A critical analysis of Jeffries vs Ruhlin

Jeffries was aggressive simply walking in on Ruhlin keeping the pressure on firing one and two punch bombs hard with fair speed but with good controlled form especially with the hook to the body. Ruhlin told Jeffries the hook to the body and the follow up hook to the head in the 4th, took all of his energy out of him.[/QUOTE]

With all the solid hard KO punches he was landing you would think a natural 220lb man with alleged KO power would have knocked him cold....as it was he didn't hit as hard as Fitz.

I will question his power a man who lands this often on a foe who was nearly killed fighting Fitzsimmons a middleweight he is not a KO puncher he is a mauler...LaMotta was a great body puncher but lacked power.

Sorry Pompous Perry you can go back to your wet dreams of Jeffries throwing triple hooks on true ATG's and knocking out real heavyweights

 

The body blows look like nothing either but they were hard enough to drop his opponent. So we are saying Jeffries could throw a left hook to the body with power. However when he brings that same punch to the head "it's just a slap". Ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself.

 

If you guys used terms like "spandrel" or "genetic drift" as often as "evolution" I'd probably have a lot less to object to.

 

I see a lot of guys on this forum chortling at how fighters in old footage have their hands down as if there is no conceivable reason for this and they simply knew no better.

As an undergrad I had a philosophy professor teaching an introductory class who told us (I'm paraphrasing):

"These are the ideas that have, for one reason or another, been either highly persuasive or influential in the western intellectual history of the last 2,000 years, and although that doesn't necessarily mean they're correct or admirable or without serious counterargument or even fatal flaws, if anything you read or hear immediately strikes you as just plain *stupid*, you are almost certainly misinterpreting what the philosopher who said it meant."

I think this maxim generalizes to any kind of history. The people of the past were every bit as smart and perceptive as we are, and if some way they had of doing things just looks self evidently ridiculous on its face, there's a very good chance you don't fully understand why they were doing it that way.

 

I know what you mean, and I completely agree.
It can also happen in modern times too.

Wlad for instance.
If you are finding reasons to diminish someone who ruled the division for a decade, there is something wrong with the way you are watching him.

 

Okay. What exactly is the reason to carry your left hand below you waist plus off to the side and even slightly behind you?

Also, just because something is done one way in a sport doesn't mean it is the best conceivable way of doing it. When I was young, all the NFL placekickers kicked straight on, and were nothing like modern kickers in distance or accuracy. Then Jan Stenarud and other Europeans came into football kicking "soccer style" from the side, and now no one kicks straight on. Well, why didn't anyone think of kicking from the side decades earlier? They just never thought of it and followed the traditional method of the time.

 

I don't remember denying he did.
The reports of the fight describe Jeffries as landing with terrible force and throwing rib roasters and I've underlined them, I'm not trying to disparage Jeffries offensive abilities ,if I was I would not have made a point of highlighting them. I'm just stating he was defensively lacking,the reports say he ignored Ruhlin's punches making no attempt to evade them,saying he attacked unguarded ,and remarked about his durability calling him a battleship. I'm not relying on this snippet of film to come to this conclusion, reports of the second Fitzsimmons fight which I have, state Fitz handled him like a novice and hit him at will,when and where he pleased.
"In 1902, he and Jeffries had a rematch, once again with the World Heavyweight Champion at stake. Fitzsimmons battered Jeffries, who suffered horrible punishment. With his nose and cheek bones broken, most would have sympathized with Jeffries had he quit, but he kept going until his enormous strength and youth wore down Bob and he knocked him out cold in round eight."
That is not a boxer with a good defence.
NB the report of the Ruhlin fight says Jeffries was calm and unhurried once he had Ruhlin in trouble, he took his time he wasn't throwing caution, and his defence to the winds as Dempsey did against Willard.Jeffries was always cautious and often criticized for it. I base my opinion of Jeffries defence on the contemporary reports of his fights and the damage that he accumulated in them.

 

The high jump is an example of this ,Fosberry Flop?

