By John Kelvin: In boxing, many fans and writers like to compare today’s stars with those of the past, particularly those from the 30s, 40s and 50s etc. On almost every occasion the old timers are favored over the best of today. There is no doubt that their were great fighters from those times but there are also great fighters in this era. I feel that the greatness of some of these fighters is exaggerated, it is made out that they were invincible and the fighters of today would stand no chance against them.
Perhaps one of the reasons that they are remembered like this is because they fought all comers and had to really earn world championships as their was only one champion in the division. In today’s era, there are around five title belts if you count the ring magazine and many of the best fights aren’t made for various reasons.
However, boxing has evolved since then and i think that the boxers of today are better conditioned and are better technically than some of the boxers of the past. One of the reasons that there were so many knockouts in the past is that the fighters used smaller gloves. Today the gloves are a lot bigger and have more padding which diminishes some of the punching power of the fighters. Among the stars of this era, it is easy to imagine Mayweather, Pacquiao, Marquez, Rigondeaux, Golovkin, Mosley, Hopkins, the Klitschko brothers and others competing with the best fighters from the past. They may have taken losses due to fighting more often and the level of competition they were up against but i believe they would have would have been greats or at least elite in any era. Sometimes i watch fights from the 50s and 60s and although they were good boxers i don’t feel some of the fighters are as good as they are made out to be. I am not going to list the records of the prominent boxers of the past as you can research them for yourself but several of these fighters have several losses and not all of them have come against fellow stars.
These favourable comparisons are understandable, when we look at the best boxers in 30 or 40 years we will probably say that they wouldn’t stand a chance against Mayweather and Pacquiao, thats just the way it is. Ultimately, we will never know who was the best or who would win from the various era’s so all we can do is speculate. However i feel that it is unfair to diminish the accomplishments of today’s fighters by saying that they are B and C class fighters compared to the boxers of the past. Many if the people who make these assertions have never seen any of the old timers box and only say they were the greatest because everyone else does.
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