Champions who represented the biggest qualatative advance over what had gone before

I think it should be noted that different styles, are, like evolution, simply adaptation to a new environment (rules)... saying that Johnson's style is inferior to Ali's is like saying a white coat is a better camouflage than a yellow coat. Which really is better depends on the ruleset.

Having said that, i think Tunney was the first to adopt a style that was based on boxing mostly from the outside under gloved rules. Dempsey consistently put together combinations that i haven't seen before. Joe Louis was the first to successfully combine the two into a boxer-puncher style. Maybe Langford should be given credit here, but there is too little film of decent quality for me to judge. Certainly he seems to be among the pioneers
however.

As bigger gloves were used, the high guard and glove blocking became a more used form of defence from say the 40's on, but i wouldn't say that there's a single champion who started it.


Now, i'm not saying that no one before Tunney jabbed or that no combinations were thrown before Dempsey, but they did seem to be the first ones that did it consistently and built their entire style around doing so. And with great success.

 

Archie Moore probably deserves a mention. His use of upper body movement and angles wasn't new, but he seems to have taken them to a new level. Then we also have his crossed arm guard.

Pep, perhaps?

 

Joe Gans. Great Counterpuncher and kept distance well.

 

You're obsessed! You're right though.

Not in terms maybe of speacial ability not seen before, but Pancho Villa could keep up a frightening and ferrocious pace,

 

Willie Pep

 

A bit obvious, but pre-excile Ali was a new breed of HW.

 

James Figg, Jack Broughton and Jem Mace pretty much between them helped evolve boxing to what it is today.

Plenty of course since and before them, added things to the sport, but as far as biggest advances, them three are some way ahead of the rest.

 

Corbett since Tunney based his tyle on him and even Ali and Burley drew comparison to him.

Jack Dillon his style still used today Tyson had a very similar style which also worked well against big men like Dillon.

And from the footage I've seen of Choynski sparring with Jeffries he was exellent at moving in and out of range using his speed to counter the big man in fact it looked very similar to what Pac was doing to Oscar.

 

Corbett based his style on Mace....

 

I think they were as much as quantum leaps as you'll find, during the 20th century anyway. Whether Langford already did what Dempsey could i wouldn't know, there is too little watchable film of him during his prime. I can tell that Tunney definitely is better and different from Gibbons, though.

I haven't seen much of fighters smaller than middleweight pre-20's, so i couldn't comment on Gans or Blackburn. But as far as heavyweights go, Louis was unique.

 

I think that Lennox Lewis was as big a leap as we have seen. He represented the modern superheavy, who would jab from the outside and use his size and strength. This coupled with the change in rules to 12 rounders, the already larger glove sizes and a safety first boxing tactic amongst the super heavys (created by lewis after his ko losses, and continued by the likes of Vlad, Valuev etc. It has only been since Lewis that you needed to be so massive to be considered any chance in the heavyweight scene.

Before this I think that Ali was revolutionary. Looking through the Heavys, once Ali started dominating a string of heavyweight dancers followed, with every young fighter trying to increase their speed more than anything. This only really stopped when Tyson came along and the trend turned to weight lifting and developing an enormous punch. He is another who was revolutionary, imo.

It is quite clear to see that it takes a dominant champion to revolutionise, imo. Hopefully the next dominant champ will be someone who actually trains hard and relies on punch output and stamina to dominate. Another Rocky Marciano would be nice.

 

Gentleman Jim Corbett.

Inspired the styles of fighters like Jack Johnson and Gene Tunney.

His defense, counterpunching and footwork represented a different level of boxing artistry compared with John L Sullivans brute force.