Some time back I had picked up an old Ring mag from the late '60s, which featured a series that ran a computer tournament involving historical greats. The mag I read featured the middleweight tourney final which pitted Sugar Ray Robinson against Stanley Ketchel, which was won by Robinson. This was done on the up-and-up with data fed and no writers influencing with their judgement. Well, Nat Fleischer found this intolerable and wrote a piece on how this simply would not have happened. In his eyes he could not see anything but a Ketchel victory. Moving right along to the present where we now have access to the Ring archives (and I've been enjoying the hell out of these) I see they also did a tournament with the heavies. Apparently, Marciano KO'd Dempsey in the final. But in the preliminaries, Max Baer beat Jack Johnson on a 15 round decision. Well, you can only imagine Nat's fury on this one. But Ring did a piece called something like Nat vs Jacobs where Nat Fleischer and Jimmy Jacobs (later to become Tyson's co-manager) argued the merits of the pioneers v the new breed and I found this enlightening. Nat's argument was that fighters at the turn of the century looked poor on film because of the archaic equipment used at the time to film them and one should just trust the opinion of those that saw them in person. He then went on to name several old time writers (that were also from the 1800s like Nat) who agreed that Johnson was the best. It was a very poor argument for Nat, whereas, Jacobs was pretty solid. Jacobs cited that pictures (film) don't lie and that Nat's picks were all nostalgia based (I always said those fighters were Nat's heroes, but I do like Jacob's line better). He also went on to say every sport has exceeded their pioneers such as track and such and why one thinks boxing hadn't improved as well. It was a great article, which I enjoyed and Ring actually threw it out to the readers on who had the better argument, and Jacobs garnered the most votes. A fun article that would have us all examining out preferences. Afterall, like these two, we're all from different eras and I would guess we all hang on certain fighters.
Those old computer fights have always fascinated me. I would love to know what data they put into them, way back then, to come to those conclusions. Are you familiar with the old TitleBout boxing game? it was a board game with over 750 fighters in it, going back to george Dixon and up to current fighters; I first saw it in 1978 and, in the 90s, i bought an updated version. i ran a 64 man tournamrent - they ranked fighters from 1-12, so i started working my way down. The bottom end of the top 64 were rated at a 10. I just matched everybody as if they were the same weight and, in the finals, Sam Lanford beat sandy saddler.
I remember it well. The controversy was if Flieschers memory was more reliable then watching the fights. The significance of Jacobs was that in this era before video was available to the public Jacobs owned what was said to be the largest boxing film collection in the world. So he had seen about anything that had been captured on film. His contention was that boxers had improved and the newer fighter ie Ali Liston even Louis were superior to Johnson Jeffries etc. Nat started watching live fights in late 19th century and saw all the best though the early 70s and that should be respected. However between him and Jacob’s I think it should be clear now who was more correct. Fliescher undoubtedly was seeing the old guys with fondness that affected his perspective. He rated Fitzimons the 3rd best heavyweight and even Schmeling was #9 while Ali Frazier and Liston were not in the top ten. Reminds me of a lot of nostalgists in this forum only now they’re saying Marciano could beat Lennox Lewis etc. A side note one of the reasons Mike Tyson was such a student of boxing history was that he had access to all Jacobs films as Jacobs was his co manager.
As much as I disagree with Nat on things he is right that the recording technology was pretty poor, for the most part anyway, and made boxers look worse than they are. @reznick already expounded on this year's ago. Recently there have been people on YouTube using AI to upscale definition and supplement missing frames in poor quality film. One of them I saw was Jofre vs Medel and it's incredible just how much better both men look. Lately I've been thinking this type of debate is a heavyweight specific problem, in all honesty. When you compare good quality old film on lighter weight fighters like Driscoll, Leonard, Young Corbett III, Gans, Welsh, Gibbons etc they just look decades ahead of the heavyweights, with the only major differences being adaptions to old school rulesets. Meanwhile the heavies look primitive, sloppy and just generally uncoordinated and technically abysmal (which you still see today). Even guys like Johnson aren't impressive to me tbh. Despite being the premier division it's always been low on talent. I find it notable that the people who talk about boxing 'evolving' almost exclusively refer to heavyweights. Lighter weight fighters had already fully 'evolved' to the modern styles we see today by the implementation of the Walker Law (barring some adaptions to antiquated equipment like super small gloves).
I remember once reading about this in Cox's Corner. In an article about how with gloves now becoming the norm, and bare knuckle dying, the lower weights really started employing modern skills at around the turn of the century, whereas Heavyweights stagnated. Kinda makes sense too, given how the champion fought once every blue moon and the division was legit just kinda ass for a good 20 years. Even during Johnson's and Willard's reign, the division was defined by Langford, Wills, Jeannette and McVey before Dempsey came as they would get no shots. And Dempsey's the guy everyone points to when addressing the point that Boxing started to look modern.
