So Fitzsimmons gets destroyed 2x by Jeffries yet he has a shot vs Louis and Marciano?

Which heavyweights did McCoy KO?

 

Here's his record:

http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=39949&cat=boxer

 

I've looked it over but there aren't any listed weights for many of his bouts. Can't bother to look whether some of those opponents were heavyweights or not.

 

Peter Maher, Steve O'Donnell and Joe Choynski

 

They were heavyweights in their time but light heavyweights in Marciano's time, and Choynski I'd say was more of a middleweight. Marciano may have only weighed 185 in his prime but he trained down to that weight. It's difficult to see him being seriously hurt from any 154 lbers blows, unless they bulked up and brought their power with them. Tom Sharkey was smaller at 5'8 and 175-180 pounds, and weighed a mere 173 lbs vs McCoy.

 

The San Francisco call said that Jeffries shot a large steer, lifted it onto a wagon, and that when it had been butchered and weighed it tiped the scales at 510lbs.

I presume that it was not a whitetail.

 

Two issues that keep coming up in this thread and others are Jeffries power and Fitzsimmons weight.

I intend to produce threads summarising contemporary opinions on both, which I hope will give the arguments more context.

 

He also used to train by moving around a 350lb sandbag. I would not be surprized if he turned out to have been as strong as George Foreman.

To answer the question, he was an inexperienced and overmatched fighter when he fought Choynski and Fitzsimmons the first time. He was wary of their power and seems to have fought safety first. The second Fitzsimmons fight was a different ball game, where Fitzsimmons fought on the retreat, prompting onlookers to say that he was fighting like Jim Corbet.

Part of the reason that Jeffries needed rounds to put smaller fighters away, is simply that he was a much more defensivley based and reactive fighter than most people think.

 

O'Donnell often fought in the 185-190 pound range, so he would definitely be a heavyweight in Rocky's time. Maher as well. Once again, you have to consider the era. Maher was sometimes training for 20 round bouts or even finish fights. Same with Sharkey. If Rocky were training for 20 round fights he would probably have been weighing in closer to the light heavy limit himself.

Note on Sharkey- he purposely trained to come in lighter when he was facing the quicker boxers and heavier when facing the stronger men. He wanted to be as light and fast as possible so he could catch the boxers. That's why you see him in the 170s against the Corbett's and McCoys and the 180s vs the Jeffries and Ruhlins.

I think if one saw Sharkey and Marciano standing together prime for prime it would be clear that Sharkey was in no way smaller (other than height). Like Marciano he was built like a miniature sherman tank.

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Thick, sturdy and built to take a hammering to get in his blows, just like Marciano.

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