 

There's a very good chance things have evolved ,progressed ,and improved too!
Jeffries had poor defence, he is described in this fight as ,not trying to evade Ruhlin's punches,ignoring them, smiling when they landed,and being like a battleship in absorbing them.
I don't need any professor to tell me what my eyes are seeing,Jeffries had zero head movement, a very low guard[remarked upon by reporters of this fight,] no upper body movement,no glove rotation,and he came at you in a straight line, without any dips or feints. Three years before Jeffries ascended the heavyweight throne Jim Corbett was described as revolutionizing boxing with his hit and getaway ,"fancy dan" tactics,the premise that gloved boxing was not in its infancy and its skills still rudimentary is fatuous.

 

I don't know; I'm not a boxing expert. But I am a logic and probabilities expert, and when you have a choice between two seemingly implausible hypotheses, you should favor the one that's less implausible. Your pointed rhetorical question actually supports my reasoning, since the more obviously silly something seems upon superficial observation the more *unlikely* it is this was missed by the people who chose to do it, and the more likely it is they have reasons that are not apparent to you. This is certainly not to say those reasons are, on balance, the best possible reasons, but it's a pretty safe bet you've missed something.

I think your place kicking illustration is kind of an ill-fitting analogy. The advantage kicking a football from the side is not at all obvious *a priori* or from casual observation; the advantage of holding your hands up in a boxing match is.

In much the same way, the reasons for surgeons to carefully wash their hands are anything but superficially obvious, but the reasons not to arbitrarily restrict the patient's breathing are entirely self evident.

 

I'm not a fan of the Klitschko brothers but some of their detractors can certainly be ridiculous. For instance I remember a few years ago long before I created an account here I saw a thread where people were ragging on Vitali for choosing to not to continue fighting with a shoulder injury against Chris Bird, with some wag even dubbing him "Kwitali".

Do people just not understand how serious and excruciatingly painful a rotator cuff injury can be, or do they think he just made it up out of whole cloth?

 

People were comparing it to Danny Williams continuing with a dislocated shoulder in a fight and going on to win. Buddy McGirt had a torn rotator cuff against Pernell Whitaker and went the distance, being competitive in every round.
He actually went into the ring injured.

"McGirt went into the Whitaker fight with an injured left shoulder. He said the injury probably happened in December during sparring for his fight with Genaro Leon on January 12. A week after the Whitaker fight, he had surgery to reattach a tendon that had been pulled away completely from the front of his rotator cuff."

The reporters Larry Merchant etc gave Vitali that name .Vitali was in front against a light hitting much smaller man [34lbs lighter], the general consensus was that he could have continued and won using just his uninjured arm.
Byrd was a 10 day replacement.

"After Klitschko quit, HBO commentator Larry Merchant said, "He doesn’t have the mentality of a champion. I can hardly believe what I just saw."

Shannon Briggs tore his left bicep in the 2nd against Vitali he continued to the end shipping a hell of a lot of punishment along the way, fractured orbital bone ,broken nose. Kevin Finnegan ,Arthur Abraham,Muhammad Ali, all continued fighting with broken jaws.

There are fighters and then there are fighters!

 

I am not sure what exactly the reason is, perhaps holding the arm low rests the arm muscles. Presumably it also helps generate more power from the left. Why dont you ask Vitali Klitchsko who does this constantly and continually in the below highlights against Lennox Lewis. In fact, most modern fighters (last 10 years) seem to use the low left constantly.

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Also, if you go to about 3 minutes in the video above, i wonder what is the advantage of Klitchsko clinching the right shoulder with his left hand, while Lennox unloads constanly with his right. why dont modern fighters defend in the clinch?

 

Vitali does it when he is out of range and waiting for his opponent to come in, he was an excellent judge of distance and knew precisely when it was safe to drop his hands.Jeffries did it on the way in when he was attacking.

 

Lets apply some balance here, Jeffries was described as landing with terrible force and connecting with rib roasters that had Ruhlin wincing.
He is also described as disdaining defence, ignoring Ruhlin's punches and smiling when they landed.So heavy punchesn were thrown and landed by Jeffries , but he was lacking in defence.