Honestly I just find those old heavies painful to watch. None of the names you list look amazing to me, really. Jeffries in particular looks ****ing horrendous on film imo. Personally I don't even find Langford that impressive on film - he just looks like he's using basic pressure fighting skills and defense from his lower weight years against sloppy, bigger guys who honestly look novice-like. I wish we had film of him as 135er. Bet he looked a phenom against Gans. And yeah I have to agree on Dempsey looking like the first modern phenom at Heavy. Though I do wish we had film of Sullivan's physicality.
Some of what has been said here I ve been posting about for a long time. The progression in the sport is mostly in the unlimited division. That because more fighters are bigger and stronger which affects the unlimited heavyweight division. It however also affects the cruiserweights a division that wasn’t necessary prior to 50 years ago. So the lower ranks are still the same weight they were which gives the best chance for prior eras fighters to be just as good. I will say technique training and diet control have evolved which is an advantage for the most modern era fighters. Technique has probably changed the least of the 3 since say by the 1950s. By then fundamentals had been mostly maximized. It’s before WW 2 that you see poor fundamentals increasingly the farther back you go even for some so called greats. But yes the quality was better then in the heavyweight class where talent was scarcer as the number of larger stronger fighters was fewer. So while Ray Robinson may have had some disadvantages in training and diet control there is better chance he would be great against modern welterweights then say Dempsey would have been against modern heavyweights.
Yeah Sullivan reads like an absolute beast. You'd swear he had the technique of Louis with the ferocity and aggressiveness of Dempsey the way they talk about him. I don't find the the pre 10s Heavies except Langford impressive either, though there are some things they do well, but they just don't look like complete fighters. Langford is an intriguing case. I can see parts of him that look sloppy or clumsy, and it's hard to get a clear picture of what he was capable of at his best, but I definitely get his essence. The power can be felt even in the old ass film, and I really, really like his work up close. He found gaps and created openings through angles, positioning and maneuvering that would have saved Usyk's ass from Rico's work up close a few days ago. It's so interesting that the modern way you'd expect someone to fight a Heavy as a smaller man, is to move around a lot, making them reset and trying to outbox them with speed and superior skill. But lots of of old guys just went "**** it, we ball" and just went on the inside and worked from there. No leverage for strong punching that results in cuffing shots, the smaller man's shots get there first, he has all the advantages of the inside position, and if he doesn't allow the big man to rest too much of his weight on him, he can rely on his superior work-rate and stamina. Moore did it vs Valdes, Walker did it vs Sharkey Iirc and Conn did it vs Louis (though Conn did spend time at long range, but his best work came from up close, and he did nothing at mid range).
I think in general what we like to tell ourselves is ‘evolution’ — the practitioners getting better on some curve over time — is more a function of the equipment, rule sets and general working conditions in different eras. Which is to say, today’s ideal boxer may not have thrived under London Prize Ring Rules, or fighting with the thin gloves of Jack Dempsey’s era just as Jack Johnson may struggle today as much because he cannot with modern gloves grab and manipulate the arms and wrists (nor would he under modern officiating be allowed to, at least not to the degree that he did). How would guys from the two-fights-a-year era of today’s game do in a time when you might have to fight every three weeks (or more) just to put food on the table? Would today’s best welterweights or lightweights make it if they had 300-fight careers and often had to fight when sick or still injured/marked up from a previous fight a couple weeks earlier? And how about the changes from 15 rounds to 12 for championship fights, and day-before weigh-ins with guys rehydrating? Some of today’s middleweights would be heavyweights in the eras of Ali and Patterson and Marciano — they walk into the ring at 185 pounds or whatever … would they be able to handle heavyweights of those days? I kind of doubt it. As for Ray Robinson, I think he’s a prime example of how marginal today’s nutrition really matters — you gonna tell me he’d be that much greater if he ate today’s diet? It’s funny, because what’s en vogue for an athlete’s diet changes year by year and yesterday’s cutting edge is today’s ’oh they had no idea what they were doing’ … when, in fact, maybe we today have no better idea what we’re doing. I think it’s marginal. Robinson ate steak as a prefight meal and he is so much better than 99% (or more) of today’s fighters … maybe those guys should try a steak every once in a while instead. Could today’s best welterweight beat Ray Leonard or Ray Robinson. If they had to make 147 say 10 or so hours before first bell? I don’t think so. They’d be too weak.
Fleischer was a knob. So are 99% of those who call themselves "boxing historians". Ketchel couldn't beat Robinson with Walter Dipley's gun. Nat's heavyweight lists are the stuff of sublime idiocy.
Jim Jacobs was obviously very knowledgeable when it came to boxing - but also a bit weird! I remember a Hugh McIlvanney interview with him, something like 40 years ago - where Jim completely rejected the notion, that even a long pro career, with 1000s of punches to the head, could result in brain damage, that would become apparent later in life. Hugh, a big fight buff himself, and of course knowing better, was clearly taken aback by such a claim - but Jacobs was quite adamant about this, so Hugh didn't press the issue much further. Which I thought was a pity!
