the 19teens. You had minor adjustments made as canvases and gloves became more standardized in the 1920s and title fights were no longer longer than 20 rounds, but nothing highly significant in terms of how boxers boxed.

[raylawpc]

From 1920 (when the Walker Law first came into play) until around the late 30's/early 40's it went through a real transition period. Which is what makes the era in between one of the most fascinating.

Interesting, I'd recently been thinking there was a transitional period around that time but I didn't realise what caused it.

Anyone know when gloves were standardised to 8oz/10oz? And what size gloves were used before then?

5 ounce.

[dempseyfire]

From 1920 (when the Walker Law first came into play) until around the late 30's/early 40's it went through a real transition period. Which is what makes the era in between one of the most fascinating.

Interesting, I'd recently been thinking there was a transitional period around that time but I didn't realise what caused it.

Anyone know when gloves were standardised to 8oz/10oz? And what size gloves were used before then?

5 ounce.

Wern't 6 ounce gloves used in the 30s-40s for the upper weight classes?

[man]

correct me if i'm wrong, but i have the feeling
that several technical things became common
place for a professional boxer. i feel the stance
changed slightly, more narrow. the chin was
taken down more pronounced, reducing target.
the jab became more important. high held guard
as protection more common place. counter
punching as an almost automatic reflex was
further developed and with it the aggressor had
to throw more sudden, not telegraphing with
wild swings. plus i feel each of the different
types of punches became more pronounced,
more technically "correct" if you will.

i do not think and do not claim any of these
was never done before or that everybody
after this era boxed in the way i mentioned.
but it seems to me that something has changed
on top level.

some examples:
willard vs johnson
deep in the era prior to the change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4_KWmskMXk

dempsey vs firpo
still pretty old era, especially firpo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NN0vGHnCLo

dempsey vs tunney
change on the way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4irZwzQQ1Y

braddock vs baer
transition almost complete, especially braddock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsowPJOFrBs

louis vs walcott
transition complete
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gB09VEEZvM

[Ambling Alp II]

I think you are just taking a handful of examples over the course of about 30 years. Take Braddock-Baer for example, it wasn't anything extraordinary that hadn't been done many times decades previously anyway.

Willard -Johnson is not a good example at all. johnson was way past it and you are just taking a few snippets from a long fight in the hot sun.

Don't think fighters in general got any more technically correct at all.

[man]

Willard -Johnson is not a good example at all. johnson was way past it and you are just taking a few snippets from a long fight in the hot sun.

plus the older clips all have the framing differently,
so they look more weird to our eyes ... just to give
you an additional argument against my point ... :) ...

[Ambling Alp II]

[ben geoghegan]

To my eyes something is clearly different. The footage of Jack Johnson shows a much different and more crude-appearing sport than the modern game. Even compared to Dempsey. But Dempsey was a fighter of his time if you read the boxing writers of the time who saw him and other fighters fight. That's who I go by. The idea of Dempsey introducing a revolutionary new style seems to be a modern creation. In the end I don't know. Imagine if Johnson's 2 round pasting of the giant Denver Ed Martin survived and the Gibbons fight was all we had of Dempsey. What would people believe then?

[man]

to my eyes dempsey was still pretty old school.
i feel like power and chin was good enough for
a boxer to have back then. i think as well that
the technique of certain punches was improved.

today i feel like boxers either throw a jab, a right
hand or a hook, but back then you could see punches
that were kind of in between these. like a jab, that
came kind of curved, or a mixture between straight
right hand and hook.

i don't say nobody back then ever punched a straight
jab or that all punches were weird, but the technique
as such was not as "perfected" as it is today. and i
feel like boxers quite often would lean back rather
than step back in order to not be reachable. something
you rarely see today and if someone does it, like vitali,
it looks ... weird.

[Ezzard]

Great thread.

My opinion: I don't know.

[Ambling Alp II]

I think the main problem is that you would need to watch thousands of fights involving hundreds of fighters to really know. Otherwise you are really making generalizations that are probably way off. Enough footage probably doesn't exist, even if you were willing and able to watch it.

You also have to watch a particular fighter several times against various styles of opponents. As ben geoghegan mentioned, we might think of Jack Johnson quiote differently if we had the footage of his fight with Denver Ed Martin (where ko'd him in two rounds) and nothing else.

Pick any time period that you want, and you will see fighters of widely varying styles in that specific time period.

Most fighters of any era don't fit into the cookie cutter styles such as boxer/swarmer/slugger either. Many are some kind of a combination of two or all three.

I believe that styles and strategies do change quite a bit in the early years of a sport. People find out what works and doesn't work and learn new things. (and of course rules changes play a role.)However after a while, it doesn't change much.

Boxing styles probably changed much more from the 1880s to the 1920s than it did from the 1920s to more modern times.

[Ezzard]

Which great trainers straddled the different eras...

One thing that I noticed...

Jack Johnson had a profound effect on the sport… He slowed fights down. He used his opponent’s aggression against them… Fighters held back wanting to outlast one another… Willard eventually outlasting Johnson himself…

Then along came Dempsey and turned the whole sport on its head. He looked to finish fights quickly.

Decades later Ali had a similar impact especially the win over Foreman. He outlasted his younger and fresher opponents by using their aggression against them. Holmes followed the same paradigm. As did most of the 1980s fighters such was the legend of Zaire. Then along came Tyson who broke the paradigm again.

[Ambling Alp II]

There have been a lot of trainers who were in eras far apart.
Charley Goldman was Al McCoy's trainer when he won the middleweight title in 1914 and later trained Rocky Marciano.
Jack Kearns had Dempsey in the teens/1920s and Maxim and Moore in the 1940s and 1950s.
Ray Arcel had Frankie Genaro in the 1920s and Duran in the 1970s.
Angelo Dundee had Basilio in the 1950s and had Leonard in the 1980s and was still training other guys long after that.

There is always room for most styles as long as the fighter is good enough. It is sort of like pro football; almost all of the "new" plays and strategies have been done many decades before; it just may have been a while.

[man]

it would be interesting to know if top trainers
of the era 1910-1950 saw change. that would
probably be the only real proof for the theory.