Dempsey vs james j jeffries

I am sure for his size his power was phenomenal but when a 165lb man lands his best shot on a big man another trained fighter with an average chin what should happen is what happened with Jeff

I can take a few middleweights known as murderous punchers roughly the size of Fitz and use them as what I would expect as way beyond the power a man their size can normally generate such as Julian Jackson.....I take a near clone in size to Jeffries in Chuvalo/Liston and possibly similar in strength.....no matter how you explain it this fight is a mismatch a bear mauling a dog....I would not expect Fitz to KO the smaller champions in Dempsey, Marciano, Patterson or any of the smaller champions unless he got in a perfect shot which can happen with any man...but what I would never expect would there to be a physically competitive one sided beating as the Jeff and Fitz fights are described...from a Fitz or a Jackson even if they could land like Ketchel did with Johnson then I would expect the fight to be ended rather quickly just like that fight....Fighters that all fall into the Jeffries size body type are Liston, Chuvalo, Frazier, Tyson fighters that fall into Fitz size are GGG, J Jackson, Freddie Steele, Monzon, McCallum that were roughly the same size.....furthermore when I see a fighter the size of Dempsey unloading the punches he did on Willard with his style of movement their is no 165lb man who IMO was capable of doing that....it took a many trimmed down to 187lb with cat like athleticism, speed and power....I believe when motivated like he was when Ketchel hit him Johnson hit equally or greater than Fitz and it was this motivation he took into the ring with Willard....

 

You compare Fitz to middleweights, but Fitz's size at the time he fought Jeff is in dispute. They did not weigh in for heavyweight fights in that era and so the weights are all over the place. But the best evidence seems to be that Fitz was a solid light-heavy for the first Jeff fight. He was 5' 11 3/4" tall and his weight off the New York Journal report was 171, based supposedly on an actual stepping on the scales a few days before the fight. But he could have been a bit heavier for the fight after slacking off training.

For the second Jeff fight Adam Pollack quotes sources that Fitz was heavier, in the 180 to 185 range (p. 521)

All this makes him look more like Ezzard Charles or Billy Conn than those middles you list.

Pollack implies that Fitz tended to understate his weight to the press in order to stoke his rep as a "giant killer."

No doubt, though, that Jeff was not the biggest man Fitz fought. Ed Dunkhorst weighed at least 235 and probably much more off most of the estimates. Fitz knocked him flat and out cold for a couple of minutes.

 

"true top notch heavyweight competition"

and which champions prior to perhaps Louis pass this test?

This thread is comparing him to Dempsey, not to Ali or even later heavies.

 

Try as someone might to cover all the basis with the pro Jeffries crowd I stated 185+......I thought I was fairly thorough....you guys have got to quit responding without reading the entire post

 

Since there are no reliable weights given it is well known that Fitz had to eat liberally to even get beyond 165 his genetics never allowed him to gain weight much like Bob Foster could not get heavier than the mid 180's.....it appears that with the pro Jeff crowd it is near impossible to show the improbability of a 165lb fighter a natural middleweight who at his biggest could not exceed 171? was by all rights a natural middleweight or smaller depending on what era of pre weigh ins....so I say again at his biggest he was not any bigger than Mike McCallum or Julian Jackson was in his era and you expect intelligent seasoned fans to believe he was not only a harder puncher but an harder puncher by quite a bit when I have stated that his success as a KO puncher against heavyweights was evidence that the heavyweights of his era were chinny in comparison to later eras from Jack Johnson forward......but keep in mind only the top white fighters because the great black fighters were not let into the inner championship circle......you are describing a man that does not exist the probability is incalculable given all the great fighters who have come and gone in all combat sports.....their is a much higher chance that the heavyweights of his era were not as durable or punch resistant as they were in successive eras because punching techniques were not as good I would surmise that the heavyweights of the era had not faced fighters who knew how to hit and as a result there were few chin checking fighters....look all fighters and eras are defined by the strength of competition when capable power punchers exists the chinny fighters are generally through natural selection of the time not competitive look at Bob Satterfield a great puncher but not very resilient or consistent with better fighter with power also...but few chinny fighters got past him either

 

