Come on Rez, he looks "amazing" on film? Quite a bit of an exaggeration there no doubt. If not, please illustrate which particular fights he looks "amazing" in.
He was barely over 6 foot. I think I rate Fitz above him, their comparable results favour Bob. He won the title in his 14th fight, Corbett won it in his 13th.I wouldn't take too much notice of how many rounds he lasted with Johnson.Fitz said afterwards Johnson could have finished it when he liked. Does he Rez? In which fights?
Unequivocally yes. If you could find no other merit in his record, you would have to acknowledge that he dramatically raised the bar, for both quantity and quality of title defences. Even if you thought that other versions of Corbett and Fitzsimmons could have beaten him, you would still have to recognise that they did not come close to him as champions. In practice I think that those fights were not as one sided as you are making out, and that Jeffries himself was pre prime at the time.
Besides Johnson, his fight films are very low quality. So I am using his training footage, combined with the stylistic nuances I see from the Johnson fight. Very fast for a man of that physique. Great head movement, footwork, power, and punching technique. He also had really fast feet, very good mobility and really good balance. He looks like a complete nightmare of an opponent.
With regard to his size advantage, I think that the argument is overplayed. Yes Jeffries had a weight advantage over all of his opponents, but there were guys who were bigger than him around at the time, who did not come close to replicating his success. If Jeffries was only successful because of his size, then why didn’t Sandy Ferguson dominate the opposition?
I'm just not seeing this at all. The fights we do have, I see very little head movement what so ever. I don't call leaning your head to the side "head movement", in fact, they teach you the opposite of that these days. I'd say he has poor head movement, and certainly not "great". Footwork, again I'd say no, I wouldn't call his footwork great by any means when you watch the fights we have. Training videos count for F All in my world. You could watch me without somebody trying to take my head off or needing to position myself to set up my punches and block others; and just freely move around a ring pretty damn fast. That in no way means I have good movement for functional boxing purposes. In his fights, movement wasn't his thing, he generally plodded forward with his head leaning to the side and tucked in. That isn't great movement. I'll give him strength and power though. Plus I do feel he had good speed for a man his size. It was noted by others, but that isn't the same as functional boxing movement, that, we can clearly see he doesn't have when watching his fights. He also likely did have good Balance, so I'll give him that one as well.
I agree with all of this, though I'm not sure that his speed would seem notable for a modern fighter his size.
I'd agree there isn't much to go by when it comes to straight speed, but I'm simply extrapolating on the fact that he was an All American football player in college. Who really knows though.
Did he raise the bar when he defended against Munro and Finnegan,or Ruhlin whom Fitz had half killed? How about when he defended against Corbett the second time ? Corbett hadn't fought in3 years. I give Jeffries credit for quantity but not quality.
