charles v tommy harrison 1953, can you see this guy losing to valdes?

To me Charles was 'past it' post Title reign. He was campaigning beyond his natural weight and was also past his physical best. At Light Heavyweight he was a boxer-puncher but as he progressed into the Heavyweight ranks he laid more emphasise on the boxer and became generally alot more crafty, or at least used alot more crafty techniques. For example in the footage we have against marshall he looks an aggresive 2 handed sharp shooter, at Heavyweight he is a laser-like accurate puncher but with decent movement and a slippery defence.

During his reign as champion I do think he declined, the loss to Walcott is where I think his prime ended. He looks a brilliant fighter in the footage after this but he is not the force he once was. In the Johnson fight he shows great skills and all but he just wasnt the Great he once was, and it is true for all his fights after this. I could definitly beleive the big aggresive Valdez could have beaten Charles in a close bout.

 

I wasn't trying to take anything away from Walcott. Walcott could be a real pain in the ass when he was well prepared. He landed some leather on Charles in their 3rd fight and got him outta there in the 7th. If you fight a guy enough times you tend to learn something. I thought Charles won the 4th fight. Charles was still at the top of his game in the 3rd fight but he wasn't excited about fighting Walcott again. He took the win for granted. Charles had peaked though and there was no place to go but down.

 

I was meaning he was laser-like accurate in his peak at Heavyweight i.e his title reign.

Being active means little except you are pretty sharp. If your skills and physical attributes are eroding, they are still eroding. You cannot reverse the damage by fighting more.

I think it does add up on paper. He had campaigned at Middleweight through to Light Heavyweight fighting the best of both weight classes in sometimes gruelling fights. Then still being a natural Light Heavyweight he moved up to Heavyweight and became champion. I think towards the end of his reign he was starting to lose his skills, and he wasnt as good at Heavyweight as he had been at the lower weights.

It does add up on film aswell. Watch the fight with Valentino, IMO his best title reign performance. Look how accurate and clever he was. If you watch say the Johnson fight IMO he just isnt as good, overrall. His defence is not as good and his accuracy is slightly off.

Then why the losses in the interlude?

Layne was immediatly after he lost the title, and yes he looks to be very impressive in that fight. Although I think he was on the slide still. As for Satterfield, I thought he looked awful in that fight and saved it with a brilliant knockout, if that punch never came he was looking terrible, I think that is forgotten in that fight.

Yes Harold Johnson was better than some people Charles defended against, but he was also a Light Heavyweight moving up, and gave Charles a very hard time. Yes it was a very close bout, and Charles looked good but I still think Charles was not at his best.

Charles was winning fights against lesser contenders with ease though. I do think during his title reign he was by far the best Heavyweight competing at that time. After he started to decline he fought some higher class opposition but struggled slightly more IMO, Layne being the only real exception, but he did lose to him.

What I can't get my head round, is that if he was the force he was as Champion, and he was a very consistent champion, why did he all of a sudden become inconsistant?

 

No you stop winning at the level you were at. He lost his title to Walcott who he had beaten twice before. Then he lost to him twice, do you not think this was because Charles was eroding? Or Walcott improved?

As I already stated when he was Champion he was for me the Best Heavyweight in the world, when he lost the crown IMO he became a mid top 10 contender. A clear regression IMO.

'Gruelling' was the wrong word to use. I meant he mixed at a very high level before his Light Heavyweight days and that must take its toll.

Good point, Johnson was better than Valentino. For reasons outlined in my arguments made already, I still dont think it was a top drawer Charles fighting.

They were still guys he could have beaten before. Perhaps below the level of Walcott or Louis and he would have beaten them as champ but now he was struggling with them. I agree he was competitve but he wasnt winning them clearly like he did as champion with his wins over Walcott till his loss to Walcott, he won all his fights inbetween clearly IMO.

That is another good point, his offensive skills and power had not eroded but I think other aspects of his game had begun to regress. As they say the punch is the last thing to go.

It was a close fight, I scored it a draw. Could have went either way. Johnson brilliant as he was, was the level below Charles IMO. Do you think the Charles that beat Walcott for the title would have lost to Johnson?

Indeed, but how tested was Wallace?

He was 12-2 and then after he lost the title he had double that many defeats by rated contenders and nearly half the wins.

Out of the guys he lost too, he had beaten too of them previously (the first Layne bout was just after he lost the title and he hadnt faded that much and he had beaten Walcott twice). And again do you think the Charles that won the title would have lost to Johnson or Valdez?

Right Choklab, realy enjoying this debate, I am off to bed but will resume in the morning.

 

Some of you guys are way off base with this.

A fighter can still win when he's past prime. A fighter can still beat a good fighter when he's past prime. A fighter can still show flashes of greatness when he's past prime.

Remember this... there is a huge difference between being "past prime" and being "washed up".

Does anybody here really think Holyfield was at his best when he beat Tyson? Holyfield made a comeback in '95 and struggled to beat Ray Mercer. He looked washed up vs. Riddick Bowe later that year and was stopped in the 8th round. In '96 he looked fair beating a well "past prime" Bobby Czyz.

