I’m not a huge boxing fan but it seems to me that the 70s was the era of big spectacle event fights that everyone in the country would tune if for a couple times a year but the 50s was when people watched boxing every single week. So one era had a plethora of hardcore fans nationwide for whom boxing was a weekly passion but the casual viewer wasn’t that into it, the other had nationwide interest from casual fans or even non-fans interested in the spectacle and the big personalities but only a couple times yearly. Which is more a golden age? Over a beer with a couple of old timers, that could make an interesting debate.
The popularity of different sports and events changes over time.
I’ve heard people say that, back in the ‘50s, the most popular sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Back then, NFL football and NBA basketball were not nearly as prominent as they are today.
Perhaps part of the decline of boxing, is that there is no outsized personality such as Muhammed Ali nowadays?