Why todays era is better than past eras. Discussion.

[BattlingNelson]

Well a few things jump out at me BN:

a) What do we mean by professional? technically professional means to get paid....It is not really a standard of competancy. In fact, there have been times when olympic fighters were considered the equal in many respects at least in some countries, like Cuba for example. T Stevenson was never a professional fighter per se....neither was Savon.

b) Also per capita what were the levels of professional fighters in America as compared to the number now? this would be a good number to have. Remmeber the world didn't have a billion people for most of those years!

Lets start with that info....

No disrespect Bill, but I cannot see how those statistics could enlighten us regarding the topic at hand.

[BattlingNelson]

The problem I have with today is that people get rich fighting low opposition, so why risk it?

Look at Peter Quillin. He hasn't fought one single top middleweight, yet can cash million dollar paychecks. Why fight GGG?

Back in the old days, people could make a significant amount more only by fighting top guys because TV wasn't paying millions for average fights.

Therefore I would imagine top fighters fight less top fighters today than before. That's my assumption, whether or not that can be proved by stats is different altogether.

Im not 100% certain, but I believe I saw a statistic on number of fights between top10 contenders in Larry Holmes era compared to the current. I dont think there was any significant deviation.

[BattlingNelson]

And are we sure there is a corelation to quality? Thats a tough one to prove...I would be interested if even a correlation could be established.

Only certain insofar as the law of competition. More competition. Better results.

[BattlingNelson]

I have never been more confident that these statistics are bogus. Small arenas across the country had regular cards for low level pros up to the 1950s.

It is typically myopic of non staticticians to compare the eras on an absolute numbers basis. The U.S. population when I was a kid was about 180 million, now it is pushing double that. Saturation was much higher then than now.

Statistics do more harm than good in the hands of people who have no idea how to handle a data set. Massaging statistics is every day business in our world. Both political parties and their minions indulge in it constantly, which is why the statistics given on the O'Reilly show will often differ from those on MSNBC, etc.

Of course no one here has an agenda. Or do they? The title of the thread suggests they do. Someone here has an agenda that boxers are better today than in the past, so bogus statistics based on absolute numbers are conscripted to prove it.

The only agenda here for me, is to get wiser on the sport I love. My world of reference was shook with those statitiscs as my explanation for the 'weak State of boxing' was that there where more fighters having more fights BITD. Now they still had more fights individuelle, but the number of competitors is far greater today.

I know it does not prove anything Per se, but its a quantitative measure and trumps any 'eye-test' that any observer can have.

[joeandthebums]

I was asked to look at a different year in the 1940's as Humean believed it might not of been representative of the decade due to it falling within the period of war.

1948 MW's

Jan -
Bert Lytell vs. Oakland Billy Smith (#10 LHW)

Feb -
Bert Lytell vs. Jackie Darthard

Mar -
Marcel Cerdan vs. Laverne Roach

Apr -
Bert Lytell vs. Major Jones
Bert Lytell vs. Jackie Darthard
Steve Belloise vs. Chuck Hunter

May -

Jun -
Rocky Graziano vs. Tony Zale

Jul -

Aug -
Jose Basora vs. Bee Bee Wright (#10 WW)

Sep -
Tony Zale vs. Marcel Cerdan
Bert Lytell vs. Charley (Doc) Williams (#8 LHW)

Oct -
Nov -
Dec -

Total: 10

[joeandthebums]

Below is a comparison between the same date 68 years apart.

Friday 12 July 1946

Australia; 3 cards; 12 bouts
Ireland; 1 card, 7 bouts
Italy; 1 card, 1 bout
Panama; 1 card, 1 bout
Spain; 1 card, 4 bouts
USA; 18 cards; 79 bouts

Total Cards: 25
Total Bouts: 104
Total Boxers: 208


Saturday 12 July 2014

Argentina; 4 cards; 6 bouts
Australia; 1 card, 5 bouts
Chile; 1 card, 1 bout
Colombia; 1 card, 4 bouts
Georgia; 1 card, 12 bouts
Hungary; 2 cards; 14 bouts
Mexico; 2 cards; 7 bouts
New Zealand; 1 card, 3 bouts
United Kingdom; 3 cards; 35 bouts
USA; 7 cards; 40 bouts

Total Cards: 23
Total Bouts: 127
Total Boxers: 254


As the date fell on different days, I did a quick count for the correct day.

