by B. R. Bearden

19.08 - In boxing discussions often the argument rises over current boxers versus the fighters of the past. Are today's fighters better, as some claim, because of superior diets and training techniques? Is a modern, air-conditioned gym with snazzy training equipment more able to turn out a quality fighter than a dingy old New York gym of the past?

Are there fighters of the modern time who were comparably as good as those of nostalgic memory? Yes, there are. Maybe not as good as, say, Sugar Ray Robinson, but Whitaker, Hopkins, and a younger Holyfield would match up favorably against many of the old Hall of Famers. Even Roy Jones shows skills equal to most of the greats, though he lacks a great heart to match. Lennox Lewis, when he's on his game, could hold his own and even defeat many of the former heavyweight champions.

But overall, it is my opinion (for all that's worth), that across the board the fighters of today aren't the equal of their predecessors. For every argument there is a counter, and for every advantage there is the disadvantage.

We are told modern nutritional standards are so high that the men of the past were suffering under malnutrition by comparison. So we are told. But any health expert will tell you that today's young people don't eat as they should. They consume far more sugar than the kids of the 1930s, at least ten times as much. We have soft drink machines in our schools so the children won't have to suffer through a glass of milk. They sit around and play their Dreamcasts during the hours their grandparents would have been outside running, riding bicycles, swimming, or any of the many other activities that were exercise as fun. Despite the "availability" of better diets, the truth is the average American teen isn't as physically fit as his grandparents. The same probably holds true in every industrialized nation. And while a young person today doesn't have to contend with polio and other dangers of his grandparents, that's due to medical advances and not to any willingness to exercise. Yet, this is the pool from which our boxing talent is drawn.

I have actually heard it argued that Jack Dempsey was so badly nourished he wouldn't be competitive at all today. All those hard years of riding the rails and living from meal to meal made him weaker than today's super fed giants. And this from people who purport to know boxing. A solidly muscled fighting machine of 6'1" and 195 pounds would fold up under the power of one of today's hulking 6'5", 240 pound mountains of muscle, steroids, and excess body fat. So they say. And a bullet from a World War I rifle would just bounce off the chest of today's super athlete, too.

I don't want to be labeled as someone completely lost in the past, but that' s often where the answers are. (Ask any pathologist, archeologist, medical researcher, or historian) But I find it hard to believe the leather tough killer who beat 6'6" Jess Willard within seconds of death wouldn't have at least a little bit of a chance against one of the big clinchers of today.

As a tribute to the miracle nutrition of today we do have a 6' 5" heavyweight champion and a top contender at 6' 6". Lennox Lewis is a very good fighter, weak chin aside. And Klitschko appears to be good, though his big test is still to come. And if you could name ten other fighters of that size and skill, you would have an argument that better nutrition has created an era of great super-sized heavyweights.

If there was positive truth to Max Kellerman's oft used line, "These aren't your father's heavyweights" it would be a quick and easy list to make. Lewis and Klitschko are good; the rest are just big. I say "positive truth" because I'm not disputing the statement is true; just not in the way Max meant it. These aren't my father's heavyweights. My father would have changed the channel rather than watch Ruiz wrestle Kirk Johnson or Lewis clinch with Holyfield. As a kid I watched with him Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Quarry. If it had been today's heavyweights on the tube, we'd have been watching "Bonanza" instead.

I did a post on RSB (the newsgroup rec.sport.boxing for those who are uninitiated to the finer points of debate and insult the newsgroups offer) in which I argued that it was mostly a myth that today's heavies are so much bigger than those of the past. I took the top ten list from a 1975 Ring
magazine and compared the men there with the top ten in Ring today. I found, and showed, that the average height of a top ten heavy in 2002 was ½ inch above that of 1975, and the reach was actually 1 inch less! When Lewis retires, the modern "super-sized" heavyweights of the top ten will actually fall below those of 1975. Quick question; would Holmes really be out-classed today? Foreman? Ali? For the slow of foot, the answers out of the teacher's copy are "no, no, and hell no".

And when your three biggest draws in the heavyweight division (Lewis, Holyfield, and Tyson) are all pushing 40 years old, it's hard to convince the skeptic that the superior diets and training techniques of today have created a class of fighter Dempsey, Louis, and Ali would have trouble competing against. Young Jack, Joe, and Muhammad did very well against the aging champions and ex-champions they faced (other than Joe's loss to Schmelling) and they did very well against bigger men. In fact, none of those three ever had problems with a man because of size. And if we are in the era of a new breed of bigger, stronger heavyweight, then where are the young lions of that pride? The big men put in against Lewis, such as Grant and Golota, remind one more of the inept giants put in against Jack Johnson than the high velocity fighters of Ali's era. The truth is, many of the men over six and a half foot tall and 240 pounds are more in the class of the Great White Hopes of Johnson's era than in the class of "super heavyweights".

But what of all the great new training techniques? What techniques? The number one method to condition a fighter for a long fight is running. It's hardly a new technique. Early Neanderthal used the same method to avoid becoming a meal for a cave bear or saber toothed cat.

