1919 Jess Willard vs. 1988 Larry Holmes

Is this my Christmas present?

 

Well, I got the chance before X-mas dinner of watching the Willard-Johnson fight with my former boxer-trainer friend. He turned out to be a perfect foil. He had never heard of Willard or Johnson. When I expressed some surprise, he just said he was never into history.

He jumped on Willard immediately for the poor fundamentals mentioned here. His take was that his stance was too wide and therefore he was giving up part of his greatest advantage--his height. He pointed out several times how Willard was flexing his knees and therefore bringing his head down closer to Johnson. He also felt that Willard would lose power on his punches with that stance.

His first comment was that if he trained Willard he would have him narrow that stance.

But he did say he thought a wide stance like that does allow quicker movement directly backward.

He was also critical of Willard "circling" his hands which he felt would simply lesson his ability to exploit an opening and was foolish.

He also scored Willard for carrying his hands too low. In that case I asked him about body punching and he agreed that that was a factor which could change the equation some.

*One observation he made, and frankly, I didn't notice, is that Willard narrowed his stance in the later rounds when he became more aggressive, and he thought was getting much more effective reaching Johnson.

As for Willard as an athlete. He thought him somewhat slow, but on balance a "talented" big man and relatively light on his feet, who would be a "beast" to fight.

On one issue, he seems to differ a bit with the consensus here. He thought Willard showed decent defensive skills.

**The thing that really impressed him was the stamina. He asked me how long these rounds were. When I told him I think three minutes, he was impressed. He thought the stamina displayed beyond awesome.

 

Just a point, off what I remember of hearing Willard interviewed back in the 1960's.

Willard has been described here as a farmboy or plowboy.

He said that he made his living before being a boxer breaking horses. Horse herds ran wild in many parts of the west in those days.

I think breaking a fractious wild stallion would take concentration, judgment of distance, the ability to move quickly, etc., It would seem to require athletic ability.

So sneering at Willard as a farmboy strikes me as somewhat similar to sneering at Clyde Beatty as a circus clown.

 

I am not so sure that the advantage of the wide stance is speed in moving backwards, particularly with the weight on the back foot, more than the front. I believe the wider stands gives the fighter a more solid base, making them harder to move around the floor and dominate in the clinches. It also should allow a fighter to sit down harder on their punches, which is why in the older days, there was more grappling and less combination punching.

You didnt mention it, but the square stance is another big one that seems to be glossed over. I think this is one of the biggest stylistic advantages that the newer fighters have over the older ones.

The low guard, i am not so sure about. I would have thought that the high guard protects the body every bit as much as the low guard. the low guard probably has better conservation of energy and allows the left hand to be loaded more, which does make a little sense when you consider the other stylistic choices made by older fighters (square stance, weight on back foot, more clinching, less combinations etc). I guess the real question is whether or not these things were done because of different conditions and rules, or whether the changes made are in fact modern advancements.

 

It is noticeable that fighters who use a lw guard, often adopt a higher guard, when they go into a crouch.

Clue there perhaps?

It has to be acknowledged, that fighters who usually enjoy a big height/reach advantage, often sucumb to the temptation to carry their hands low.

If you were fighting over 20-45 rounds, and your opponent was typically a lot smaller, this would increasingly make sense.

 

Well, I've never understood the snobbery against farm workers disguised as an objection to a fighter's level of boxing skill.

Some of the greatest ever fighters were from farming, labouring, cotton-picking, rural backgrounds. In my opinion.

I guess there's a school of thought that says good fighters need to have grown up jobless in a big city, preferably with a grounding in beating up old grandmas for their welfare checks.

 

It seems to be a common line of attack against certain fighters, to bring up the fact that they had another occupation, before they took up boxing.

For example Primo Carnera was a professional strongman, and this is often cited as evidence that he was not a serious boxer.

I have never regarded this as either a good argument, or a sincere argument in many cases.

A great fighter can potentially come from virtually any background.