What if the only film available of Ali,Louis,Holmes,Tyson etc was footage run on grainy old stock that was shown ,often slightly out of focus and at the wrong speed .similar to many of the old classic fights like Fitz v Corbett etc? What would our perception of them be? Wouold many of those among us laugh at their antics and say they were crude and unskilled?
i would really like to convert some of the great footage to the old grainy cameras, to see what they look like, and i think it would make an awesome documentary to see the differences, but i dont have the technology or brains. Imagine if Alis film was limited that to Jeffries? The holmes match, some training films, and some snippets of one or two other fights. NO way he would be a consensus no 1 or 2 fighter.
Yes Ive been thinking about this for some time. I recall Fleischer having a debate with Jim Jacobs in the Ring magazine ,comparing Nat's heroes with the reality of the films that Jacob's had of them.Both made solid cases for their points of view, but Fleischer, pointed out how unfair it was to judge the old timers on the available footage.It's like watching" Birth Of A Nation ",or "Battleship Potemkin", two acknowledged masterpieces of their time ,and comparing them to a Hi definition, computerised film of today.Another thing I would enjoy seeing is colourised [if that's the word] films of the old battles,imagine Dempsey Willard ,under that blazing sun ,Willard with blood all over his face Dempsey burned black by the sun his teeth snarling as he waded in,maybe one day.I expect in years to come there will be technology to put Louis and Ali together in a fight, just as they can now blend duets between dead singers and current stars.I'll probably be gone by then unfortunately as I'm 60 now.
I did a couple of "experiments" on this subject with the Klitschko brothers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srrmj6eAFGc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-whJCy5J6qg These were meant as a joke when someone was preaching the superiority of the Klitschko brothers compared to old time fighters. I also made one of Calzaghe-Hopkins compared to some old Jack Johnson films but I never uploaded that video. If I used a better program I'd probably be able to make something that would really look like an old film from the early 1900's, except for the camera angles. Maybe if I find a film of a modern boxing match that was taken on a handheld camera.
Thanks. Great stuff! But I actually thought Vitaly looked better against Peter on that film than on regular. The upsped tempo helped rather than hurt him.
Much would depend on which films of them survived. Chances are that we would have about five fights from each, give or take, with the film quality increasing towards the end of their reign when their abilities were declining. Whether the handfull of surviving fights represented their best efforts or their off would be a bit of a lottery. We almost certainly wouldnt get a complete porfolio of their abilities. If we then take a fighter like Jimmy Young we might have only one of his fights. If that one fight happened to be his off night and the film quality was poor then many posters on this site would dismis him without even taking the trouble to analyse the film in an atempt to pick out his subtlties.
If the Tyson fights you had were Bonecrusher Smith, the Tokyo debicle, Holyfield II and Lewis, you just wouldn't be able to believe the things that people told you about him.
That might well be what you ended up with. Add to that the fact that names like Berbick, Smith, and Tucker would not stand the test of time well without extensive fil portfolios.
Perhaps Tyson would be view of the Dempsey of his time? And most of his title fights, and 1 or 2 comeback fights made it? I mean we have amost Dempseys's entire title rein on film. Sure the Mikse fight is not there, just ring intros. But we have million $ defenses like Fripo and Carpentier, and the not so great defenses like Gibbions and Brennen, not to mention, the Willard and both Tunney fights. When compare to most fighters of that era, Dempsey stands heads and shoulders above the rest, and I think it had to do with Dempsey's icon status.