David Tua versus Jim Corbett

Off the top of my head, the Corbett footage I mentioned, Dempsey sparring with Big Bill Tate opened some eyes, even Sullivan's few second clip made people pay attention to his feints, and Langford.

EDIT: And Jeffries with his brother.

 

So I pretty much only discuss old-school boxing in forums like this. From what I can tell, your new high-quality footage usually doesn't sway very many people around here to hold fighters in higher regard. If I'm wrong, maybe some of them will let me know? It certainly doesn't ever lead to anything approaching a consensus toward reappraising a fighter. Braddock and Primo might be the two negative examples that most readily come to mind.

Like I've written before, with the right atmospherics and music, you could probably string together clear 2-second snippets and slo-mo clips of any number of unimpressive old-school fighters and get similar feedback from your youtube subscriber base. But I doubt that even many of those guys would evaluate Corbett with the type of superlatives you use, if they didn't realize he was supposed to be a Legendary ATG.

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

When did all this happen? Do you remember any threads or any particular regular posters who came away more impressed with those fighters?

 

Years ago before I left the forum.

No, I don't remember specific threads or posters. You can probably find them with the search function and see whether I'm remembering it accurately.

 

I thought the claims of hitherto unappreciated skill made for the fighters featured in those brief clips were conclusively blown out of the water by the majority of posters .It seems a case of people seeing what they wish to see.

 

Nowadays, with modern weight cutting drugs, it's very possible for fighters to boil themselves down to weights that they wouldn't have safely been able to achieve in the past. Do I believe Byrd used drugs to get himself down to LHW? Quite possibly. I won't rule it out. He certainly looked unhealthily gaunt and feeble at the weight, just as DLH looked gaunt and feeble for the Pac fight. Why he did it I don't know. Maybe he thought he could genuinely make the weight and still be strong. Regardless, it was certainly a big mistake as he realised afterwards.

Could he have done it eight years earlier and been more successful? Maybe. Maybe not. It's anyone's guess since he never made the attempt.

So no, I wouldn't accept that Tua lost to a 'viable' LHW, because Byrd never proved he was viable at that weight. Did he lose to a natural cruiserweight? Yeah, I could accept that, but that's no shame considering many of the best HWs in history would have fought at that weight had it been around then. I'd simply say Tua lost to a phenomenally talented two hundred plus pound HOFer who made a career out of beating bigger and harder punching men than himself and displayed skills that very few HWs in history possessed.

That has no useful relevance to an argument for Corbett in this thread, I think.

 

My recollection was that in the threads themselves that introduced the footage, you had people saying stuff like "oh, wow, that's impressive", as if pleasantly surprised, and that occasionally afterward, the videos were pulled up when Dempsey's abilities (or whomever's) were questioned. That's really it.

I don't know how measurable the videos' effects on their surroundings were, since I never considered how one would measure those effects, and didn't investigate the effects as evidence of anything. I just noticed the things I mentioned.

If somebody wanted to be more rigorous about it than recalling unsupported memories from years ago, they could probably do Google searches to see all the threads where the videos appear, and tally up the number of comments where posters express surprise at how good the fighter looks. They could also see whether formerly skeptical posters ever re-post the footage in a subsequent discussion as evidence that Fighter X is pretty good. And with even more work, somebody could investigate whether the posters who made those comments or reposted the footage started reversing their previous opinions in fantasy fight threads or revising their top 10 lists.

But I don't have stats like that, or individual instances of conversion. I'm just offering my own impression at the time.

 

Sullivan trying to hit the speed bag and getting his hat knocked off?
Jeffries on speeded up film throwing his useless brother around?


Very informative, in a negative way.

 

"There is no question that Fitzsimmons had a heavyweights punching power. In 1893, he knocked out seven men in one night and accomplished the feat in under nineteen rounds. All men weighed over 200 pounds. One stood 6-7 and weighed in at 240 pounds. The fact that a middleweight could knock out a man the size of Lennox Lewis demonstrates his worth as a hitter."

From http://coxscorner.tripod.com/fitz.html

 

That's very interesting. I'd add one or two things to what you wrote, by way of further speculation:

I think the default for most boxing fans, when they begin the sport, is to trust the Bert Sugar / Ring Magazine type books that are the gateway drugs for boxing history. Now, say what you like about Sugar (I've said a lot, perhaps some of it undeserved), but he and people like him reflect the overall consensus of old time historians to a fair degree on most topics. Those guys, like Klompton2 or CMoyle, have seen the films.

Now a new boxing history fan comes to the forums, where there are a lot of revisionist movements from modernist fans. We are currently going through a couple strong ones over Greb, Sullivan, Stribling/Baer/Carnera/Braddock, and Corbett. (This too shall pass.) We have had a lot more before.

It's interesting, to me, that Jeffries, Corbett, Dempsey, Sullivan, et al have stayed as close to the old timers consensus (which has seen most of the film). Their stock hasn't violently collapsed.

If anybody actually investigated this stuff, I'd propose another hypothesis, in addition to yours (emotional short boost), reznick's (permanent effect), and mrkoolkevin's (no effect). It's possible that the posted film serves a protective function against the boxers falling too far down. Especially since the film can be pulled out when somebody attacks a fighter. Especially for less knowledgeable new fans.

 

So if a newcomer to boxing decides, that he would like to know more about the great boxers from the past, what would you recommend him to do? Should he read up on what old time historians have/had to say? You know, historians like Burt Sugar and Nat Fleischer... and maybe Hall of Fame trainer Ray Arcel. Or maybe he should get hold of "The Arc of Boxing", so he can learn how far boxing has fallen since the "good old days".

Another possibility would of course be to study the material (film) available to him - and then make up his own opinion!

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with the way people get into boxing history now. There's a thread I posted recently asking about the best books for boxing beginners. This was the forum's opinion: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/boxing-historian-starter-kit-5-books-you-recommend.614534/