Are the technical boxing skills of Jim Driscoll disgustingly archaic?

Gifted, experienced and extremely powerful with a clever veterans mind. Today, I'd give him a chance, or even make a clear favourite, against anyone around 160 - 190 odd pounds. I can't see him winning a heavy title today though, and he would certainly have to adapt his style to today's times (such as increasing his workrate and modifying his guard). I think he'd definitely be able to do it.

 

If your interested, here's a HQ version of Moon vs Robert Shannon as an amateur. Moon breaks down Shannon with concrete aggression

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If you're a fan of Moon, than you'll definitely be a fan of Fighting Harada, Jiro Watanabe and Jung Koo Chang.

 

I will have to rewatch the films. Been quite a while since I've looked at Sam extensively. I'll get back to you.

 

A staple of the Korean fighters were their probing jabs. Chan Hee Park was the definitive Korean stylist, but Chang was their greatest fighter. The guy simply ran through styles.

Fighting Harada is the man I'd consider the most technically skilled swarmer ever. His jab was insane, and one of the best ever. He is Japan's greatest fighter. The great thing with Harada is that most of his career was filmed. You can see him go from a skilled but very raw and physically talented Flyweight champion, to the immensely skilled legendary Batamweight who beat Jofre.

 

Yo. Been watching a few minutes of the Langford vs Jeanette bout (which has also been coloured by d brown).

Langford's punch technique reminds me of George Foreman. It has its similarities in the way he drives his hips and creates leverage IMO. Very dangerous if it catches you.

What strikes me most from giving this a proper rewatching, though, is just how relaxed a fighter Langford is. A real cool customer. There's no nervous energy there, even in the crappy film. Looks like a guy who's done it all before. This also helps his punching. No excess tension allows him to whip the power in. The amount of experience Sam had cannot be over stated.

The constant clinching and disengaging really gets to me, though. Makes it very hard to watch and analyse. Obviously this wouldn't fly today. The slow pacing is hard to watch.

Langford has some adept feints, but they are far too infrequent in this one. He would be much better if he constantly worked it. With that power, it's soul crushing.

Defense wise, Langford obviously had tricks up his sleeve to go on so long at such high weights. In this film with Jeanette, he shows adept parrying and some sneaky turns of the head. It would definitely need changing for boxing of today, though. The over reliance on parrying and slow pacing, which leads to low hands, would not fare well with bigger gloves. Imagine Kovalev? A pure 1910s style would have massive trouble with his sharpshooting straights at a fast accurate pace. Langford is unquestionably the better talent and greater fighter (and has better power IMO) but he wouldn't do well.

Bobbing, weaving etc definitely needs to be developed most by Sam IMO. He's nowhere near as good as Dempsey who came a bit later. I guess it correlates to the time period, but it's quite glaring for me compared to the others.

The modern boxer Langford most reminds me of is Qawi, probably due to their similar disposition and body type. If Langford adapted to now, he'd probably look like Qawi. His movements and reactions also have a very 'Toney'ish' feel.

Overall, Langford was a phenom for any era, but with a very old school style.

Edit: edited a bit.