Prime James J. Jeffries vs Jack Johnson

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i will accept that if you say it, i was thinking about china and a couple other countries adding to the pool.

 

Read the report I posted here. Why must you be such a dolt? The fight was even to going Jeffries way prior to the KO!!!

Brady liked Corbett better, and he wasn't shy about saying it. The two shared the same love for theater.

 

Brady was in Jeffries corner at the time are you stupid? No don't answer that.:roll:

 

Yes, I am using the footage to make an analysis, and I'm pretty sure you never saw the Sharkey clip I am commenting on. But the clips show good defense. Film doesn't lie.

Fitz likely did something to his gloves in the re-match. He didn't cut Jeffries up in the first match. In fact the only match Jeffries had with a bad cut was the Fitz re-match.

Those of the times said Jeffries had good defense. Read below, and for once learn something. Sometimes you stretch the definition of stupidity...

W.W. Naughton who lives and saw Jeffries writes:, "To sum up his qualities of ringmanship, it may be said that he is fairly talented in every branch of self-defense. He boxes cleverly, defends himself well and strikes a hard blow. But, back of all these are the qualities which have made him a champion, to wit, magnificent strength and wonderful endurance."

 

I never said he wasn't. Can you read? I said he liked Corbett better, and there was some stretching of the truth in this fight. But a detailed round by round report tells the tale.

 

Jeffries carefully examined Fitzsimmons wraps in the ring it is a matter of record. Jeffries was cut against Choynski,Baker,Corbett and Johnson,his legs were stained with his blood against Johnson and photos prove it.Film also proves his defence was rudimentary at best.

The link below states Corbett had Jeffries badly beaten and in front after 19rds.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...1,2859008&dq=jim+jeffries+v+jim+corbett&hl=en

 

It's clear sparring footage where Jeffries is showing off his skills, and Jack was qualified enough to be a sparring partner.

It's not a fight against world-class opposition, but it's more useful than you're presenting it.

As I said above, the footwork was fastest when he wanted to close distance. Plod-plod-plod-lunge. On film against Ruhlin, he's very good at that.

You can see some (very) occasional instances of lateral movement against Johnson, but not much. Age played a big role in that.

It's not as if every fighter who got hit (or slipped punches narrowly) developed a cauliflower ear, though. Sharkey absorbed punches throughout his career, but didn't get his ear until a particular swing landed just right in the Ruhlin fight. You're expecting a small sample size of 10-20 top heavyweights to all display something that may or may not happen each time you get hit.

Sharkey also got it surgically corrected later, as other fighters could have. And you can't always tell from photographs whether the guy had cauliflower ears.

Kid Lavigne and Griffo both had them during this period. Sullivan's ears always seemed suspiciously oversized to me, and he didn't take that much punishment over the course of his career. For that matter, the fact that Johnson bragged about never getting cauliflower ears is significant -- it suggests that it was fairly common.

Johnson's display, like the first part of Jeffries' footage, was using dumbbells. I was referring to the sparring portion of the footage. Given the relative dearth of good quality film with Johnson and his contemporaries, it's perfectly legitimate to use sparring footage to assess style and skill. Some people here sing paeans to sparring footage of Dempsey, and he came significantly later.

And while some of Ali's tricks might be fight-specific, fighters by and large compete the same way they train. That's the point of sparring. In the 19th / early 20th century, you had the added motivation of wanting to show off your skills for the comparatively rare cameras.

CBZ lists three exhibition matches between Roeber and Jeffries, another with Farmer Burns in 1910, and several with matches lesser lights. Those are only the recorded exhibitions. Jeffries -- like Johnson and Fitzsimmons, the latter of whom fought Roeber in a no-holds-barred contest as well -- used boxing as a regular accompaniment to his boxing training. Jeffries entered boxing in the first place after a NHB-type contest, and everything I've read about the man suggests that he was quite proud of his wrestling skills.

I don't think it's remotely outlandish to attribute the ear to training in wrestling. Lots of wrestlers get cauliflower ears, and boxers in the late 19th century did a lot of wrestling. Ketchel's fight with Papke looks like somebody started a bad Greco match with gloves.

I never said that Roeber specifically gave him the ear, just that Jeffries' involvement with Roeber is a good example of his involvement with serious wrestling training.

 

Well you believe what you want to.

 

I don't exactly have an emotional stake in the abilities of a long-dead boxing champion. But everything I've read said that Jeffries developed from a crude athlete to a relatively fast, technically skilled fighter by the end of his career. Within that context, my interpretations of the film and record make sense to me.

 

The ringside papers give conflicting accounts over how exactly the fight ended. That one would requirte a thread in its own right.

 

How do you reconcile the idea that Jefffries was good defensively with the fact that in his 4th to last fight, Fitzsimmons ,who was coming back from two years retirement, and was nearly 40 years old, is described in that fight as being," able to hit him at will, and when and where he liked".?

 

Partly that Jeffries kept improving right up to the very last fight, so there was still some room for tightening up defensive weaknesses, and partly that Fitzsimmons was an amazing fighter.

Somebody like Marciano had pretty good defensive skills, all things considered. Much harder to hit cleanly than he looked. That didn't stop masters like Archie Moore from nailing him repeatedly.

EDIT: Also, if you're referring to their second meeting, Fitz wasn't coming back from two years' retirement. He was coming off destructions of the two best heavyweights aside from Jeffries and himself.

 

Fitzsimmons last fight prior to meeting Jeffries for the second time was on the 24th of August 1900,he met Jeffries on the 25th of July 1902.

That's two years,[ all but one month ,] without a fight , now do you want to split hairs on that?

 

Wow all these years and I believed Johnson had beaten Everett. Great research on the draw guys. Taking that into account I must say objectively that Jeffries has a clear cut edge on common opponents. As for Johnson being Ko'd often I don't hold any of his knockouts past the Willard fight really against him although it does hurt his overall legacy. He was washed up. The Ko's that mattter are Klondike, CHoyniski and Willard. Two early in career and one to lose the title even though he was out of shape for that fight it's his responsibilty as champ to perform and show up at his best. Johnson does seem a bit more susceptible for having an off night than I originally believed. Everett The marvin hart (highly debateble deciscion) fight is also a bit of a red flag. He clearly got tired and tried to coast to end of fight. Perhaps Johnson lived to much of the good life in between some fights.