Harry Wills vs Jess Willard primes

Most of the punches either threw or landed were in clinches, Firpo misseda good number, but he certainly looked to be landing a few, most clearly at 3:03 with a bodyshot, and Wills missed a few swings too. Wills certainly looked to be winning and the sharper of the two, I just don't think he looked that impressive.

 

Neither did the reporters the next day!

 

Matt is an excellent poster but my impression is his knowledge and interest is more in the earlier era.

 

I don't think that McMahon could reasonably be described as a tomato can, and without seeing a few primary sources for the fight, I would not read too much into the newspaper result on Boxrec.

 

A few stylistic view points that are worth taking into account.

Willard has a height, reach and weight advantage. Wills will not benefit from the same height, reach and weight advantages he held over most of his opponents, therefore we can conclude he wouldn't be able to wear down Willard inside and during clinches, something he would have undoubtedly done to his smaller or similar sized opponents, Willard however would be able to.

Willard appeared to struggle with much smaller and faster fighters, that offered a smaller and evasive target, Wills doesn't fit this description.

Wills might have to press on the front foot more than he was used to, unlike Willard who will try and keep the fight at distance, returning fire when his opponent engaged, something he did all the time. My perspective of Wills is that he is a boxer puncher, probably good enough to win this fight boxing Willard, but is that not playing into the bigger mans hands?

I still see Wills winning this fight on a decision, I think he had the versatility, adaptability and boxing ability to get the better of Willard, despite this we can't count out Willard's chances who hit like a mule and quite literally killed a man in the ring. He also appears to be one of the most durable heavyweights ever, so to suggest Wills takes it by knock out seems odd.

Using a fighter Jess lost to who doesn't even come close to replicating Wills as a fighter isn't a very good analogy, but you've used it constantly in this thread as reasoning for why Wills win this fight shows terrible stylistic analysis.

There's one poster here who seems to think this is a mismatch and that's yourself Suzie, my comments where childish and unnecessary, but I thought it might show how silly you were coming across, considering the amount of times you've been corrected by Janitor and Mcvey in this thread.

 

I'm not sure if the Kudos where meant in a good way, I just thought something drastic was required. I did lose my cool a little, something I rarely do, because it's not fun or clever to do that, but what the hey, we all make mistakes

 

Some info or a breakdown of Wills and Tate's draw would make for interesting reading. All I could find was that Wills more than likely deserved the nod, but might have been competitive.

 

Two of them loses have already been addressed earlier in the thread with valid points. Also taking up boxing so late, did you ever consider that Willard might have improved from these loses and to suggest he was in his prime at this point seems like a massive stretch considering how inexperienced he was? You kind of defeated your own argument there

 

And how do you know these fighters were slower than Wills?

 

Wills would win.

 

Like I said, two of the fights. You picked the one I didn't point out.

Boxrec records are misleading for fighters for this time period, you know this

When he beat the reigning not lineal champion, he went a year out of the ring spending a good amount of that time preparing to go 40 rounds. Willard was in exceptional condition and was never in that shape before or afterwards. He clearly wasn't in this type of shape when he lost to '175lb man 24-21 record' who you clearly know nothing about, because all you did was check his boxrec page out.

I don't think Willard's and Fulton's durability were on the same level, comparable in your eyes, but I'm not sure you have actual evidence

I'm not trying to argue that Wills doesn't beat Willard, I'm just trying to point out that it's far from a foregone conclusions. If you agree with that then we have nothing to go back and forth about. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing, which I quite frankly don't have the time of day or night for.