Corbett and Fiz were like chalk and chesse. Corbett was certainly no gentleman but he was the kind of man who could play to any audience. Put him with na group of roughnecks and he could be a roughneck. Put him in the carlton club and he could be a gentleman. Above all he was an improvisor. Fitz was a man of average+ inteligence who had a knowledge of boxing methods that might never have been surpassed. If you respected him he would respect you back. If you didnt he was like Joe Frazier against Ali.
I'm 21 thanks much. Also, blahblahblah generic Suziepoo response too long to bother reading. Keep it concise and short plz. I can't bother reading too much of your verbal diarreah. :-(
Get back to me kid, when you earn a College Degree. I have one, you don't. 1 point for me. As far as boxing knowledge goes, your IQ is somewhere around 80. Honestly you have to be the least knowledgable poster in the classic section...and I am only 1 year older than you.
Your temper tantrum are very telling that emotionally you haven't gone past the level of sucking on your mom's tit. :rofl
You have no idea what these guys' records are, they're acknowledged as being incomplete. IBRO's researchers have uncovered at least 70 or so possible fights for Martin, so trying to claim his record was only "4-9" is pretty questionable at the very least. Martin appears to have been considered a decently respected fighter in his day. Starlight was noted as being one of the top middleweights in Australia, and as being a big comeback win for Fitz (after he had lost to Jim Hall) which made him a viable contender for the MW title. You're basically just looking at a few sketchy numbers and making assumptions about how good these fighters were, and what they were considered at the time they were actually fighting, more than 100 years ago. Why? What is there to show those fighters were acclaimed as clear cut top contenders when Fitz was at his peak? Most of them lost to top white fighters that Fitz fought (ie: Choynski, Jeffries, Creedon, etc.). You're basically just singling out what black fighters he didn't happen to fight, and then claiming those are "contenders" that he should've fought, regardless of any circumstances or whether it's even true or not. Most reports point to George Godfrey as the most highly regarded of any fighter around this time who happened to be black. He got his chances to prove himself against top white fighters, but flopped big time. He was notorious in his own time as being a "choker", and probably rightfully so. How can you point to fighters that were of no better standing than someone like him, and claim those were "the men to beat" at that time?
Godfrey was aging pretty badly by the 1890s...I didnt include him for that reason I am not pointing fingers. I am only pointing out there were better black contenders OUT THERE than the ones fitzsimmons fought pre 1900. Are we in agreement on this? Well there was a COLORED heavyweight championship being passed around from Frank Childs, Bob Armstrong, Hank Griffin, Denver Ed Martin, etc... Did Fitz take on any of the colored heavyweight champions outside of jack johnson? As far as im concerned, the colored heavyweight championship back then holds alot of water. After Denver Ed Martin whupped Armstong over 15 rounds to win the colored title, San Fransisco Examiner announced he was gauranteed to fight the winner of fitz-jeffries....jeffries never gave him that shot. I think the consensus here is these were the best heavyweight black contenders around, since all of them were passing around the colored heavyweight championship to eachother. Do you seriousely think the colored heavyweight championship holds that little weight? Kind of like you think Dempsey has the better resume than Wills?
Yet he was still one of the most highly regarded of the black fighters of this time, and even beat a couple of the names you listed. If a "badly aging" fighter is considered arguably the best of the crop, what does that say about the rest of the bunch? No, first you pointed out that he NEVER fought a black fighter while in his prime (your exact words). When it was pointed out that he did fight black fighters, you then changed your argument to say that he never fought a black contender - a claim not based on any research, but an assumption made from looking at badly incomplete records. Then when the possibility has been raised that the black fighters he fought may have contenders, you're still not satisfied with that, and you amend your point once again to say you're really just pointing out that the black contenders weren't "the best" black contenders. Why are you going out of your way to find some sort of deficiencies when it comes to fighting black fighters? No. We don't have their complete records, nor a full understanding of who and how these fighters were rated in their times, so we'd be in a very poor position to make certain judgments or comparisons. You yourself just said you were only aware of a particular fighter having 10 fights, when research suggests he had at least 7-8 times that many. How can you even begin to make a judgement about a fighter and his situation when you have so little information about him? A title only holds as much water as the people at the time give it. You can't just come along 100 years later and decide for yourself what it means, and then act like that's the truth. That would be like someone 100 years from now declaring that the WBO title or some other bauble holds a lot of water, regardless of whether it was really true or not. Besides, Pearl and I believe Starlight were both credited with winning "colored championships" in their day, yet you declared outright that they were "never contenders". What does this have to do with anything? We're talking about Fitzsimmons, not Jeffries, and when he was in his prime, which you yourself said was gone by this point. What a childish and completely nonsensical thing to say. "Kind of like you think Dempsey..." ...seriously, what on earth is something like that supposed to mean?? Is that supposed to be some snide way of saying its wrong to acknowledge Dempsey as having a better resume than Wills, if even there's a shitload of facts and reasoning that point to that conclusion.