Boxing: Then Vs. Now

The other day, Dan Carlin (one of my favorite podcast hosts) released an episode of Hardcore History: Addendum that featured a discussion about boxing with Mike Silver. They were discussing how boxing is the only sport where if you go back in time, the boxers of the past would dominate the guys of today. 

Now, I have argued about other sports before, such as football and baseball. I am a firm believer that players from the 50s-60s NBA would get absolutely destroyed by modern players. Seriously, I would bet some top high school kids would go back to the 1960s and win a championship. Football is the same way. Yeah, there are greats: players who could probably play in any era (Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson in basketball; Lawrence Taylor, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders in football). And then there are outliers, someone like Jack Lambert, who may not have the size and speed of modern players, but he has intangibles. Ferocity cannot be measured. Meanness cannot be measured. Sometimes in this modern, analytical era, we tend to forget about intangibles. 

So needless to say, when Dan Carlin started off saying that boxers from the 1930s would dominate modern boxers, I was ready to start arguing. I am not kidding. I was driving to Johnstown from Indiana, and when Dan began the topic, I sat up and could feel myself wanting to argue. Fortunately, no one was with me, and I kept my mouth shut and listened to the whole episode. I am glad I did. 

Carlin and Silver (I am planning on reading his book about this topic) laid out a good case, and they definitely convinced me. Allow me to lay out some of their arguments (I highly suggest listening to the podcast). 

-Weight classes keep things even
-Fighters back in the 1930s just fought way more often than modern boxers. Joe Louis debuted in 1934, he had 12 fights before the end of 1934. For reference, it took Deontay Wilder almost two years to get his first twelve wins. Why does that matter? When you constantly box, your timing is better, your skill continues to improve. 
-Trainers who trained modern boxers, but were old enough to have trained with or at least boxed with the earlier greats, are fairly unanimous in saying that those old timers would have destroyed modern boxers. For example, Cus D’Amato (who trained Mike Tyson), as well as Teddy Atlas (who was trained by D’Amato and later trained Michael Moorer who beat Evander Holyfield for the heavyweight title) have said that someone like Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano would have knocked out Tyson or any of those guys from the late 80s, early 90s. 
-One thing they do talk about a bit in the podcast is the Rocky Effect. Yes, the movie Rocky had a negative effect on boxing. People thought that was what boxing and boxers should look like. The ripped physique. This in turn caused boxers to want to look like that as well. They note that guys like Muhammad Ali were big and strong, but they were not extremely cut, and if I remember correctly, Ali said he never lifted weights. If you look at pictures of even earlier boxers, they look tough, but you would not look at them and go “damn, that guy is ripped!” The reason for this is that the bigger muscles do not really help all that much with punching speed and power. Do not get me wrong, you have to be in great shape to be a boxer, but the training is totally different. 

This whole debate had me thinking about other sports. A sport like wrestling is interesting because I think you could have any era face each other, and you may be surprised by the results. Golf is also interesting. I think if you give guys like Bobby Jones or Sam Snead access to modern equipment, they are probably still very good. Also, I think you could give Rory or Tiger old-timey wooden clubs, and they would still be great. 

So are there any other sports you think could see players from earlier eras compete or beat their modern counterparts?