Charley White

I think I would take the opinion of.
Ray Arcel
Nat Fleischer
Gene Tunney
Jimmy Mclarnin
Hype Igoe
Grantland Rice
Willie Ritchie
Over Steve Lott's, I dont have any info on Gordon ,aside from what I have mentioned, so I will not comment on him.

 

Ok cool
But... correct me if im wrong. Its been ages since i saw it..Bennys bouncing around jabbing Lew. Lew is two hand pushing Bennys jab up and away. Lotts making comments. Flash is making comments, and i gotta admit it looks none to impressive.
Thoughts?

 

This is the problem with so called expertswho 60 or so years later, take a snippet of a man's career, in this case Benny leonard,vs Lew Tendler, and
summarize a HOFers career...First of all Lew Tendler was a great great southpaw whofought everyone of note in his time . He fought Mickey Walker in 1924 and lost a narrow decision to the Toy Bulldog...
How can a Steve Lott judge correctly the abilities of a Benny Leonard,by
watching one fight, and somehow his judgement would be as valuable to
all the boxing writers and trainers as Arcel, Mannie Seamon,Fleischer,Tunney and virtually all of his peers who saw his entire body of work, and proclaimed Leonard along with Joe Gans,as the best LW champion of all time..Would Lott saybthe same thing about Leonard who kod 69 fighters in his great career ? I think not...There is a game afoot, to demean all great fighters of the past, on the basis of watchinga miniscule percentage of their fights, ages later , and basing their abilities ,on one or two bouts...Like 50 years later basing Ray Robinson's fighting ability on a surviving film of Robinson / Tiger Jones or the first Randy Turpin..
Silly i think ! It is the entire body of work that counts !!!

 

:deal

 

By the time White faced Leonard ninety years ago this month, White boasted a record of 73-9-4 and had already defeated five Hall of Famers over fifteen years as a professional.

His left hook was highly touted.

He was not just a hooker, though. Believe it or not he set Leonard up like a deck of cards by shooting rights repeatedly and landing them --and only after that he shot the left hook like a bolt. Leonard went through the ropes and landed on the ring apron -and he couldn't get up becasue his legs were “dangling over the lower ropes while his shoulders reclined outside the hemp,” according to a scribe on the scene. Leonard's corner rushed over and pushed Benny back into the ring as the referee counted to four.

White did well right through round 8. Then Leonard figured out how to time White's hook and shoot the right inside it. White got up, but then he himself went throught the ropes when Benny attacked him. White went down and got up several times before he went down and stayed down.... for the first time in about 140 fights.

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--And it may have been White who beat Leonard had the ref disqualified Leonard for getting assistance back into the ring by his handlers! And mind you, this was before Dempsey-Firpo.

 

I may be wrong about this but if memory serves the fight between Leonard and Tendler that exist complete on film today is the lesser of the two fights being considered a bad fight at the time. Also, Tendler was no slouch, I think for Leonard to look less than godly is in my opinion ok.

 

This is interesting given the general consensus of Leonard. Maybe Flash and Lott were maybe too 'shrewd' in this evaluation? It's really hard if not impossible to gain a complete eval off of one piece of film. I'll say this... that Leonard looks to have a complete awareness of his spacing against (by the accounts) a serious banger in Tendler and Leonard has very good mobility. Some of the feints, cuffs, pushes and pivots looked like something a guy by the name of Pep picked up on(?)
Maybe Flash and Lott were having a bad day? Hmmmmmm.

 

What fighter who ever lived,would look like a world beater if someone
eons later scrutinized ONE available in existence fight ,and not calibre
his opponents [TENDLER ]place in history ? The answer is NONE!

 

Yep.
But quite frankly, I think Leonard DOES look good in this film...and this was his poorer performance against Tendler. The man is very keenly aware of his positioning.
It is the same with that film of Ketchel, most if not all think Ketchel looks to crude for words...but if you watch you can see that Ketchel is an excellent inside fighter, never lets an opponent (and Papke was considered great) get him against the ropes, crowds his opponent's counters, tricky shifts to set left hooks, even a step jab to the body (Mayweather Sr did not show him this!)