[Syd Thrift]

I'm sure that boxers train better than they used to. I mean, older heavyweights have been champions or contenders since they started keeping track of that sort of thing. The issue with the lower weights always seemed to be that eventually older fighters could no longer make weight for the classes they were best equipped to fight. When you already weigh 220, 10 pounds of fat that you can't seem to get off doesn't matter too much. At 140, it's a killer. Certainly advances in nutrition and that sort of thing have improved since the 40s.

Also, in the specific case of Sergio Martinez, it's worth noting that he is not your classic boxer with 200 amateur bouts before he turned 18 followed by a long and demanding pro career. Martinez didn't start boxing until he was 20 years old - as HBO liked to remind you every 2 minutes, he was a soccer player and cyclist who took up boxing as a way to stay in shape. In that respect, one could classify his boxing age as somewhere closer to 30.