Greater Heavyweight? -- JEFFRIES vs JOHNSON

I am not a huge fan of Johnson’s title reign, but let me play devils advocate here.

He basically defended against whichever white contender the media demanded, and in that respect his criteria were exactly the same as Jeffries.

The key difference is that in Jeffries era the talent lay more on the white side of the division.

 

Jeffries, was a great athlete who learned to box along the way. Read somewhere that he ran the 100 yard dash in slightly over 10 seconds. Not bad for a 6'2" 225 lb. man who was never trained to run. He drew the color line like all Heavyweight champions before him, and that hurts his all time ranking for me.

He took some awful beatings during his learning curve, but had tremendous power, strength and determination which he used to eventually wear his opponents down with. He was judged by contemporary sources, as one of the greatest Heavyweights up to 1950 in polls. But Johnson was judged greater. Head to Head, I will take Jeffries word for it that he could never have hit Johnson, even in his prime.

 

Which ones would you pick to beat an in shape , non- persecuted, and not distracted Johnson?

Johnson placed several adverts in papers offereing to fight ANYONE who could come up with the $30,000 his predecessor received for defending against him.
He cabled Tommy Burns, then promoting in Canada and offered to defend against the best White challenger Luther McCarty.Burns turned him down
He signed to defend against Joe Jeannette, twice.
Signed to defend against Langford once.
It is a great pity that Johnson did not fight Langford because he is the only challenger I would give a realistic chance to beat Johnson.
If both men are in shape Johnson wins imo.

That is an opinion shared by Clay Moyle , an opinion which carries some weight by virtue of him recently having written Langford's biography and getting well received praise for it..


Anyone have newspaper reports crying out for Johnson to defend his title against black challengers?:think

 

Johnson,no doubt,was an exceptionally talented fighter. Great skills and power. Jeffries less so. He was a strong guy but would have got beaten by many champions who succeeded him.

 

I think that is very debatable.

It is fair to say that if rankings had existed at the time, then the top 1 and 2 would have always been either Langford or McVea.

Some of the contenders he fought were enjoying something of a hiatus, and I don’t think it is a stretch to say that some of them could have cracked the top 5. Serious candidates for this include Kaufmann, O’Brien, Flynn and Moran.

 

I do not believe Matt to be in any way biased, but he does have the benefit of hindsight. A champion can only see the past, and can only react to their immediate situation. If you fight the most hyped contender, then they might be the Wladamir Klitschko of the era, or they might turn out to be the Sergei Lyakovich of the era.

O’Brien was coming off a loss to Stanley Ketchel when he met Johnson, so in many ways Ketchel was a more logical challenger than O’Brien.

Kaufmann had not lost in four years going into the Johnson fight, so I can well believe that he would have had a high ranking going into the fight.

Obviously Johnson was always going to have to fight Jeffries.

There had been a big head of steam building up behind Carl Morris, when Fireman Flynn upset him. The media then jumped on the Flynn bandwagon.

Frank Moran was highly regarded when Jess Willard was champion, and I sort of get the feeling that Johnson fought him before the peak of his currency. Even so he was coming off a win over Al Palzer, who was admittedly on the decline.

 

Jeffries had as pointed probably the most prodigious run of any young heavyweight. However as champion his record could even be viewed as weak. Corbett had not won a fight for 6 years and that against a fading middleweight. The second time they fought Corbett was nearly 37, having his last fight and hadn't won a meaningful fight for eleven years if we discount the McCoy affair!
Bob Fitz was over 39 years old when Jeffries beat him the second time, positively ancient at that time for a heavyweight. Sharkey was a good win, over a good contender but it was a close and tough fight with a man that Fitz dominated in the same time frame.
Monroe was nothing, as mentioned the likes of Flynn or Kaufman were far superior to him. If you include Griffin and Kennedy, Jeffries did what you would expect a very good champ to do, and dominated them. We wont mention Jack F------n.
My year end ratings were mentioned and as pointed Kaufman would have held a rating when he fought Johnson. I tried as far as humanly possible to keep hindsight out and work chronologically and with contemporary sources. It must be remembered that the big three of Sam, Sam and Joe were nearly always in the top three, add in McCarty and Gunboat and there isn't a lot left.
I should add that Jeffries did fight who the public rated and wanted, at least up until the emergence of McVey and Johnson. Martin was better than a lot that he fought but had little backing.

 

I think he did and both they , and himself improved
I say again, if Johnson was in top shape which of the black contenders do you pick to beat him?

 

Excellent post!:good

 

Even McVey admited that Jeffries would have beaten Johnson when he was champion, and Jack Johnson himself said Jeffries was the greatest.

So there you have it in terms of the ad nausea debate.

The fact that many black heavies ( Such as Langford and Jeannette ) were picking a washed up Jeffries who had not fought in 6 years, and had to shed ( Insert you best guess of 50-80 pounds of Fat ) to get in shape speaks volumes of what a prime Jeffries was like.

I think both were great for their time, but in Johnson's case his title run was poor, and he was upset a bit too often in terms of draws and losses before he beat Burns in 1908.

 

One observation should be made about this.

After his retirement Jeffries was lauded for being a great champion who defended his title against other great fighters, and by this they generally meant Fitzsimmons and Corbett.

I get the idea that a fighter got more credit for beating a past prime great back then than today. There was less history to illustrate how a great fighter could diminish.

One interesting fact that is not immediately obvious, is that Fitzsimmons beating Sharkey and Ruhlin, and Corbett beating McCoy happened in a very short period. This is one era where the older generation really spanked the up and coming contenders!

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