James J. Jeffries vs. Gene Tunney

15 or 25 rounds are obviously not by modern day rules. I can therefore safely assume that some of the other "old time" rules would also apply in this match up. If that's the case, a prime, and at his best, Jeffries has many clear advantages. We do have Jeffries struggling with Corbett in the 1st fight, but that's more than balanced by Tunney struggling with Greb several times. Greb was a phenom but he was no Jeffries. I think Jeffries beats him at either distance. For the 15 rounder, Jeffries simply increases his work rate. This is all IMHO, of course.

EDIT: Full disclosure. I rate Gene Tunney much lower, in resume, and in head to head match ups, than most.

 

I think that the two Dempsey fights have distorted people's perception of Tunney's style.

I think that he was a much more offensively orientated boxer than those fights suggest, and that he adopted a style that was perhaps not the most natural to him, because it was the only one that would work.

It suspect that the Heeney fight is a much better guide to his natural style.

Is it plausible that he would have adopted his style in the Dempsey fights against other ATGs?

Yes, but you need to ask whether it is probable.

 

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This is very young Tunney from 1919. He didn't try to dance his way for the win here.

 

As far as I can tell he never did, unless he thought that the man in front of him was about to wreck him!

 

Jeffries gets sold short when ranking all time HWs, just want to say... He has the strength but Tunney to me has equal chance or greater of outboxing and outfoxing him, hate saying it. Really impossible to say.

 

The bottom line, is that we have a rough idea what Tunney was, but what Jeffries was, is down to personal interpretation!

 

Tunney won against Dempsey, but he wasn't the best Dempsey.
Tunney's career is long, but it includes many modest boxers, or victories against very good but small opponents, such as Greb or Loughran.
Is Tunney capable of resisting Jeffries' power? He had good technique, good intelligence, was mobile, but was smaller and with little experienced resistance against big punchers.
Jeffries's style is different from Dempsey's. Jeffries did more body work, he was more methodical. He broke the ribs of many opponents, he knocked out all his opponents at least once before his unfortunate return.
Jeffries is favorite.

 

I think it's very debatable that Dempsey came from a better talent pool, he came from a very weak era. I think Jeffries era was significantly better, and certainly the top guys fought each other a lot more.

 

While Tunney is unquestionably the better boxer I seem to doubt whether he can survive a prolonged attack from Jeffries.

 

I'm aware that some people look with skepticism at the Boxrec stats on total recorded bouts, but the 1920s have something like five or six times more heavyweight fights recorded than the decade from 1900 to 1910. Boxing was very big business in Dempsey's day.

 

If you look at the top contenders from their respective eras, I really don't think the idea that Dempsey's era was stronger holds up that well.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think the records from the 1920s could be 6 (or even more) times more complete than from Jeffries era. There's so many issues with the early reporting.

A lot of the boxrec records from that era are largely from later reports of the fighters records etc.

 

What would be wrong with the top contenders from Dempsey's era? They look, if not great, at least more modern than the ones from Jeffries's.

 

There's just an overall lack of depth. If you look at the top contenders from his reign, not only did he fail to fight his two stand outs (Wills and Greb), the quality quickly drops to guys on the level of Firpo.

 

Dempsey ducking opponents doesn't make the era's overall talent bad, though, surely? It just means he was a negligent champion.