I won a lot of point fighting tournaments back in late 70's . We had a very proactive Sensi and he was a pioneer in adding other fighting techniques into our base discipline ( Isshin Ryu) , it enabled our dojo to have a advantage over most traditional styled schools, of course he picked up the idea from Lee Jun Fan ( Bruce Lee) I got the bright Idea one day because of my youth and feelings of invincibility, and my hubris in beliving I had so many different weapons, no boxer would beat me. So a friend who I argued with the advantages of Karate over boxing , invited me to his boxing gym and I got in the ring with a local novice pro boxer. I discovered very quickly, reverse punches, rising blocks, and spinning wheel kicks can be easily defeated by a simple trap in corner, cut off the room to kick, got my ass handed to me in a very systematic and painful way..... I could take a good punch I discovered. But I don't believe I landed a single punch on the guy. (I may have gotten lucky and landed a punch on him, but I was seeing 3 of him in the ring, I hit the wrong guy . What went wrong? Arrogance, my own. That lesson would be taught to any person on this site who haven't had the number of pro fights, ( And only the Lord knows how many sparring, and back alley fights he probably had, that was the norm in those days) Tommy Burns had. Burns would destroy Joe Blow in a boxing ring. Probably in the streets.
I see 4 people have voted “I win”. I guess that might be possible if they take on Burns as a group, all at the same time. Even then, I’d make Tommy favourite, though a slightly shorter one (pun intended). I also see a “Napoleon Bonaparte” has voted an easy win for Tommy. Nice. Particularly since Burns apparently liked to think he bore a strong resemblance to the Little Emperor. Finally, we used to work with a guy who told obviously and not so “secret” tall tales about what he had done and what he could do - across the board and at clinical level. We often responded with “Sure, Walter” - the reference eluded him and he didn’t like being called Walter in its own right anyway. As to beating Burns, no way. The clever, rugged, power punching, little bruiser that he was. However, if you had offered up that Fancy Dan, “run away from trouble”, Jim Corbett - I think I could track him down, rough him good and nail him - if he doesn’t contrive for his second to crawl into the ring first for a “get of jail” DQ.
Only if I don't get arrested for spiking his water bottle, sending prostitutes to his room the night before, and I'm allowed to use karate kicks and BJJ submission holds. Even then, maybe not. Huge difference in experience as I've only been an amateur in any of my endeavors.
Well Burns was 73 years old when he died in 1955, so I figure that plays into my favor if we’re fighting with 1950s rules. On the other hand, I wasn’t born yet.
Unless someone has had significant success as a boxer-& has a good amount oof size & strength, but mainly have a #@$% great record against high level competition... They are Utterly Delusional that they would have any decent chance against even a smaller, not really HW today Champion.
My experience of friendly sparring with an ex pro HW boxer who was nowhere near being a world champion tells me that I would be mercilessly thrashed by Tommy. This guy was in his 50s, I was in my 20s with jiu jitsu experience, but I was seriously out of my depth!