Good stuff. Links very well with a different thread of McVey's where I wondered about the development of technique.
Thanks. Yeah, early gloved boxing is interesting because you're watching an unprecedentedly huge, worldwide community of professional athletes scrambling to figure out the best techniques for the new rules ASAP. You see lots of weird little experiments that end up going nowhere. Johnson's style is full of them. (And so is everybody else's.)
I'm still behind the curve in knowing how to copy individual sections of Youtube video into a clip. (And less inclined than I used to be to watch entire fights for those clips.) :yep
It begs the question.....why are you commenting on something you have not have looked at closely enough to understand? The fact of Johnsons great jab was known to historians for many decades. I knew of this watching Johnsons films back in 1970. Great FIND?
That's a lot of assumptions you make from a two-word sentence. Yeah, it's a great find. He rewatched the relevant footage and extracted a specific section so people can see it. We used to have to embed a Youtube clip into our posts and reference specific timestamps...a decade ago...when I was discussing Johnson footage on this forum.
You have an uncanny knack for parroting the stalest, most inaccurate conventional wisdom out there. And you do it so authoritatively! Whenever I wonder what misguided things people thought about old fights and fighters back before they could watch them on youtube or learn from others with different perspectives on boxing forums, I go right to your posts!
Kevin. You are an idiot. Johnsons jab was rated one of the greatest in hwt boxing history for a hundred years. Experts who saw that punch from ringside stated as such. Yet you in your little mind feel you know more than experts whose entire life was dedicated to the sport and watched Johnson live and in person? I've watched Johnsons great jab since 1970. Maybe when you reach your 20th birthday in 8 years you will discover it as well. I kind of doubt it however because ......you are not that bright.
50 year old Hopkins was smart enough to not get knocked out of the park by Kovalev. 50 year old. And Hopkins almost looks like Johnson doing it with the poised slow walk footwork. Johnson at 25 would handle Kovalev, and make him look bad. Johnson will have to work much harder in the Tua fight. He'll have to use more energy to take extra precautions.
Inaccurate according to who? Because you're climbing a steep hill attempting to discredit volumes of first hand testimony when in my most honest of opinions you have poor judgement of old film.
Should be inaccurate according to anyone who's watched heavyweight boxing over the past 60 years. The sport's evolved and one of the places where it's quite evident is in the use of the jab, which was still in the early stages of development as a weapon in Heavyweight boxing 100 years ago. Jackson's rudimentary jab was ahead of its time but there's no way in hell that anyone on this board would rave about it if they saw a fighter today who jabbed like him. Go back and watch the clip I posted of even a basic modern heavyweight like Maskaev and note the profound differences in how he utilizes and delivers his jab and how Johnson uses his. PS - In my sincere opinion you have fairly poor judgment of boxing technique in general, at least when it comes to older fighters that you have previously determined are great or especially impressive (I don't see any indications of this when you discuss modern boxers, as you don't seem to idolize or romanticize them the same way). Because of this, you seem unable to recognize many of the limitations of past fighters and the ways in which some of the techniques of even the "lesser" heavies of the past 60 years in many instances have been honed and improved over time. No offense.
Johnson was not a big jabber but could certainly do so quite effectively when he chose to .. no different than a Roy Jones or a Chris Byrd in this matter .. he shoots straight, fast, stinging jabs on film at Ketchel and at Willard .. I agree with you that the game has morphed but I do feel some fighters like a Johnson or a Langford or a Gans would have excelled at any time .. size is a bigger handicap that styles in my opinion .. at some point size certainly matters when we are discussing talented big men ..
