David Tua versus Jim Corbett

Are you sure? He may be able to find a 1.5 sec clip, where it looks like Corbett is doing something that resembles real boxing!

 

BCS is that you? I can't see through all this cigar smoke

 

P4P Corbett had some of the best footwork, reflexes, and speed in boxing history.

But yeah, Inception probably looks like crap through an 1897 camera bootleg filming.

 

He also has one of the worst winning resumes of all the heavyweight champions.

 

He wasn't.

Corbett's second jumped into the ring, I've heard it was intentionally to get Corbett disqualified for betts, and he was stopped when he first tried to enter, but then managed to get in in another attempt.

Corbett was seemingly performing worse than normal, but was very much in it, and certainly wasn't being beaten up. Both were described as being quick to get up for the 9th (which turned out to be the last round), and if anything Corbett seemed to be getting back in it before he got disqualififed, Corbett had landed some good shots in the 8th, and started showing his normal evasiveness.
A couple years before in a four rounder Sharkey supposodly just clinched to get through it against Corbett, though the ref called it a draw for some reason.

http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=NYC18981203.2.51&txq=sharkey+corbett

 

A book written by a champion, but no matter.

Of course you wouldn't.

It isn't similar.

 

How are you so sure that he has some of the best footwork, reflexes, and speed in boxing history if you admit that the scarce existing film is of very poor quality?

 

Let's make it crystal clear:

Would Fitzsimmons do better against Hasim Rahman than Tua did?

Would Fitzsimmons beat David Tua?

Would Fitzsimmons do better against John Ruiz than Tua did?

Would Fitzsimmons do better against Ike Ibeabuchi than Tua did?

 

Because Corbett beat an alcoholic toughman, who beat a 1-0 bouncer, who beat a 42 year old English middleweight.

 

A good chance he could.

Yeah. He's taller, has a longer reach, is the smarter fighter and more skilled.

Hard to do better than a 1st round KO, but I do think Fitz would be the third Middleweight to beat Ruiz, alongside Toney and Jones Jr.

Hard to say, I think there's a good chance it could play similarly to his fights with Jeffries, where Fitz won early on but ultimately got stopped, if that's better than going the distance is subjective I guess.

 

I don’t know, maybe it’s a lot of different things coming together.

I have a good understanding of the nuances of film and the history of film, I have thousands of hours of editing under my belt, a good portion of which deals with decades old footage. I’ve looked a lot at how different eras in camera technology effected the images displayed. And I’ve extrapolated those experiences over to boxing I suppose.

I can look at 1897 footage, and utilizing the experiences mentioned above, I can get a decent picture of what it would look like with modern cameras. That’s how I analyze it.

Every time a better quality version of some old footage springs up, the overall consensus amongst most people is that they become more impressed with the fighter the higher the quality of film they see it trough.

 

You know, I hadn't thought about this before, but it IS a major trend on this forum, isn't it?

I realize that Corbett is the (largely undeserved) whipping boy these days, but remember when his footage with Tunney first came out? People complained about Corbett's technique just like they do today, but they all praised Corbett's physicality. And he's a 57 year old man in that clip, for crying out loud.

 

You're making some extraordinary extrapolations from some very limited and poor evidence. I don't think you realize how much your ideology and faith in boxing lore is interpreting your analysis of the footage. I doubt any objective film expert who either didn't know it was Corbett or didn't know Corbett's place in boxing lore would view that footage and come away with similar conclusions.

I've seen no such trend, personally. There may be a few easy-to-impress types who get excited if you give them clear footage of an old-school boxer tying his shoes in slo-mo, but I haven't seen any major reappraisals on this forum.

 

Maybe reznick knows some film experts who are ignorant of boxing history, and would be willing to volunteer as test subjects.

 

I’ve seen hundreds to thousands of comments from boxing fans about how better quality footage reveal the subjects to be better than previously perceived.

You say my interpretations are incorrect, but instead of resting on my philosophies I’ve produced tangible goods through those interpretations and have found a sizeable number of people who consumed them with deep intent and agreement.

I’ll leave it up to every individual to decide on their own. Almost everyone here has experienced seeing restored footage at one point or another. I personally think arguing that better footage doesn’t make the subject look better is a hopelessly losing battle.