Later that year Holyfield beat Tyson and all of a sudden he is a prime fighter??? Bull****!!! They fought again in '97 but that fight was cut a little short because Tyson was a freaking maniac!

Look at the rematch with Moorer in '97. Holyfield put some hurting on Moorer but he could only fight in spurts. His combinations were pretty quick but only in spurts. I thought Holyfield looked pretty faded in this fight despite the 5 exciting knockdowns he was able to score.

 

The bottom line is that Ezzard Mack Charels was a great fighter. He went 42-0 before turning pro (the only HW champ who went undefeated as an amateur) and he won more fights than any other HW champ (96).

Like I stated before... thru his first 100 fights he went 87-12-1. At this point he had a win or a draw over most of the fighters he had losses to. Also, it must be pointed out that many of the losses could have went either way.

He fought Marciano in his 98th and 99th pro fights and gave him hell. Just because he gave Marciano hell doesn't mean he was in his prime. After Marciano he went just 10-13 and was stopped 4 times.

From '52-'54 he was still a very good fighter, but he was not at his peak. He slipped even more after '54. By the end of '55 he was a shadow of his former self.

He died of Lou Gerhig's Disease/ALS in 1975 at the age of 53.

 

Since when is that the basis on which a fighter is determined to be past his prime? A fighter is past his prime if his abilities have deteriorated in some way.

Because he was an ATG, and ATGs can often still be efficient in ways even when past their primes. That's one of the things that makes them ATGs.

It adds up clearly on both. Film clearly shows his all-around movements looking slower in '53 and onward than they had prior to that. On paper, he lost four times in the span of two years (and often on big upsets), something that hadn't happened to him since returning from the army nearly a decade earlier.

Charles beat Barone and Beshore though, so what does that mean?

Again, what's the significance of lasting the distance? They both lost clearly to Charles.

By your logic, Johnson wasn't better than Moore, Walcott, or Billy Smith, and Charles was collectively 7-0 against them (with two KO wins) prior to July '51.

Yes they can, if the styles or other factors match up better.

Not necessarily, if you're an ATG like Charles had been. ATGs often have so much ability to begin with that even having less than that still leaves them with enough to beat or be favored over contenders.

He had to come off the canvas to beat Marshall and Fitzpatrick and reportedly had two close, competitive fights with Moore, all before '48.

How many close fights did he drop between '46 and mid '51 when he often had an equally or heavier schedule?

It wasn't his skills that got him out of trouble as much as it was his chin, power, and resilience.

Charles beat Wallace-level fighters all the time in his prime. That there was actually some doubt going in as to whether Charles could still beat him shows that people did generally acknowledge he was past his prime.

He was a perfect 12-0 against rated HWs in a 36-month span prior to losing the title. That's a clear cut decline in consistency.

Yes you can, if you were an ATG and/or the other fighter is relatively easy to hit.

ALL of those fighters were visibly far faded at the time of those wins. Just because they scored KOs doesn't change how much they had visibly deteriorated in all sorts of ways by those times.

He had 22 fights against rated opponents in the 40-fight span between his discharge from the army and his loss of the title. He had 14 fights against rated opponents just out of the 19 he fought prior to losing his title, and won them all.

 

Exactly.

All you have to do is watch his fight with Bernie Reynolds in '52 and compare it to any of his fights from '53 onward, and you can see a visible decline in his speed and sharpness:
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IMO he was losing the preceding rounds before the knockout. Also he lost the close return as you say but he had already beaten Walcott twice before that, the first being close; the second less so. Surely that is a decline on Charles's part? Losing to a fighter he had already conquested.

I can't comment here do no know the specifics of that specific time period.

No it dosent, it helps but your body still takes some of the wear and tear. Plus he was fighting at a heavier weight.

To me Charles looks a quality operater, he was definitly underappreciated in his time. I don't think he changed his style too much (although he did apadt his style to fight at Heavyweight IMO).

Marshall, Moore, Bivins and Maxim were all before his reign as champion though. We are discussing his post-title reign so it is irrelevant.

These guys he did beat were still second tier fighters compared to Charles, in his prime you would have expected him to near run them out of the ring but infact with Layne he lost to him, and he looked bad against Satterfield.

I agree to an extent with that. But Satterfield wasnt exactly Willie Pep, he could be hit and Charles caught him. Also My2Sense is making an excellant arguement on how an ATG still has his greatness.

I had it a draw, it could have went to either man, and yes I do think Johnson would have won a rematch.

But you havent answered my question, do you think the Charles that beat Walcott for the title would have lost to Johnson?

He beat a young untested prospect. Wallace didnt exactly prove to be any massive sucess after his loss to Charles. Did he?

But we are talking about his fights with rated opponents.

Why is that?


I just watched some post title Charles. You mention he altered his style, on reflection I now agree. I beleive he became more aggresive. This is in part due to his fading physical attributes or technical attributes and I beleive he became more aggresive to 'cover up' these deficiencies.