[1929 - 31 articles] Jim Corbett: No fan of prime Max Schmeling's skills!

Ive seen the film .. I personally never thought Schmeling was that good a fighter .. he was disciplined and very smart, he had a hard right, a good chin and was well conditioned .. he had one career defining fight over a very young , overconfident Louis .. he was also in his prime destroyed by to me a very average Max Baer .. I feel Sharkey was much faster, a much better boxer, had an equally terrific chin, moved better and put his punches and combo together much better ..

 

Who is good then?

All true.

He was the only one who even came close to beating this very young, overconfident Louis. It wasn't a fluke win, he outboxed him all fight long and knocked him out - nobody ever did that to Louis.
Besides, Schmeling had a lot of good wins besides that Louis fight.

Yes, but Baer wasn't average and it was his peak performance. I mean, Holyfield lost to very average Moorer. Ali lost to Norton. Sharkey lost to many worse fighters than Baer in his prime...

I do think he was faster, but I'm not sure I agree about boxing part. Both were terrific boxers and they used different styles. Schmeling was excellent boxer - he usually outjabbed his opponents, he had very sound defense (better fundamentally than Sharkey, although Jack's style was also effective), he set up his punches extremely well and he was very versatile - he could box, he could pressure and he could counter punch.

I agree here.

Depends on what you mean. He was more mobile fighter, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he moved better.

Here I can't agree - have you seen Schmeling against Mickey Walker for example? Or against Joe Louis? He could put combos very smoothly and he was of course much more powerful puncher than Sharkey.

 

Corbett was famously bad at making predictions/talent picks if you read his syndicated column in the teens and twenties you will see he was almost always wrong. As I recall Gunboat Smith alludes to this in In This Corner.

 

And yet I'd pick Schmeling to beat him down.

 

The heavyweight boxers of the 30's were often ripped by the generation before them. In Schmeling's case he got better as his career improved. He did look a bit like Jack Dempsey, but they didn't fight a like. Corbett saw the fights with Monte and Risko, and we didn't. Corbett's assessment in these fights probably correct. Corbett wasn't the only fighter to pan Schmeling. Schmeling was no fan of Hitler; however, the thought of the Nazi's winning the championship was chilling to the world. Schmeling was their poster boy and used as an example by Hitler.

You can see other past fighters like Johnson rip Joe Louis, and he's not wrong on what he said.

When Max Baer fought Carnera, the press asked both Jeffries and Johnson what they thought.

Jeffries said he wished they were around in his day. Johnson could not keep a straight face and simply laughed.

 

Just watching the film

I gave the first round to Schmeling. The second close to Sharkey. The third solidly to Sharkey. Neither had done all that much in the fourth. I don't think anything had been settled.

One odd thing was the announcer and his inaccuracies. He stated that neither had gone 15 rounds. Schmeling had just beaten Uzcudun over 15 rounds, and had also beaten Franz Diener over 15 rounds. The Diener fight might have been somewhat obscure, but the same announcer was used on the film of the Uzcudun fight so why this mistake was made, who knows. Sharkey had gone 15 with Risko and lost.

"Movement"

Depends what you mean. Sharkey relied on moving about on his feet. He often seems rather stiff in torso movement otherwise. Schmeling has a lot of torso movement, and therefore head movement. He has a good bob and weave. Schmeling made Walker miss a lot more than Sharkey did.

I think Schmeling was the better fighter. His left might not have been a KO punch, but it scored quite often in some of his fights including against Sharkey here, as sort of a tight hook as he was moving in. His right was certainly a better KO punch than Sharkey had. But Corbett is correct to a degree. Schmeling was a methodical fighter who pounded away rather than an explosive puncher. Sharkey looks to be a far lesser puncher all the way around.

They had quite a few common opponents--Louis, Walker, Stribling, and Risko--and Schmeling did consistently better with KO's against all of them. The 1932 fight was a dubious decision and the 1930 foul fight proves nothing, although it is the only fight I have seen in which someone manages to uppercut his opponent in the groin.

 

It's interesting hearing pioneers talk about latter day boxers.

Some on here seem to think pioneers don't have a clue what they're talking about or doing in the ring, so it's good having that input.

 

As I said, Sharkey won only two rounds in this fight and it's not like Schmeling was in huge troubles. Acting like the low blow saved Max is ridiculous. Sharkey showed no superiority in that fight.

To be fair, Sharkey had fantastic head movement as well.

 

Have you seen the rematch in its entirety?

 

Exactly how I see it.

 

I too have noticed a tendency of fighters in general being quite critical of those of succeeding generations. Corbett certainly falls into this category. In his autobiography The Roar of the Crowd he assesses the champions up to Dempsey and possibly Tunney. I know of one exception regarding Corbett - in Peter Heller's book "In This Corner" former light heavy champion Tommy Loughran, relates how Corbett once told him that he enjoyed watching Loughran's matches. When Loughran asked him about it, Corbett told him that he sees Loughran doing things in the ring that he only dreamed about. Loughran then realized that Corbett was referring to the fact that he had only 20-something fights and Loughran had well over a hundred at that point.

A word about the Schmeling-Sharkey fights, I once read an observation that at the times of their fights, the loser was probably the best heavyweight in the world.

 

This deserves a bump.

 

It's weird, almost schizophrenic, to hear guys like Corbett and Johnson cogently talking about 1930s fighters' strengths and weaknesses from a modern-sounding perspective. These are commentators who fought in nothing close to the modern style whose perspective they're critiquing Louis, Schmeling, etc. from.

 

Consistent with most champions. Do you think John L said similar things of Dempsey?

 

Corbett, little known fact, was a Gypsy of homosexual origin, so, he really hated what they were doing in Germany at the time. Took it out on old Max, young'un he was at the time. Flotsam's razor, gentleman. "Sometimes the most obvious reason is not the one that the person says it is but rather another one that is more obvious."