Jim Corbett vs Harry Greb

truth.

 

Fighters cycled their fists in Corbett's day to camouflage genuine movements (just as fighters today use subtle movement to keep their opponents guessing). They chose to keep their hands in motion because the different range, footwork, gloves, etc. made it work. The elbows also tended to flare out more because it's easier to deflect the standard bareknuckle left lunge/jab with the outside ridge of the forearm.

I think Corbett was demonstrating punching from weird positions that you'd only arrive at if you'd been cycling your fists and blocking like he did. He didn't expect the beginner to pull the fist back to that position from a static guard; that would be silly. Instead, the arm would sometimes naturally pull back to that position as part of its regular cycling pattern. (Or feinting, or blocking.) At those times when the fist naturally arrives at that position, you throw the punch in question.

Sullivan does the same thing in his "friendly" feinting exchange on film with Corbett. His fists' regular cycling motion and feints put Sullivan's arms into similar positions to Corbett's. He doesn't draw back a fist from a static guard and then throw a punch.

 

When you look at Corbett SPARRING with Tunney and McCoy you are seeing a old guy fooling around in the ring. The only clear film we have of Corbett near prime is his fight with Courtney. Here you do not see the exaggerated moves seen during the sparring sessions. I think it's a huge mistake to look at the sparring sessions and extrapolate from that Corbetts skills or style. He may have been inferior to Tunney but those sparring sessions are not the evidence that should be examined to make this determination.

 

Yeah. And even with Courtney, Corbett is basically fooling around against a vastly inferior opponent, under artificial conditions, in a tiny ring designed for an Edison camera. He knocks Courtney out more or less on cue.

 

The idea here is Corbett is not fighting in an exaggerated fashion as he was doing during those sparring sessions.

 

Right.

And my point was that even in Courtney, we can't trust everything we see as representing Corbett's A game.

 

I disagree. If he's doing it in nearly every video there is of him, then that's what he did.

Even in the video with Tunney, he draws his elbows back before he punches - and in the video he's demonstrating HOW TO PUNCH.

The uppercut he throws - which he does a couple different times and is the same every time - is simply terrible. (See the 1:45 mark) He's not joking. He throws it the same way multiple times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMdot7QW9Mo

The left hooks from the outside (at the 35 second mark and later). And he threw them the exact same way against Fitszimmons.

The way, towards the end, when he's demonstrating feinting by c0cking his elbows back while he sticks his head out front (around 2:49).

Just not good. Not good at all.

Maybe it was when he was fighting old, bloated drunks like Sullivan. But it's just all wrong.

 

You raise a couple issues:

1) Pulling a fist back before punching -- After I watched this film again, I'm pretty sure that he's doing it as part of the fist-cycling. He's just not cycling fully because it isn't necessary to show how the punch works. When Corbett punches, he's completing a familiar sequence on autopilot: "continue" cycling -- punch -- return to cycling. You can see the withdrawal reflex at several points. Looks almost like a karate guy pulling the hand back. Since he's been asked just to show the punches, he looks "off" when he throws a punch as if he'd been rolling his guard already.

2) Weird uppercut, hook, etc. -- Different ranges, gloves, and rules are responsible for this. It's not that Corbett's a bad boxer, it's that he's not doing "boxing" at all, in the modern sense. He's practicing a combat sport with MMA-sized gloves that had only banned trips, upper body throws, standing chokes, and headlocks from high level competition when Corbett was a young man. That's how Corbett's supposed to look, because that's the most effective style under those rules.

-------------

...Though it's possible I'm wrong about the cycling guard, and he's just giving really terrible boxing lessons that he didn't follow himself. He's not telegraphing much in the Courtney match, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpDhbpmtpvo

 

The Courtney affair was a sparring session itself.
It was set up by Edison after John L Sullivan demanded too much money to do it .It wasn't a real fight.

7 Peter Courtney Orange, NJ EX 6
-Corbett knocked Courtney out; This bout
was filmed by Edison's Kinetoscope;
Rounds lasted from 1 1/2 to 2 minutes due
to film reloading requirements

 

No. That's not how he's supposed to look.

And chokes were essentially out after the Ben Caunt era (in the 1840s).

If that's how Corbett thought you were supposed to throw an uppercut 80 years later, it's WRONG.

That's not how you throw an uppercut against anyone.

Ever.

