Anyone who has been around old fight fans have heard it ad nauseam -- "These younger fighters couldn't have hung with the guys from my hey-day!" Well, the nice thing about this book is that it actually fleshes out that argument and makes it more compelling than the rantings of an embittered old fan.
As someone who came into this read extremely skeptical (I'm 32), I have to say I might actually be convinced. The core four arguments that got me thinking were --
1) Simply put, less athletes are taking up boxing.
As he points out, at one point in the 40s or 50s, NY state had thousands of licensed boxers on the books -- by the mid-2000s, it was around 50. A sport is only as strong as the athletes that compete in it... and boxing has been on the decline for quite awhile. Top athletes that might have once considered boxing are now playing in the NFL, NBA, and other big money sports rather than the sport of boxing. Now, only a very small percentage of fighters are truly the elite athletes of today. The ranks of boxing were much deeper with talent -- not because people back then were any more special, but because far more people were participating in the sport.
2) The frequency of the old-school boxing schedule.
I think the authors says that in the "golden era", fighters tended to have a bout every month or more whereas the fighters of today at the elite level do it twice a year at most -- and I am a believer that the more you do something, the better you get at it. The book puts forth the idea that fighters learn better defense as a bad beating or injury will put you out of work for too long and are exposed to a greater variety of styles simply through the sheer number of fights and the depth of each weight division (and there were only 8 then).
3) Weight divisions render the "bigger, stronger" element that you see in other sports a non-factor.
At least with weight classes under the Heavyweight Division. 160 pounds is 160 pounds... and while I'm a believer in evolution, I think it takes a little bit longer than a few decades to kick in, so there's nothing intrinsically superior about the modern human being versus the one from the 1950s as long as size is equal.
However, they also make the point that boxing has always had plenty of "giants" -- he lists quite a few boxers from the golden age's HW division that were 6'5" or even more. Guys who were beaten by the likes of Joe Louis or Archie Moore.
4) The book actually has top boxing trainers -- like Emmanuel Steward, Angelo Dundee, Freddie Roach, and Teddy Atlas -- breaking down modern fighters and fights, critiquing the boxing technique used and offering alternatives that worked for past fighters, all explained by some of the top boxing coaches of all time. Defense is the top thing criticized, which makes sense when you factor in the points above.
But, on the negative side...
The one thing you usually have to give the athletes of today is the superior science they have on their side, from training equipment, nutrition, supplements, etc. I feel the book makes a weak case as far as saying modern strength-training creates muscle-bound fighters, picking out fighters who used weight-training and have lost. This is a bit of a straw man argument -- you could point to a ton of fighters who use a speed-bag and have lost.
Also, the critics of this book are right -- the book needed a good edit as by the last few chapters, you start to hear the same thing over and over from certain experts -- "But could so-and-so compete with golden age fighter-x? No way, he would get KO'ed in the third round and be nothing more than a club fighter." Even if true, how many times do we need to hear it over and over? And since it's pure speculation, even from an expert (and let's face it -- take a look at past predictions from sports experts and you're not seeing an extraordinary level of accuracy), it's hardly real evidence.
Still, this book is truly a pleasure -- you get a quick but deeply informative lesson of boxing history since its modern inception, a depper insight in boxing strategy and techniques, and a panel of coaches that are a pleasure to hear from.
Highly recommended!
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- geoff grainger snrReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2018
There is no boxing tome like it, puts forward many ideas and backs each ...
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