Did these early heavyweights fight on the front foot or backfoot?

After interacting with you some and reading some of your replies, I've decided you fit into the ideal category of logical, well-informed agreeable fellows.

 

I also am having trouble with "back foot" "front foot." If a person wants to say "aggressive puncher" versus "a defensive counter-puncher," why not use those words? Johnson definitely leaned backwards even though he had his aggressive moments. I just watched Louis-Carnera, and Carnera was definitely leaning back a lot of the time when throwing his jab, or at least not following through with it. When a fighter is up against a superior opponent, he will often jab and then try to get out of range before he follows through. Stribling against Schmeling and Sharkey was also guilty of this as I recall. To me, that is a form of "fighting on the backfoot," In that case, the fighter changes his style and becomes timid and bails out before completing the punch because his more aggressive opponent is imposing his will over him.

I am guessing that the confusion is all mine and that the usages of those words are modern terminology with which I am unfamiliar. Correct?

 

Primo moves between the gaps in time and space....there is on a cosmic scale no forward or back...