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Poor Peter Courtney. Now there’s an underrated fighter. No?

Edison should’ve used that 1% inspiration of his by lacing up and getting in the ring with Corbett himself.

He would’ve made good fodder for a Gay Nineties episode of Bully Beatdown.

 

I’m a big Fitz fan but have to give Corbett his due in their fight. Despite inactivity, the descriptions (and available footage to some extent) indicate it being all Corbett’s way until and including the 6th round, when Corbett KD’d the durable Fitz hard.

Not to take away from Fitz’s stoic, incremental work or oversimplify, but Corbett’s own lack of match fitness appeared to play a fair role in the fight with Corbett gassing somewhat after a focused effort to put Fitz well and truly out. Did Fitz get a long count? LOL, let’s not go there.

 

Fitzsimmons was a generational hitter, one of the greatest punchers who ever lived. No shame in getting knocked out by him. Corbett made him look foolish for a while, and that's not easy to do.

 

They are. I actually couldn't decide which of the two were more over rated, then I decided both totally.

 

Corbett was bigger than Tunney. His size was quite normal for the majority of eras until 1970s.

 

Corbett made you think that's true

 

Didn't Corbett weigh like 160 something in multiple fights?

 

Corbett.

 

Did he? I have never seen him listed below 170 lbs and he consistently weighed above 180 lbs.

 

It was a question, not a statement. I went back to look at his weights and must have been confusing how much he weighed with some of his opponents.

4 of his opponents were 160+ fighters: Campbell, Mitchell, Choynski, and Fitzsimmons. Choynski and Fitzsimmons were 2 of the best names on his resume after Sullivan in a resume that is incredibly small even for that era. It doesn't really help his case if he was beating up guys who could easily compete with the likes of Golovkin and Charlo today at 168 without needing to cut.

None of this changes the fact Corbett looks horrible on film and that weighing in the 170 range is tiny for a fully grown adult heavyweight. Even Rocky was considered small at 185 and people were surprised at how successful he was. 170 is not normal for a "heavyweight" up until the 70's when you had an actual light heavyweight division not long after Corbett retired.

 

If you're going by the boxrec weights (which as far as I know were all just guesses), he has a couple at 178, and the rest are alll above 180.

178 would put him at the same weight as Patterson in his elimator against Jackson.

And that's his two lowest weights, the rest are all between 180-188. Calling Corbet 170 is just wrong.

 

He was 178 as a fully grown 26 year old man in his title winning effort against Sullivan which is presumably his prime? He didn't seem to weigh 188 until he got old. Corbett's style was based around speed, lateral movement, and jittery stances which get worse the heavier you get. When he rematched Jefferies he dropped down to 183, likely an attempt to have a speed edge.

Can we stop pretending he was the same size as your average HW in other eras?

Patterson wasn't huge in his era either, but he never weighed below 180 after winning the title (as a reminder, he was very young when he won it) and frequently shot up to 190+ as he matured and took on the more elite guys. Patterson shared an era with several guys bigger than Corbett such as Chuvalo, Dejohn, Bonavena, Terrell, Williams, Valdez, Liston, etc. Guys like Patterson and Ellis ate their way up from light heavy and clearly didn't have a natural HW frame nor were they even remotely the biggest guys amongst their peers or representative of the average size.

 

I need to see Carnera in a thong before I can make a decision.

No homo.

 

I just re-watched James J. Corbett vs. Bob Fitzsimmons. I would say that Jim Corbett is underrated more, by most, than Primo Carnera is, but it may be close. From what I have seen of him, I do not think Primo Carnera was quite as bad as some think, either, especially after he had been around for a while.

 

Corbett never weighed 170 lbs in all listed fights we have. He was bigger than quite a few HW champions after him - Tunney, Charles, arguably Patterson. He wasn't big by any means, but he wasn't small either. Watch him next to Tunney in their sparring, he looked significantly taller.