Chuvalo In The Late 1890's/Early1900's How Far Could He Go?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFWA5xjJ0-4

This is the Flynn footage. It is not a "fine jab" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a pawing, poking extension of the left hand -- without proper hip rotation or balance -- that he's using to taunt Flynn.

And strangely, Johnson does not use this "fine jab" (which isn't a jab at all) in any of his other performances.


Now compare that to Chuvalo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmMPBT8NAY

In this single film, I can count dozens of correctly thrown jabs. They are thrown with the hips and/or a step behind them. They are shot out and retracted at the correct height. Chuvalo does not lean far forward from the hips to throw them. He uses the jab to set up other punches in combination. He certainly does not skip-hop like Johnson does in every fight other than Flynn.

In short, Chuvalo's jab is actually a jab. It's not a pawing bit of silliness like Johnson's "jab" against Flynn.

You don't need to squint, tilt your head, and watch six or seven Johnson fights before pointing to ONLY ONE of them (where Johnson is clearly messing around) and say, "Look there. That kinda-sorta looks like a jab....maybe?"

Gene Tunney and Muhammad Ali had amazing footwork with a clearly defined center of gravity, had head movement, threw modern punches (which Johnson did not), and basically did most of their boxing correctly to compensate for their low hands.

It's not just that Johnson did one or two things wrong. He did almost EVERYTHING wrong. Refer to my long, long list (and footage!) in my post on the previous page.

Which would NOT have been an adequate defense in any remotely modern era. Johnson stood almost stationary, with no head movement, and his defense involved blocking punches from a low guard by slapping them away.

Johnson is absolutely relevant to this discussion.

By convincing yourself that Johnson was a modern fighter, you've applied 1960s standards to a very different type of boxing. And in doing so, you've painted an overly rosy picture of Chuvalo's chances against Ruhlin, Armstrong, etc.

If you somehow manage to see Johnson's style for what it actually was, you'd understand how silly it is to post the Jeffries/Ruhlin footage and say "See? Look how crude they were back then compared to Chuvalo!"

 

Honestly, it looks part and parcel of the years-long argument you've had with Mendoza, which has basically dragged Johnson and Jeffries through the mud.

The answer you're looking for is, "Chuvalo was as good as Jeffries, or better."

But to get that answer and still have a high opinion of Johnson (basically Jeffries' contemporary), a person would have to perform some amazing feats of mental gymnastics.

That does not surprise me. It does, however, contradict the films we have of both men.

 

Not really I seen some film of Jeff (old) but looked a little nimble of foot and strong but hard to gauge the measuring stick in era's, especially in an era where glove use was new and learning was based on a few decades, so if the era was in fact infantile and Chuvalo's era advanced...then George may be the King of Jeffries Johnson era if he could be parachuted to that era

Some of the older era's for me such as the Joe Louis era where the height or pinnacle of the sport and it continued....as far as modern I always considered the Dempsey era the beginning but there was still much to be learned by example and trial and error

 

I said:

"Look at any film of Jack Johnson (take your pick), analyze it objectively, and tell me honestly that he looks better than Chuvalo. Different rules. Different set of skills."

You said:

"Honest answer .YES!"



Since most of this thread has been about comparing a guy with modern skills to Jeffries/Ruhlin, and my post clearly referred to modern skills compared to the old-timers, you should have clarified if you meant something else.

Your argument comparing Jeffries and Chuvalo revolved around film. Now that I've posted film showing that Johnson didn't have a jab (or any other modern skills), you've shifted your standards and want to talk about newspapers.

We have film from Johnson's fights against Burns, Flynn, Moran, Jeffries, Willard, Ketchel, and maybe others I'm forgetting. That's a LOT of footage. In none of those fights does he demonstrate a modern jab, even though the contemporary fight reports claim that he has one.

What happened, then? Did Johnson suddenly forget how to jab whenever the cameras started rolling?

 

I already explained why Johnson is relevant to this discussion.

You obviously believe that Chuvalo was (at least) as skilled as the 1890s/1900s fighters, and cited the Ruhlin/Jeffries footage to prove it.

I countered that Johnson was an example of a fighter whose poor showing on film is deceptive -- just like Jeffries, Ruhlin, Fitzsimmons, and Corbett -- because the entire game was different.

 

Thanks for a very interesting read chaps

 

Class tells, Chuvalo didnt have it. He would have lost to the best guys of any era. He simply could not win the big ones.

 

Class is class in any era.

However the sport of boxing might have changed, there are common factors among all the fighters that have atained greatness in every era, and fighters who have lacked these characteristics have invariably faield to atain greatness.

 

Rather than getting angry with me, maybe you should reread your own posts.

Again, you said this:

mcvey: Look at the film of Jeffries stalking Ruhlin,analyse it objectively , and tell me honestly that he looks technically better than Chuvalo.

I later replied with this:

Cross_Trainer: You obviously believe that Chuvalo was (at least) as skilled as the 1890s/1900s fighters, and cited the Ruhlin/Jeffries footage to prove it.


...At which point you accused me of making up / "guessing" your side of the argument. Or however you want to put it.

Explain how I twisted your words, exactly? I'm baffled. It's almost exactly what you said.

Well, that's too bad.

I, by contrast, don't find you insufferable at all. You're an asset to the forum. You just tend to get excessively angry and defensive when people debate with you.

 

Why would I want you to leave this site? :blood

I like you, even though I sometimes find our conversations frustrating.

I also never said that you wrote any "untrue syllables" about Jeffries, either. I said that between the two of you, you and Mendoza dragged Jeffries and Johnson through the mud, which you did.

Yes, you did, though not intentionally. It's a matter of emphasis. Your feuds with Mendoza -- and the threads they spawned -- constantly focused on the bad points of each fighter.

Reading through them is like a lowlight reel. Yes, Johnson refused to fight black fighters after the title, and had some shady aspects to his life. Yes, Jeffries was an ornery racist who ducked black fighters just like Johnson. And that's most of what you two threw back and forth in those threads.