David Tua vs Jim Jeffries

He beat Ruhlin, Goddard and Armstrong.

 

Tua probably threw more punches in the ring but Jeffries was usually scheduled for longer distances, so that comes into play. I think Jeffries was faster. (Jeffries was timed in 100 yard dashes and was very fast for a man his size.) And Jeffries, when anywhere near his prime, won big fights, and he was Lineal Heavyweight Champion for quite a while and fought the best fighters available to him. Tua sometimes found a way to lose the big ones. They were both very durable. I'm going with Jeffries in this match up.

 

Another factor that might come into play, is Jeffries physical strength.

The man used to play with a 300lb sandbag, and there are pictures of him doing it, in the newspapers that reported it.

I am not saying that he is stronger than Tua, but he sure as hell could have been!

 

Could you post those pictures?

 

They are in the Pollack biography.

I am not very media savvy, so you might need to instruct me how to post them on this forum.

 

Considering we have all of 2 seconds of Jeffries on film and he never fought anyone remotely close to Tua, I'm going to go with Tua here and he looks pretty abismal however he wins.

 

I’ll preface that I love the old timers and do not dismiss them out of hand at all. They deserve due assessment like their mod. day counterparts and the concession that the information we do have on them is less than ideal.

Reading old newspaper articles re Jeff, it’s seems that if Jeffries wasn’t the superhuman as described, they needed to pretend he was, Jeff being the official rep. for manliness and physical superiority (among whites only, of course).

Some of the achievements afforded him external to the ring, I take with a grain of salt. A case of whiskey to cure pneumonia? Okey-dokey, let’s bypass critical thinking on that one.

The reviews on his performances were often mixed and there were several that were none too impressed by the punishment he took or his failure to step it up earlier in a fight.

As to mixed reviews, you can even read the one scribe describing the one fight expressing sentiments that were strangely contrary, viz: Jeff’s marvellous defensive skills vs his incredible ability to assimilate a huge amount of punishment. Apparently Jeff was having his cake and eating it too.

As to power, hard to gage v smaller Fitz, Corb, Sharkey etc. Suffice to say, it seemed almost every man and his dog hit sufficiently to have “felled” an Ox and/or KO 5 ordinary men. I hope they didn’t go around punching Oxen to fine tune their calibration of the apparent power required to render them unconscious.

Duran’s claim to have knocked out a horse is just heresay. I know Alex Karras actually did same, it’s on film for everyone to see. Vision is so much more important than quotes.

Anyway, overall, it seems Jeffries was too open for and did in fact take too much punishment. However, he had the size and strength to soak up the quality of offence put to him by the available opposition.

Though he fought some big men, his more celebrated victories were over notably smaller opposition. To read that even Corbett could stun him (as described by third party observers and corroborated by Jeff) may be a red alert.

I appreciate and agree with the caveat on making a call on this fight, that being that our evidence on Jeff is limited by an impossible lack of all important vision and what we do have is of poor quality.

So with that, I’m afraid I see the Tua Man emerging victorious via KO by approx. rd 5.

 

Ever seen Jack Johnson in training videos ?He skips around like a flyweight ,but we know he did not fight like that and neither did Jeffries! Jeffries took 23 rds to catch up with a past prime much smaller Corbett who was coming out of retirement.Does this indicate to you he had fast feet? BTW the training clip you refer to, tossing his useless brother around is not running at the correct speed! Furthermore it is footage of Jeff training for Ruhlin!

 

What did they have to compare him to? Sullivan,Corbett, and Fitz he had only three predecessors .

 

Jeffries finished his short career,[24 fights,] with a cauliflower ear, ridges of scar tissue over both eyes, and a thrice broken nose. Tua had 59 fights over a more than 20 years career and looks much the same today as he did then,Plus Tua was facing genuine heavyweights and not past their sell date cruisers and light heavies.

 

Goddard was 40 years old!
Armstrong was never an elite fighter,with a 17-10-5 record he is most noted for being a sparring partner for better men.
Ruhlin had been taken apart by Fitzsimmons previously and had spent two weeks in bed after their fight.The question you should ask is why Jeffries fought Ruhlin instead of Fitz who kod both Ruhlin and Sharkey in the space of two weeks ,yet had to wait a further 2 years for his title opportunity, by which time he was nearly 40!

 

He fought the best WHITE fighters available to him.

 

Yes, I would say Tua hit harder than Fitz. He faced more bigger men on average and poleaxed a good number of them.

I’ll admit also that one would fundamentally assume Tua hit harder given superior size but of course that correlation doesn’t always hold. For instance, I think there’s good reason to calculate that Fitz punched harder than the much heavier Jeffries.

Fitz was, no doubt, a wonder. He punched well beyond his weight. Even if he punched as hard as say an average 210 lb - 220 lb mod. fighter, that would’ve been be amazing, particularly whilst maintaining the advantages of being the lighter, more nimble fighter at the same time.

At least with Fitz, as opposed to some other reputed punchers of the day, you can actually see Fitz’s tremendous shoulders and back muscles (in part due to his work as a Smithy) that can be indicative of elite punching power. Fitz could’ve done with a bit more leg work however, LOL.

 

There's multiple reports of Ruhlin being out and about the next day after he fought Fitzsimmons.