Champions who would have been university lecturers if they had lived in another era.

In the early 20th century and before, many highly inteligent men pursued careers in boxing because it was the only ocupation open to them that would have given them a significantly greater wage than a manual labourer.

These men could have enjoyed considerable sucess in anay field today.

Jem Mace, Jim Corbett and Jack Johnson were men with genius IQs who aplied their inteligence to boxing because it was the only field open to them. That might have been a crucial factor in the history of the sport.

Thoughts?

 

Gene Tunney actually did lecture at a university(s)..on Shakespeare. This really comes as no surprise as erudite as Tunney was.

 

This is an interesting question. Don't know about IQ's or academic aptitude for that matter. But guys that strike me as bright enough to do anything?

Max Baer, Both Sugar Rays, Ali, Wille Pep in his non-classroom way, I mean this is a difficult question, because what I really wanna say is most of them. But I feel that way about the general public, about mankind; that most all of us can do most anything if given the right opportunity.

What might be a better question, at least the way I see this thing is which guys couldn't have done much of anything besides fight?

I don't know, I'm thinkin'..........

 

Lets put it another way.

Who was wasted as a boxer?

 

I think Max Baer would have been a hoot as a humorist, more so than as a lecturer..he had a humerous, appealing personality and a wit about him that could be somewhat honest and self-depreciating at times.

 

The fact that his son became an actor with less natural talent, speaks for itself.

 

Janitor brings up a good point. Jack Johnson was very well spoken as was Jim Corbett and Jim Jeffries. The most eloquent was probably Tunney. Maybe it was important back then to be well spoken and somewhat wordly and to project an intelligent persona as well as athletic prowess. It certainly doesn't seem so today as the world of Boxing is inundated with trash talking, foul mouthed uneducated slobs. It seems as if the general perception is that well spoken socially conscious athletes are weak and not tough. Kind of makes one yearn for a Jack Johnson to reappear on the scene when you stop and think about it.

 

Gene Tunney, however..in sports lore, has always been characterised with the adjective "colorless"..and was looked down on with scorn by the sports world, esp. in his own time, for his pursuit of things deemed as intellectual or "snooty"...he was a misfit in the sportsworld, and probably is still considered as one.

 

Gene Tunney had an inferiority complex that drove him to be a classic pedant in an effort to compensate/overcompensate.

 

after he retired he was part of a comedy duo in the clubs w/ Slapsie Maxie rosenbloom.:rasta

 

Tex Cobb recently in the last 2 years got his degree from Temple

 

I have 4 books on Tunney and about 30 books on the oeverall boxing history and have never read that. Tunney was supremely confident and a ring genious to boot. He was raised well. His daughter went nuts and killed her hubby in England though and was institutionalized and Tunney took to the bottle and never recovered.:rasta

 

He loved to use big fancy impressive words. Being plain spoken would never do.
Grew up in an era when Irish Catholic's in N.Y.C. were looked upon as mutts by the Knickerbockers.
Nat Fleischer labeled him "bitten by the high society bug"

 

Schmeling would probably fit that well, given the susccess he had later on as a business man - not only with Coca-Cola but even before right after the war with a mink breeding farm and his own vineyard.

 

The Klitschko brothers are guys I consider very intelligent, both well-educated as it is but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say someone was ''wasted'' as a boxer. Archie Moore seemed like a very intelligent man as well. I can't recall at the moment even hearing Ezzard Charles speak but I have read a few times that he was painted in the light of an artistic, possibly too intelligent and "civilized" man to be the fighter people wanted in a champ. I have no idea how much BS that might be. May have just been an angle.