Bob Fitzsimmon vs. Jim Corbett (speed corrected / HD)

The best film of the era by a country mile. Commissioned and preserved by Mike O'Dowd who later gave it to Mike Gibbons because he (O'Dowd) had no heirs and felt that since Gibbons had done so much for twin cities boxing that Gibbons should have it. Now if we only had the Gibbons-Ahearn film which was commissioned by Mike. That filmed looked amazing and featured the usually mild mannered Gibbons losing his temper and nearly killing Ahearn. I have some stills of it and it looks to have featured the same multiple angles and high quality production as the O'Dowd fight.

 

Pretty cool stuff although Corgett throws some ugly, push/jab/hook thing .. I can see Fitz being very dangerous ..

 

Interesting. It appears from his clip playing around with Corbett that he got a little bit of Fitz's taste for switch hitting, but he didn't import the weirdest element of Fitzsimmons's style -- the slightly raised front foot.

 

On the face of it I dismiss that notion out of hand completely.

But then I think, what if you took film of Mayweather vs Maidana, stripped the production value from that, removed the colour and the commentary, reduced the frame rate,would it then be possible to view Mayweather as one of the most talented in history?

I usually watch fights without the commentary when I'm watching from a judgement point of view. Like the other day I watched Holyfield vs Lewis 2, to see how a supposedly smaller HW fared against a prime Lewis, a past prime smaller HW at that. Situations like that I need to remove commentary so I can focus on technique and tactics.

 

I think production quality makes a film more watchable, I don't know that it necessarily makes fighters look better or worse. Certainly if its not jumping around in the aperture you can see what the fighters are doing better but Gans-Nelson 1 is in pretty bad shape compared to even Corbett-Fitzsimmons. There is more of the film but the quality is very poor and its shot from further away. Even still you can clearly see that Gans was way ahead of his time and that Nelson is very strong, durable, hard hitting, nasty, and has a ton of heart. Im pretty underwhelmed by Corbett and Fitzsimmons. Ive seen streetfights and schoolyard fights where the participants illustrate more skill than those two and that has nothing to do with LPR rules vs Queensberry rules or any of that.

 

I too feel underwhelmed.

Ironically Gans looks like you would hope Fitz to look like, a quick and savvy defensive master with ko power. Someone who can evade blows, hold the ring centre and knock his man clean out. Gans clearly passes the eye test.

Fitz looks horrific on film to me and I just can't compensate for how poor a ring legend looks. Corbett at the very least shows genuine quick feet and solid jab, but like I said earlier, he looks more modern than Fitz but nowhere near to level.

Our top 3 LHW fighters today are Stevenson, Kovalev and Hopkins, so it is quite a weak era and one where Hopkins has proven an experienced old man with next to no athleticism or speed left can still become a unified belt holder, but would anyone honestly favour either of Fitz or Corbett over any of our top 3, based on this footage?

 

It absolutely has to do with LPR vs. Queensberry, but let's leave that aside for a minute.

Just think about the implications if you're right.

You're watching two fighters who got paid very large sums of money to perform in a sport that had already existed for a century and a half. Prizefighting was still illegal in many places, but "sparring" was widely practiced. And it certainly wasn't illegal everywhere; there were lots of professionals even back then. Corbett and Fitzsimmons each trained a large part of their adult lives under other professionals, and had tons of sparring and competitive fighting experience. In fact, they were the best two fighters in a world where boxing was already big business.

Neither of them liked being hit. Nobody likes being hit. Corbett and Fitzsimmons -- like literally every other person on earth who has ever put on gloves and exchanged punches -- would have quickly realized that dodging punches, blocking punches, and guarding your face with your arms is a good idea. In fact, keeping your hands up is the natural human reaction to being hit.

If you're right that Corbett and Fitzsimmons fight this way because they're so incompetent that a couple kids hitting each other in a schoolyard are better, the entirety of humanity circa 1890 must have been mentally defective.

 

I just reread Fitz' comments about the knockout blow of Corbett. He states clearly that the KO blow was a Left hand shift to the "wind" and a left to the jaw, without moving his feet. (he says this was the exact same blow that finished off Sharkey)

Klompton, i am interested as to whether or not your version of the film shows the left to the jaw.

 

No matter what you think about Fitz or Corbett. There's no doubt that they're two champions in there. With the championship mind set and heart.

 

Yes but its just a light afterthought of a left hook as Corbett is going down. It wasnt of much consequence.

 

He learned from Fitz the pivot from the knees (to the point that some of his knockout wins were considered fakes, writers couldn't believe a knockout could be scored with such short punches and with no pulling back the arm before the punch) and to detect an opponent's intention of starting a punch by the way he moves the weight to one or the other leg before starting it.