James J Jeffries?

His era was hot garbage compared to what would be a couple decades later and beyond.

 

Well he’s underrated in the sense that people basically view him as the irl Rocky Balboa, or the heavyweight equivalent of Battling Nelson as a human punching bag that pretty much only had endurance. Yes, Jeffries was a fighter very willing to take enormous amounts of damage in order to give a few. It was simply the easiest route to winning fights as the significantly bigger man, and he was pretty damn bad at defending himself while on the hunt. The film also shows how bad is footwork is while on the front foot as well.

This doesn’t mean he didn’t have anything in his arsenal though, the footage against Ruhlin shows he’s good at timing his opponents with accuracy which all time great technicians like Joe Gans attest to being Jeff’s strength as well. He’s good at catching Ruhlin’s lead hand as he attacks with his own left. On the inside you can even see him holding Gus’ bicep as he works. In the footage of him as an older man you can see his right hand constantly try and catch Tom’s jab with quick sharp parry attempts. The Jeffries crouch seems like a much more exaggerated version of the Blackburn crouch.

 

What you are saying sounds plausible, but you are not presenting any evidence to support it.

The worst thing that you can do, in any historical matter, is dismiss the evidence that contradicts your opinion.

Your opinion needs to at least acknowledge every line of evidence.

 

His best opponents were old, frail and small, often wharf brawlers or miners. Such was the era. I do think he was tough and talented. But did he struggle mightily with those who he held almost every advantage over.

 

I’m curious, would you say the same applies for Sullivan? You seem into think more highly of him than Jeffries, how come?

 

Just because you hold a physical advantage over most of your opponents, that doesn't mean that you don't hold any other advantage.

We have lived through a couple of decades of super heavyweights, who were assumed to have an advantage, without taking anything away from the other aspects of their game.

 

Clean him up!

 

Carriage.

 

For all his admitted physical advantage, he still struggled with an old-ass super middleweight and an old-ass dilatant boxing instructor and a sawed-off wharfbrawler. This is all true. I don't see any other advantages he displayed. His crouch is laughable and he's wide ass open. Thus his face at the end of fights with his better opponents.

 

Based on what footage? He looks absurd vs Ruhlin and completely ineffective ( understandably to a degree ) vs Johnson. All the poor Sharkey footage seems to favor Sharkey. The Chuvalo comparison, a big ( for the era) very powerful, hard but not often one shot power guy with stamina and a chin is at best what we see. Maybe he was more but we really don’t know.

 

I certainly wouldn’t rate Jeffries as highly as they did in his day.

There was a lot of hyperbole and myth applied to the Boilermaker.

I don’t think it’s entirely unfair to say that he was primarily a sponge for punishment, using his size advantage, youth and stamina to ultimately over come and prevail over much smaller and older opposition -

Jeff basically said as much in direct relationship to his title winning performance against Fitz in 1899.

What was the main basis for observing improvements in Jeffries game after he won the title? - his rematches with even older and more inactive versions of Fitz and Corbett - without due consideration given to the obvious deteriorations of said opponents?

And, Big Jeff still copped an awful hiding in his rematch with Fitz - the ending more about the aging Fitz flagging badly during the latter stages - so much so, some even questioned the bonafides of the KO - since Fitz was still doing very well no long prior to the KO.

Not to be confused with a moral judgment (a separate issue) but the fact remains that Jeffries failed to face his most eligible and most likely challenging opponent in Jack Johnson.

 

One thing I will say for Jeffries is I see a lot of criticisms that he struggled with over the hill versions of the smaller Fitzsimmons & Corbett, but not a lot of recognition about his severe inexperience.

 

That’s a reasonably debatable issue though. Johnson’s eventual standing has been used retrospectively to say Jeffries didn’t face this all-time great contender, but at the time of Jeffries’ retirement, Johnson had only very recently been marked down as so. It is really no worse than Lewis not facing Byrd, as was discussed here a few months back.

 

How about Corbett's recent inexperience at winning fights that weren't fixed?

And I get your point and acknowledged that in my initial post here. But perhaps the division was so poor that a novice could take it over.

 

Well as I said, the criticisms are frequent. The praise, less so. As to your second point, I suppose we’ll never quite know.