Name some commonly-held opinions long hailed as "facts" that you think are incorrect. I'll start: Cassius Clay beat Doug Jones rather handily. I had it 7-3 Clay (yes I know, but he was Cassius Clay back then, relax). I think the fact that this was the first time a hard fight for him went to the cards meant that this must then signify a loss of sorts, or a dent in his armor somehow, which his detractors were searching so very hard for. It was then enlarged as much as was possible to the point some actually claim he should have lost the fight. This is patently ridiculous. My guess is many such people have never even seen it. Pernell Whitaker deserves only partial credit for outboxing and outfighting Chavez because Chavez was worn and above his natural weight class. ………...Well if Chavez was, so was Whitaker. Neither was a natural welterweight, in fact this one was a sort of pseudo catchweight fight because Chavez came in really light at something like 142, just two pounds above where he'd been for years. He was also hardly "past it," that's revisionist talk. He was a dominant 140-pound titlist and right at the top of the heap on nearly everyone's P4P list at the time. To then turn around after the result and say "oh, he's seen better days I guess" is just dumb. He started seeing worse days after Whitaker beat him and burst his bubble mentally, it happens a lot in boxing. Let's not confuse the two things. Others?
The myth of 10 - 15 minutes for a glove change after Angelo Dundee ripped Ali's glove during the first Cooper fight in order to give him a break to recover from the knockdown. Yes, Dundee widened an already torn glove, but there were no gloves available so they just continued on with what they wore. A grand total of 11 seconds of a delay onto the one minute rest. The Johnson-Ketchel knockdown in the 12th round. Despite the grainy film one only has to watch it over a couple of times to see the right hand from Ketchel, that was thrown from the fences, barely skidded off Johnson's head. Jack was in an awkward position and was falling over anyway. Again, watch the body language.
I’ve heard that Willie Pep winning a round without throwing a punch was bull The Greb Walker bar fight after their fight
It was supposed to be against Jackie Graves. Someone did the research on it and found that he actually threw a lot of punches during that round.
Paul Berlenbach being an Olympic wrestling gold medal winner. Battling Nelson having a skull twice as thick as that of a normal person.
The Dempsey loaded gloves story has been proven time and time again to be false. Even Kearns admitted he originally sold the story to SI because he was broke. Dempsey sued and won. They then had a reconciliation of sorts yet the story still persists.
Willie Pep’s injuries from the plane crash, while significant, are overblown. There’s not one reference that I can find before he lost to Saddler the first time (by decisive KO) alluding to him being a shell of his former self, a veritable cripple in the ring. All the excuse-making for him losing to Saddler came after the fact. Suddenly Pep was a guy with a tin cup on a street corner who got taken to the ring in a wheelbarrow rather than a great fighter, lol. In five years after he resumed his career following the crash, Pep went 53-3, with all three losses by stoppage to Saddler. He beat some damned good fighters in that stretch (including Saddler once), and only lost to two other men (once each) with 88 wins in the years after the crash before he began to really slow some slippage: 88-5, with three of the losses to Sandy. Was he injured? Yes. Did he “break his back”? Technically, yes, there was a fracture. Mostly likely it was a transverse process (the bony spikes that stick out of the back). What is 100 percent for sure is that he did NOT sever his spine ... that would have paralyzed him from the waist down, which clearly did not happen. Bear Bryant, the late, great football coach, had a quarterback at Texas A&M who suffered a broken back (transverse process) and continued to play. Ric Flair, the great professional wrestler known as the Nature Boy, also broke his back in an early 1970s and went on to have decades of success.
People often think the famous Marciano-Walcott picture (Walcott's face all scrunched up as Marciano is landing) is the knockout punch, but it isn't. Look at their positions in the ring: https://www.artnet.com/WebServices/...man-rocky-marciano-vs.-jersey-joe-walcott.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p...m7JV77xhAENJeY99_2rkKy9ED_KWP3yHhcGC1Fuyvcdxk The knockout punch was on other side of the ring, with Marciano's left side maybe a couple feet from the ropes. Walcott also has his back to the ropes when he gets knocked out, where he was not quite on the ropes in the other photo. Marciano's left eye is also in much better condition in the other photo. This is the knockout: https://www.thefightcity.com/wp-con...-one-punch-KO-of-Walcott-1024x795-KO-crop.jpg https://www.boxingnewsonline.net/bn/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/marcianowalcott.jpg
The Marciano Training Myth is probably my favorite. Some of the commonly-recited "facts" about Duran in the months after the first Leonard fight are also a myth.