Poor Jeffy? Who are you? Comparing a washed up and out from retirement Jeffries who could find none of the zip from his frightening days against Johnson is like comparing the Ali of the Holmes fight with the one from his prime days, its absolutely irrelevant. Many of the contemporaries of the first three decades of the twentieth considered Fitz power at or above what Dempsey put out and while he cut Jeff up in their second go I can't recall a writ of the fight that said Jeff was hurt as you state, what are you quoting? Which "fighters" are you stating were drunk, what are you quoting? Both Jeff, Jack, and others in the 200+ range fought smaller heavies as they were the large fighters of their day. Anyone can post as they will here but your condescending words of a fighter that Fitz, Dempsey, Sam, as well as the other great fighters of their day and the leading boxing writers such as Fleischer, Taub, etc. who all considered Jeff a strong, tough as nails, and a great compared to your words which are silly at best. Jeff's fighting out of a crouch was designed partially as a defense against body punches which were more a mainstay in that era then today.

 

We

Well yes, exactly the point. Its irrelevant at best.

 

Fitz was weighed on a set of steel balances just before he fought Corbett his weight was 157lbs as witnessed by Bob Davis. Sometines they were were prior to the fight, sometimes not.

 

Fitz when he was appearing nightly on stage with Jeffries told him to lose the crouch as it worked against his reach. Fitz hurt Jeffries in their second fight in fact some papers said he rocked him at times,and there is no disgrace in that..

 

You were the one quoting Fleischer not me ,you can't just cherry pick bits of his opinions that suit you as you wish.
Martin beat Armstrong too, he beat him in London.A promoter offered Jeffries a good purse to fight Martin who was at the time the coloured champion.Those who saw Martin sparring with Ruhlin said that he was at least as good as Gus. Martin has wins over McVey,Armstrong,Ferguson,Childs,Griffin,Russell ,and Everett.

McVey was considered a good match for Jeffries because he was at over 200lbs, near his size and a promoter guaranteed Jeffries a good purse to accept his challenge ,instead he fought Munro.

" At least they seem to have been in shape." Is that a good enough reason to defend your title against them?
Dempsey went through the heavyweight division like a tornado,sure Willard was fat and had been off too long, should Dempsey have waived his shot at the title then ?
The crucial difference here is Jeffries was defending his title against old comebacking ,ring rusty ex- champions ,[and avoiding Johnson and McVey ].Dempsey was challenging one!
Johnson doesn't really have any place in this debate.

 

As Ed has pointed out, there is some doubt as to exactly how much Fiitzsimmons weighed when he fought Jeffries, but he had clearly not been a middleweight for a long time.

A more recent example of a fighter his size displaying such power, would be Bob Satterfield defeating Bob Baker.

Satterfield weighted 180lbs, to Bakers 214lbs, and Baker was the #4 rated heavyweight when the fight took place.

Satterfield knocked Baker out a 2.32 of the first round, sending his gum shield flying out of his mouth.

Satterfield would later knock out an inexperienced Cleveland Williams in the third round.

Satterfield was not a great fighter, but I think that he did posses the kind of power being claimed for Fitzsimmons.

 

Have to know if Davis actually saw Fitz adjust the steel balances up close or just saw Fitz step on a scale, adjust the balances himself, and announce his weight as 157. Gilbert Odd gives the weights as "announced" at the Corbett-Fitz fight as 157 for Fitz and 170 for Corbett. So now the Corbett who beat Sullivan and Kilrain and went 61 rounds with Jackson was actually a light-heavy? And where did the weights of 183 and 167 in The Ring Record Book come from? You can believe that Fitz was no bigger than Sugar Ray Robinson, but I think the higher weights are quite a bit more likely, with Fitz going generally between 170 & 180 or so during his heavyweight run.

There is a good film of Fitz with Bill Lang. Supposedly Fitz weighed 156 and Lang 188, but the men don't look nearly that far apart in size to me. A weight in the 170's for Fitz would seem more logical just off visual evidence.

 

Fitzsimmons was accused of under reporting his weight by Jeffries, and various people in the press.

Hard to say whether it is true or not, but the last time that we have a reliable weigh in for him, is when he fought at middleweight.

 

Rich.

Are you aware Jeffries would have the same weight advantage over Dempsey by 30-38 pounds?

If you so fixated on the weights, how can Dempsey win? Please reply.

You can’t have it both ways. I’ll reply in more detail later.

 

Correct. When someone told Jeffries Fitz said 167, he said put me down for 144, implying fitz’s weight was fabricated to be lower than it was.