By Jaime Ortega: This is an intricate question that many old school boxing fans brag about, but do they have a point?
When we compare music from the past to modern music, no matter how much technology has changed our perception of instruments, music in the past showed greater creativity than what I presently hear in the radio. The same can be said with movies.
People in the past with much less resources read far more books, and newspapers. The average American before the age of digitization had a lot more global knowledge than most adults in our generation who fry themselves with video games, drugs, hours of program television, endless infotainment and other modern distractions having significantly more access to information.
If it were not for calculation systems such as relativity physics or quantum mechanics invented in the 1930’s, most electrical and mechanical integrated engineering systems such as computers and Ipad’s would not exist today, and yet with all the outcomes we developed from past thinkers we still have failed to come up with another form of numerical reasoning other than what the old scientist discovered.
Those are a few unrelated cases, but what about boxing? Have we really advanced? Are fighters today better than the legends of the past? In boxing people use only their arms, and working hard, everyone in the past or in this era could achieve greatness.But competition has sadly changed for the worse in the US, and other countries. I will analyze US boxing’s past.
When we analyze the golden era of boxing during the 1920’s to 1960’s, research shows that 2 out of 10 Americans boxed. The sport of boxing was in equal terms with top sports like football, and baseball and it attracted a vast amount of followers. It was consider one of the top 3 sports, and competition was fierce.
Unlike today where other combatants have chosen the path of doing MMA, Pride, K-1, Strike Force, UFC, and other competitions giving modern fighters more alternatives other than boxing; in contrast, boxing in the past was indisputably the number one blood sport and competition swelled everywhere.
It wasn’t hard to find boxing gyms, especially in high urban areas and inner city districts. There were a lot more local competitions, and unlike today’s boxing scene unknown boxers fought in brothels, bars, pubs and restaurants to entertain people who would pay an entry fee for the night’s performance.
When local job performances became scarce, boxers travelled and registered their names and boxing records into sport gambling committee books, these committees would decide over the fighters next move and write their names with entertaining agencies that would pay the committee a fee for the scouting services. Thousands of fighters, took opportunity of these committees mostly set up by the mafia.
Underground boxing was far more predominant than today, and the sport was practiced by immigrants from different ethnic backgrounds who felt boxing as a hobby, lifestyle and quick way to earn money.
Many fought to eat, others for the money, many others to become world champions. Upcoming young pugilist trained very hard, some from an early age, they had the same aspirations to become legends and hunger to succeed, and inspiration to fight as fighters today.
It was similar to how most Muay Thai gyms in Thailand train fighters. Thailand currently trains fighters, using old practices to bring up new talent. Thailand is considered the best country to train Muay Thai, and has had the highest ratio of world champions.
In the past boxers workout schedules were no different than today’s training. Boxers used less sophisticated equipment that gave exactly the same results. They swam, others ran many miles, pushed truck tires, and others chopped wood and carried stones for strength conditioning. I will also add that they worked harder to triumph given the economic stagnation the nation was experienced after and before the great depression.
Statistics show the average work rate per-capita was double than that what it is today.
One of the main reasons life was harder in the 40’s, was because unlike today where many upcoming boxers rely on government benefits such as EBT cards, and other government programs to survive, these programs didn’t exist back then; that created a tougher survivalist environment only depending on themselves, and their boxing ability to succeed.
When an opportunity arose to fight, no one turned it down firstly because it was considered cowardly and most importantly because it was the only way to keep moving up the chain. When a challenger contended your belt, you didn’t cherry pick the opponent, and if you did the mafia or the boxing athletic commission would suspend your license and strip away the belt.
In contrast with present boxing where African Americans and Mexican fill boxing ranks; Irish, Italians, African Americans, Germans, Czechs, Polish, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other ethnicities swarmed gyms and spawned competition. Rates to join monthly gyms, changed to inflation, cost about 4 cents the equal of $25 dollars a month.
To be good, you had to be very good. The mafia, controlled the sport in the bigger cities, while in the south and most of the Midwest state competitions were under the supervision of most athletic boxing commissions.
Even states like New Mexico, Arizona, Utah not known for boxing, registered many local fighters who fought nationwide given the opportunity.
Unlike today where boxers wait three months, six months and even as much as a year to fight, back then people fought an average of 12 times per-year, and sometimes scheduled fights two weeks after their most recent bout. The more times pugilist fought, the more experienced was gained, and the more repertoire was added to their resume to get the bigger fights.
Trainers today, have HD footage and plenty of resources online to check out their opponents and study film giving them an edge in their game plan. It is clearly a benefit for boxers to know their opponents skills. But on the other hand there is a major chasm between ‘composing’ and ‘free-styling.’
It’s like playing slow tactical chess, versus fast chess with a clock. It involves a different learning tempo.
Boxers in the past had to rely more on their trainer’s judgment, their ability to read the opponents strategy during the fight, with little preparedness of their strength/weaknesses given the lack of film study harder to reproduce in gyms those days. Most intelligence reports dealing with boxers came from hearsay, trusted spies or friends, or the commission itself, but regardless of the tips many sources were not reliable.
It had to be remarkable for any boxer to fight Sugar Ray Robinson, 3 weeks after his fight knowing Ray’s status, without really comprehending his skill-set among other qualities. It was more of a boxing freestyle, an art that more or less has vanished from today’s level of preparedness, where boxers rudimentary studied and analyzed thanks to technology.
Great fighters in the past commonly took on bigger divisions, to an extent a peril to their health as weight classes were not set to fit the selective standard division variability we see today. Obviously that possessed a higher risk for the boxer’s career, but risk then was not meddled with cowardice as shown with most present boxers.
As crazy as it sounds, I highly doubt that any present boxer could have survived fighting for 16 years, an average of 10/12 fights a year without losing one fight, especially without hardly studying their opponents.
When Floyd Mayweather Jr. anoints himself as The Best Ever (TBE), and people buy into it, my heart aches deep inside. I mean I don’t even consider Cassius Clay, the best ever and in my view he was better than Floyd given the opposition he fought.
How can boxers who have less than 50 fights, be put in the same pedestal as those legends that fought well over 100 fights? Never mind 200 and over!
Most modern boxing fans with their visceral approach of classic boxing, categorize these old boxers as only fighting ‘cab drivers’, ‘nobodies’ and easily fall into that discerned assumption. Willie Pep, Sandy Sadler, Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, Benny Leonard, Kid Lewis, Carmen Basilio, Sugar Ray Robinson, Sam Lanford, Kid Gavilan, Henry Armstrong, Joey Maxim, Ezra Charles..etc. Those guys fought cab drivers? Did you drive the Taxi?
The only backdrop in the past that scared boxing was the amount of rigged matches that were fixed thanks to the mafia and the financially precarious lifestyle boxers had to live with if they didn’t comply.
Modern day boxers that retain ‘0’ record as a sign of invincibility but would be eaten alive in the 40’s where boxing was a sad but also a fine virtue for those that achieved greatness.
Price fighting only came with fighting all the mandatory bouts, and sadly I hardly doubt boxing will recover given the present circumstances and ducking floating around the sport.
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