Gene Tunney ran; I've seen pictures of him running. I'm sure Dempsey did a little running, and Benney Leonard, and Joe Louis. I know for a fact Rocky Marciano ran every day of his 8 year career, even on Christmas morning. This training method wasn't discovered to train Zab Judah, folks. The old timers knew that a 5-10 mile run every day was the best way to avoid gasping for
oxygen by round three. Many of today's fighters still don't know it, apparently.

What equipment is in the gyms of today that an old time fighter or trainer wouldn't know how to use? They still use the heavy bag, the speed bag, those catcher's mitts the trainers wear as they teach their fighters to punch in combination. None of that is new. What mainstay of the training equipment used by Joe Louis has been scrapped because of newer, better modern equipment? That would be "none".

Maybe Louis didn't have a Bow Flex machine for his workouts, but I've never heard that shortcoming as an excuse for his knockout at the hands of Max Schmelling. And it sure wasn't because Joe didn't have modern vitamins or a sports-medicine expert on hand during his training. He lost because of a flaw in his technique and nothing available to a modern fighter would have availed him.

Let us not forget, either, that it is only in the unlimited heavyweight division that we see a physical difference in fighters. Look at the other classes and the men there don't appear any more physical than their forefathers. The disparity in size between heavyweights doesn't translate down to middleweights, for example. A one hundred and sixty-five pound fighter is the same size in 2002 as he was in 1952. All this reference to "fast twitch muscles" doesn't mean the panther quick fighters of yore didn't have them; they just hadn't bothered to come up with a catchy name for them.

Does anyone doubt that could we bring Sugar Ray Robinson to today's arena, at his peak, he wouldn't whip everyone across at least three weight divisions? If Rocky Marciano was brought forward, and forced into the cruiser weight division because he was "a small heavyweight", would Jirov be champion for long? Would Ezzard Charles or Billy Conn look as inept against Roy Jones Jr. as do the lesser fighters he feasts upon every Pay-Per-View? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, you need to watch films of these guys. And remember, just because they're black and white films doesn't mean the guys in them weren't full color in real life.

And least we forget, the old-timers did something the modern fighters skimp on; they fought, and they fought often. You can only advance someone so far with a wonder diet and modern weight training equipment. It's in the ring that one learns what really works and what doesn't. And in that category today's fighters are so far behind we're not comparing apples and oranges; we're comparing apples and grapes.

There are many old sayings; "you learn by doing", "practice makes perfect", and "experience is the best teacher". An expert carpenter isn't the guy who' s read all the books and worked on carpentry techniques in a vocational school shop; it's the guy who's built 100 houses. The logic of that should be indisputable.

So what of a comparison between a 23 year old champion who's had 25 fights and defends his title twice a year for upteen million dollars versus the old timer who had 100 fights before he fought for the title, then defended it every other month for five years? Be sure to sweep up the sawdust when you finish your two week bookshelf project with the ban saw and then we'll ride out to the housing area and you can watch them frame up a house in a day.

Anyone who feels the urge to argue the point, consider this; if you're in an airplane and one of the engines fall off, who has the best chance of getting you to the ground alive? The pilot who's logged over 2000 hours under real adversity or the fellow who's spent 100 hours in one of the best high tech simulators money can buy? If you picked Joe-Video Game, I hope you brought a parachute.

When a young man of 22 becomes champion after 20 or so fights, no matter how much natural talent he was born with, he can't possibly have seen in actual combat everything an opponent can throw at him. Sadly, the champions of today often gain their first of many belts at a young age before they've even hit their prime, then go into semi-retirement. You have highly regarded champions with flaws that were overcome by Sugar Ray Robinson and Archie Moore before they ever made the top ten. The flaw that allowed ex-champion Max Schmelling to knock out contender Joe Louis in 11 rounds was gone two years later when Joe the champion dropped Max in the first round. He learned before he became champion, as it should be. He didn't get a half dozen ABC belts while still trying to learn the proper way to throw a left hook.

Take a look at the records of the old time greats. While the modern top contender or champion is putting in a couple fights a year, those guys were fighting on a regular basis. AFTER he won the featherweight title the first time from Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler went on to fight 67 more bouts.

Willie Pep fought 242 times, Archie Moore 218, Robinson 202, Benny Leonard 212, yet people will, with a straight face, claim that the so-called "Pound-for-pound" guys today with their 20-25 fight careers would be too much for those old time guys.

I've heard the supporters of the "superior fighters of today" concede that IF some of the old timers were brought to modern times, AND trained as fighters trained today AND could have grown up with the benefits of modern nutrition they would be able to fight competitively against currentfighters. I think they have it backwards. IF today's fighters were taken back in time and had to fight more often, in more competitive matches, and IF the #1 contender they were matched against really was the ONLY #1 contender in that un-watered down weight class, they'd be much better than they are.

As Darth Vader warned in "Star Wars", "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed."

I might para-phrase that to add, "The ability to destroy an over-hyped Top Ten contender today is insignificant next to the ability needed to challenge a Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis."