Tommy Burns with modern sports medicine and steroids vs. Jack Johnson

Nobody ever shows greater distain for the value of size in boxing, than a proponent of bigger more modern fighters, trying to downgrade an old timer who beat all the big fighters of his era!

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He beat Willard?

No, the fact was that the better heavies of his era were the smaller heavies. His victories over the best fighters (Jeffries was but a shell) were against smaller fighters. And, also, his best victories were when Johnson himself was smaller.

 

McVey was between 20 -25 lbs heavier than Johnson he had some good wins under his belt yet Johnson totally dominated him. You have no way of assessing how good Johnson's earlier bigger opponents were because you never saw them , many times you have lumped them all together as clod hopping farm hands without any proof to back such a derogatory generalisation,it' s becoming a little stale now.

 

I used the word "generally" specifically because of the Sam McVey win. Then again, footage I have seen of McVey is not entirely flattering.

The argument that I, or anyone, has no way of knowing the quality of Johnson's earlier largish opponents is hardly an endorsement of their abilities. We can know records such as they exist and contemporary accounts of their abilities. I am sure the lot of them were hard, desperate men. But to use our lack of rounded knowledge to their pedigree to equate them with Burns, Langford, Jeanette or even Ketchel is beyond a stretch.

 

The difference between the Martin's,Griffin's,Klondikes, Russell's Ferguson's, Butler's ,Childs etc is we havent seen their common opponents as we have Greb's ,we can get a line on Harry because of the footage of his opponents. Some of Jack's opponents were probnably not that special , but some of them may have been suprisingly good.