Jack Sharkey was better than you think?

Come on man, you seem like you're a boxing historian but if you are you should now Schmelling got robbed silly against Sharkey

Sharkey certainly knew how to fight, shift his bodyweight, have a well balanced stance, put his punches together and jab. And trust me, most boxers don't do that as well as him. Some of the things he does are pure class. But he wasn't a ring general. I think this is the reason for his hit and miss resume.

 

Come on, this is considered 1 of the worst robberies and he got DQ'ed too. Schmelling proved to be the better man.

As for his prime, was he really past it at 30? I don't know, maybe he was

 

Excellent post . Sharkey peaked in the 1920's ... in his prime he was a terrific fighter , absurdly underrated today because people simply don't know his tory.

 

Jack Sharkey in peak form was a brilliant fighter. He’s criminally underrated today by fans and “experts”. His athleticism jumps out on film, and the results back up that he was to coordinated and fast for the giants of his era. According to reports he absolutely dominated Wills, (this bout was filmed but seems to have been lost, which is odd because so many of Sharkey’s films have survived, more than most contemporaries), he dominates Carnera in their first bout, and he defeats Godfrey easily, who may have been peeking ahead of Jack as he was already booked to fight less than a week later on the undercard of
Tunney Dempsey I.
While I always place Schmeling above Sharkey in all time rankings based on Max’s superior performances against common opponents Risko, Walker, and Louis and the fact in their own rematch I believe the wrong man’s hand was raised, I find Jack’s strength of resume to be the class of the division during his career. He fought more great fighters than anyone not named Ali, or Holyfield. That alone should keep him in the discussion as a top 20 all time heavyweight.
How many guys could claim they fought Jack Dempsey, Harry Wills and Joe Louis. That’s top shelf.
Then throw in Loughran, Schmeling, Walker, Godfrey and then tough outs and style problem guys like Risko, Carnera, Scott and Floyd Johnson.
The big letdown for me with Sharkey is the draw with Heeney. That was prime Sharkey and while a draw isn’t the worst result it clearly manuevered him out of the way of his chance at Tunney who took on (and probably realized) the easier opponent in Heeney.
It’s also apparent to me that Sharkey a fighter that relied on his athleticism, falls off a cliff once he became champ and started living the good life. He looks completely different in his post champion years and just look at the way he fights from Schmeling 1 to Schmeling 2. Injuries maybe? Maybe he knew he had the fight in the bag with the judges? Whatever reason it doesn’t even look like the same guy fighting.
Great Thread.

 

Years ago I found a book about all the heavyweight champions up to that point. The book was written in the early 1960s because the chapter on Sonny Liston was basically only about a page long. The author described Sharkey's abilities and boxing skill in glowing terms and they compared his ability to master his emotions to a silent movie diva.

 

Great post, Pug. Sharkey lived well into his 90s without any significant dementia that I know of. Your comment about his general intelligence is right on. He was more interested in living an all-around rich life as opposed to being remembered as you say a "balls-to-the-walls" fighter. That's a better recipe for a good life than most fighters had.

 

Cheers bro. You put it much better and more succinctly than I did. He came across as a very invested and well loved family man also. An extremely well fulfilled life.

 

I mostly agree with all this, and your case is very well put together, but I think Jack peaked before he won the title and was on the downgrade by the time of the second Schmeling fight. Jack was boxing well against Max in the first fight up until the disqualification, but he knew he was slowing down prior to their second fight, and that's why he was so cautious, not only against Max, but also against Walker and even Carnera. By the time of those fights he had already made a bundle of money (probably more than any fighter up to that point except Dempsey and Tunney) and he had lost a lot of his drive and motivation and wasn't going to stick his neck out and get hurt. I've watched the first Sharkey-Carnera fight many, many times, and it was no walk in the park for Jack. He fought very carefully in that fight, and it was pretty close in my opinion -- about 9 rounds for Jack and 6 for Primo.

 

Yeah,Godfrey was mentioned. I didn't see Harry's name in there.

 

He seemed to overact to make it convincing. He did reasonably well with it if there are people who truly believe Carnera won on the up and up. Jake LaMotta was much worse because he was too stubborn to go down.

 

Jack said 90% of people didn’t believe it was legit and that even his own Mrs had her doubts about his KO loss to Carnera.

 

If you dive bombed chin first into a 260lbs guys fist you'd react the same way.

 

Excellent post.