Saturday 13 July 1946

Total Cards: 22
Total Bouts: 69
Total Boxers: 138


Friday 11 July 2014

Total Cards: 19
Total Bouts: 85
Total Boxers: 170


Which produces the following totals;

1946 2 Day Total

Total Cards: 47
Total Bouts: 173
Total Boxers: 346


2014 2 Day Total

Total Cards: 42
Total Bouts: 212
Total Boxers: 424

[billeau2]

No disrespect Bill, but I cannot see how those statistics could enlighten us regarding the topic at hand.

non taken.

You can't make a qualitative judgement based on a quantitative point of reference. If you want to prove something is "better" then you do not prove there is a greater quantity of the thing....."better" is a qualitative judgement...as in fighters are better __________ than ____________ fighters because ________ fighters were all lacking the use of a jab and cross while __________fighters used a jab and a cross. The proof of which is that ______fighters won 30% more of the fights with the use of a jab and cross showing qualitatively that they were better fighters because 30% is statistically relevant.

More professionals is a statement about quantity, especially when it is yet to be established that more fighters makes better fighters.

As far as "per capita" I am directly addressing your statement under the assumption (for the sake of argument) that more is in some way better. My point is that unless you have more fighters as a proportion of the general population, you cannot infer that there is more competition because there are more people. If what you said were true then the best fighters would be from India and china and other populated areas....In fact? Not only are many great fighters from relatively fair to middlin areas with respect to population...But countries like Cuba (a very small population) and Puerto Rico are well represented in the boxing ranks.

A better measure is what amount of the stated population in an area participate in boxing over time....this measure would indicate that per the amount of people in the united stated for example, there are many less participants in boxing now a days. Make sense?

Now....you do have one good point which is that there are areas in the world where more people per the population are boxing....In basketball this is also true. You have more countries that are developing professional ball players. But this is a demographic point that seems to say that overall the place where professionals are coming from has changed, more than saying that strickly speaking more better fighters are being produced because of more people vis a vis more competition.

I could go on...I do not want to sound pedantic but traditionally because I teach I tend to be thorough! So let me just say one more thing here: Even "competiton" as a category is highly suspect because there are many more endevours that gifted athletes can do now-a-days including other combat sports. So to say the professional ranks indicate greater competition and thus better skill sets is a fallicy.

[billeau2]

Only certain insofar as the law of competition. More competition. Better results.

See my other reply.

[billeau2]

The only agenda here for me, is to get wiser on the sport I love. My world of reference was shook with those statitiscs as my explanation for the 'weak State of boxing' was that there where more fighters having more fights BITD. Now they still had more fights individuelle, but the number of competitors is far greater today.

I know it does not prove anything Per se, but its a quantitative measure and trumps any 'eye-test' that any observer can have.

Ok. Just single out this one point.....I don't know your age....But, I am 50 and when I was in High School....I will never forget this, we had this goofy kid Charles Fischer, who said that the world had a Billion people....Everybody laughed at him (he had really bad breath!!). We now live in a world where we have far surpassed a billion people!

With that in mind....There should be many more fighters having more fights. One cannot divorce boxing activity from the amount of people with a potential to box. As a proportion of the population this hardly makes more competition. If 10 percent of athletes were trained as boxers in the old day, and that is ten percent of 50 million.... does ten percent of todays 300 million make for better competition? In both cases you will have a bell curve showing the best, the middle and the rest. Sheer numbers does not make the best better because the averages will work the same either way....the only difference is that with more people you will get more in each category...you see how your thinking about competition is suspect?

In an IQ test you will also have a bell curve right? does more people taking the test mean that you have more intelligent people if more people take the test?

[SlySlickSmooth]

Interesting discussion. I was always of the thought that there were more pro boxers in the mid century than now. Could it perhaps be harder to collect info from that era for boxrec?

The old days are always better - that's how the old days are remembered. Today's boxing has little euphoria connected to it. So in 20 years time, we'll talk about the great days of Mayweather and Pacquiao - similarly to how Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran are being talked about today. Probably.

Now, I have one issue with this. How do we determine that the quantity of fighters improve the quality of fighters? Surely, there must be a better way to determine this? I don't think that we can determine that 'general competition' increases quality as today there would probably be more registered boxers who freelance as boxers, because the paycheck for a journeyman is higher today than it was before.

So if say, 95% of today's fighters are fighting at regional level and only 85% of yesteryear did - That should be a detraction from the overall quality?

What do you guys think?

Yes but guys in older eras fought A LOT more. We have people who complain everyday that champions only fight twice a year, they don't even want to fight 10 round exhibitions and the networks won't pay for that.