Max Baer vs Cleveland Williams

I agree.

Williams record would suggest him to be on the same sort of level and Machen and Terrell, but not on the level of Johansen or Patterson.

I will grant his supporters that his peers rated him, and he might have been better than his record suggests.

 

Daniels was ranked in both of his meetings with Williams. In the first, 8th by the Ring and 6th by the WBA. In the second, 10th by the Ring and 8th by the WBA.

 

I might check it wrongly, thank you. So two of his 3 wins vs ranked fighters are against Daniels?

 

Yes, although Roger Rischer was ranked 9th when he signed to fight Williams, only to slip out of the top 10 just a week before the fight. Which just goes to show that the distinction between ranked and unranked fighters can be a pretty blurry line.

 

Of course, but the point is that Williams basically never beat a true contender outside of Daniels. I don't think you can call someone like Roger Rischer a legitimate contender, he just squeaked inside top 10 for a brief time.

We can argue such nuances when we compare fighters with similar resumes, but it's not the case here. From top of my head, Baer faced top 10 contenders 15 times and he won around half of them. Williams faced less than 10 and he only won twice against the same fighter.

 

Rischer was not bad. He was in and out of the NBA/WBA top 10 from 1961 to 1965. He had given Eddie Machen a close fight the year before he met Williams and the following year he would regain his ranking with a win over Henry Cooper.

But I wasn't including Rischer as a ranked fighter. The other was Alex Miteff, ranked 7th by the Ring and 9th by the NBA when he lost to Williams.

This is the constant issue when it comes to rating Cleveland Williams. He doesn't have a long list of wins against top 10 fighters (there are countless contemporary references to the trouble his managers had getting name opponents into the ring with him). But when he did fight ranked men he always performed well. His only genuine failure when he was anywhere close to his prime was against a peak Sonny Liston - who beat the undisputed world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson even more convincingly.

 

He does nothing for me, maybe it’s just me though and possibly people with more knowledge than me can point out what he’s got.
All I see is a fighter with a big right hand and good chin. Even then when having an opponent in trouble his skill set is extremely lacking he becomes wild and undisciplined.
Although Williams isn’t exactly supremely skilled I think he has more about him than Baer and equal power.
Of course it’s possible that Baer catches Williams and eventually takes him out I just think that fundamentally Williams is more consistent within a fight and he’d prevail, he’s not fighting Sonny Liston here.

 

Baer might kill him

 

Excellent post. Only nitpick is, I wouldn't call his performance against Liston a failure, seeing as he broke his nose, forced him to give ground, and actually won 2 rounds or so, which was the best anyone had done against a peak Liston. Liston himself said Williams was the hardest puncher he'd ever faced and conceded he thought Williams was going to knock him out and said "I thought he'd cut my throat". Clipping from Daily News-Post - Newspapers.com

 

I guess it depends on what you call a failure. Peak Williams couldn't beat Machen and prime Terrell convincingly. I guess they were good enough to say it's not a failure, but then again - this is the level of opponents on Baer's resume level. Williams never beat anyone close to Baer in terms of abilities to win fights.

 

Machen would run circles around Baer. I honestly doubt Baer would win more than three or 4 rounds tops (providing Machen doesn't engage him as he did Ingo, with no respect for his power).

 

I don't know, Baer broke down Earnie Schaff who was a good boxer. He stopped Max Schmeling, who to be honest was less mobile than Machen. He also crushed Tommy Farr, although in two tries.

 

baer wins by ko!

 

I really am done with considering Big Cat in these match ups.

However erratic he was, Baer fought tougher competition overall and managed to net superior wins, at one point earning d the right to be called the best Heavy in the world.

As I've said before, Baer firstly was a gifted athlete who was always in fantastic shape, he was fast on his feet, agile, durable, and strong. His punches were loopy but got around guards and were difficult to anticipate. He was dirty and sold out, and didn't bother to out box the technicians of his day, instead maximizing his gifts of durability, reach, and power. He was often injured but always came back with a surprising win to keep him in the title hunt.

Actually a fighter like Anthony Joshua or Wilder could learn something from Baer's reckless assaults on superior technicians like Primo and Schmeling.

Big Cat was nothing special and his rather poor resume reflects that. The narrative that he was some beast that never got his break is a bunch of crap. Liston wasn't his ceiling....Machen and Terrell was.

 

Which filmed fights best showcase Baer's abilities against good, conventional boxers?

I ask because it might be interesting to ask Tim Witherspoon's opinion on him. Witherspoon did recently break down Marciano vs Moore...