I don't want to diss the pioneers. Corbett helped move the sport forward. But, by the 1920s, the sport had taken another huge step forward. And Corbett's "stylings" were way out of date and easy to pick apart by then.

There are backyard boxers today who post videos of themselves fighting one another who are better boxers than those guys. Because they've seen people fight with better technique their whole lives.

And that's basically who the boxers pre-Corbett were - backyard boxers.

If you're fighting in a barn, or fighting in the yard outside someone's mansion, or you and 30 guys get on a barge and they push it out on the water and you fight on it so you don't get arrested ... you're a backyard boxer.

People have since written about them and put them on pedestals. And they were celebrated in their day (even though most of the world - even then - never actually saw them fight) because there weren't any sports at all back then in the U.S. but baseball.

But that's really all they were. Backyard boxers.

Just hard*ss guys who liked to fight but didn't really know what the hell they were doing.

 

Then you saying the historians, fighters, and writers of the time who saw them are lying as I don's see Gibbons on any top 20 lists. None, zero, zilch.

There is a huge difference in the quality of the film between the two in terms of distance where it was filmed, close-ups, clarity, correct speed of the film, etc...

Tunney was impressed with Corbett and he meet Corbett way past his prime.

 

How many Top 20 lists were printed when Tommy Gibbons was fighting?

 

Sometimes you are so dimwitted I think you're pulling our legs.

Read slowly...

Take the most recent weights before and after the Greb fight in July 1920.

Weight listed:

Gibbons 167 pounds on June 1919
Gibbons July 1920 fight vs Greb, NO WEIGHT GIVEN
Gibbons 169 December 1920.


1922 Gibbons vs Greb, Gibbons 171 pounds!

It is most logical to conclude Gibbons weight for the 1920 Greb fight was between 167-169 pounds. And In 1922 Gibbons was a confirmed 171 pounds.

We are talking about what he weighed when he fought Greb. atsch

NEXT!

 

Doubble,

The fighters themselves have given them, and there was always comparisons between heavyweights. There's enough out there and I would not focus on a list of 20, just focus on what' given.

You won't find Gibbons name on any of them, but you will almost always see Corbett.

Therein lies the difference. If you want list of names given by the fighters, managers or ref's themselves, PM me. I can show you.

Do you agree that there is there is a huge difference in the quality of the film between the two in terms of distance where it was filmed, close-ups, clarity, correct speed of the film, etc...?

I say without a doubt. But I'd like to confirm where you stand here.

 

I'm not sure what you guys are arguing about.

But any list of the best boxers ever printed in the 1920s is going to include basically all of the heavyweight champions, because the heavyweight champions were considered the best fighters in the whole sport back then.

But the reputations of Sullivan, Corbett, Fitz, Jeffries, even Johnson was based primarily on stories people had read and passed around. Most of the world never saw them fight. Even if their fights were filmed, there weren't theaters in every town. Most people in the world never saw movies well into the 20th Century.

If you won the heavyweight championship, you were someone who was larger than life (Unless you were Marvin Hart).

It wasn't based on film study. It was based on stories passed around.

It was acknowledged at the time that the sport took a huge leap forward with Corbett.

The fact that we can see Corbett (and not the guys who he took a huge leap over), and we can see that Corbett was laughably crude compared to those who came after him ... well, it doesn't say much for the guys who (by all accounts) were FAR WORSE and CRUDER than Corbett was.

The fact that people in the 1920s still waxed poetic about the heavyweight champions they'd read about when they were children and heard about all their lives isn't surprising.

But, based on the films we can see of them, the early pioneers were just that ... pioneers.

When boxing gyms began to open in major cities around the U.S. in the early 20th century and thousands of people took up the sport and it exploded ... skills improved, techniques improved, activity improved, and the sport quickly evolved.

Most people don't recognize greatness when its occurring. Especially in boxing. In fact, if you read about how INCREDIBLE someone was ... and you see good fighters around you box ... you naturally still gravitate toward the FANTASY of what you IMAGINE the GREAT fighters looked like.

When, in truth, they may not have been as good at boxing as the guys coming up.

What you can't see and you can only imagine is always better than reality.

And since we can't watch Corbett fight guys like Peter Jackson or Sullivan ... any newspaper account mentioning GREATNESS is overblown. Because you've seen far more GREAT fighters in your life than the writers of those reports EVER did.

So you imagine GREAT being better than all the guys you've ever seen. Whereas, great in that writer's mind in 1890 was something far different.