A review of modern boxing by Lochlann Gargan - 5 reasons the golden age of boxing will never return (maybe)

I love watching combat sports. I have been an avid fan of different types of combat sports for years now. I really enjoy watching mixed martial arts (mma) (especially the UFC) and Muay Thai fighting (especially in the One Championship fights). I cannot say which form of martial art is my favourite as picking one favourite out of even the two that I have just mentioned would be a near impossible task for me to complete. Saying that, in terms of purity and traditionalism and just raw physical and mental toughness and overall ruggedness, nothing beats good old fashioned boxing, especially (and this goes for any type of martial art if I am being perfectly honest) when it is a proper brawl. Pure boxing. Fisticuffs. Stand and trade. Not a game at all. Not a sport anymore. Not even really a boxing match. A battle. A war. A fight.

Here are 5 reasons why I think that the golden age of boxing has been and gone and why older era boxing was more entertaining than it is now. This list explores boxing in the past (in my opinion its purest form) and compares it to modern boxing (which in my opinion has been slightly tainted by too much social media involvement and sometimes content creation as well).

1.) Undefeated Status - too many boxers nowadays care so much about being undefeated. This has created less entertaining fights in more recent years with modern boxers sometimes less willing to get into a brawl or a slugfest in the ring in order to stay safer to increase their chances of keeping that untainted record. Losing is all a part of it in my opinion. I mean I know it might sound cliche, but that is genuinely how people learn and I feel nowadays that a lot of boxers are too afraid to take that risk, too afraid to lose that undefeated status by maybe trying to find out if it is worth it or not to entertain the fans more by getting involved in a brawl rather than going for an easier winning strategy and counter punching and trying to jab your way to the final bell. It's a fight, not a beauty pageant Mayweather.

2.) Defensive fighting style (too defensive, sometimes almost no offense at all i.e. Floyd Mayweather) - this leads to boring fights almost one hundred per cent of the time. Floyd Mayweather id the best defensive boxer of all time in my opinion. Does that make him an elite fighter in my eyes? Not really. He is a supreme athlete but just a good fighter. I am a boxing nerd and I genuinely enjoy watching clips of him box, his use of the philly shell, his head movement, his counter punching, the way he makes his opponent miss by just inches sometimes allowing him to stay close enough to effectively land a significant counter punch (god I could actually feel glasses forming on my face and see a pencil case manifesting in my room as I typed that), but I also love a good slugfest and he definitely never gets involved in them inside the ring.

3.) Most modern boxers have several other jobs in entertainment (content creators, actors, entrepreneurs, i.e. Olexander Usyk - acting in the movies the smashing machine and the fight rules) - this means there is less desperation for them to win fights and risk losing sometimes in order to put on a bonus worthy performance as this used to be boxers only source of income a lot of the time. Olexander Usyk is the best boxer on planet earth right now and I think he is incredibly talented and skilled and I love to watch him box, but he doesn't quite have that entertainment factor as Mike Tyson or Manny Pacquiao used to when they were boxing in their primes.

4.) Boxers would sometimes continue to fight while being severely injured - Danny Williams knocked out his opponent Mark Potter after he (Danny Williams) had dislocated his shoulder. If that happened in this era I am 99 per cent certain that the fight would have been stopped and Mark Potter would have wrongfully, in my opinion, got a technical knockout victory or the fight would have been ruled a No Contest.

5.) Too many belts (is this boxing or a primary school sports day?) - Personally I think that there are too many belts in the world of modern boxing. The value of winning a title in boxing has decreased because of this. It seems that because there are so many belts winning a title is easier than it used to be and it is also difficult to decide who is the real champion of each weight class. I think personally there should only be one champion per weight class as this adds more value to the championship status in boxing. Roughly just before the 1960s there were only four weight classes in boxing (heavyweight, middleweight, lightweight, and featherweight) and there was only one recognized world champion per weight class. This gave more value and proper meaning to being a boxing champion as in that weight class you literally would have been the champion of the entire world in boxing.

In conclusion, I personally think that because of the five reasons that I have listed above, that the golden age of boxing will more than likely never, ever return. I hope that this conclusion that I have drawn turns out to be false. I genuinely hope that I am wrong (I never thought I would ever say or type those words, feel kind of weird to be honest) and that boxing goes back even slightly or ever so gradually to the way it was before in the golden era as I enjoy referring to it as. For some people the way boxing is in this era might be more enjoyable for them. They may prefer that it has gotten tamer and fighter are generally safer, but realistically I genuinely think that it has gone to far in that direction. We have ringside physicians and referees that seem more competent than ones in the past so I genuinely think that going back even just a little bit to the way things used to be inside the ring and even having the referees interfere a little less cannot be a bad thing at all especially in terms of entertainment. An early stoppage every now and then is not that big a deal, we are all human at the end of the day and we all make mistakes even at work and at the end of the day being a referee is a job, but I genuinely think that it has happened a little too often in recent years. Unfortunately, the golden age of boxing is just a memory for some, and a tale of the past for others.