Fleisher badmouthing recent heavyweights (RING, 1962)

I wonder if in a couple decades people will think people on forums like this are complete morons for rating Benny Leonard over Floyd Mayweather etc.

Which doesn't mean they'll be right either.

 

Most people prefer the fighters from their youth, I know I do. I guess old Nat wasn't any different

 

Some boxing historians surely had their brains upside down. I have no idea with what kind of logic he placed Louis at 6 behind Corbett (+ others). Not to mention the H2H nonsense.
Fighters transform to heros, getting bigger as time goes on after they retired. Year after year the glasses get tinted a little more.

 

He was still in a cloud of ecstasy from seeing Jack Johnson in a bathtub.

 

I think Fleischer liked the 20 plus round championship distance....but thank God there were fights of century on tv in the fifties

 

Fleischer waxes poetic about the pre WW1 heavyweights but how many and how much of them did he actually see? My guess is that prior to Jim Jacobs digging up film on those guys it was very little of them and Jacobs had Fleischer and his cohorts squarely in his sights when he said they were deluded old men who had vastly overrated their heroes and oftentimes couldn't even pick them out of a film.

Fleischer was based in New York. Pre WW1 was a time when travel wasn't exactly easy or quick. Most of these guys fought the vast majority of their fights outside of Fleischers area at a time when Fleischer was a school boy and later going to college. He always liked to pretend that he was at every fight everywhere it happened but you can catch him in lies sometimes later in life stating he was at this fight, or that fight when he couldn't possibly have been. My guess is that like a lot of people, he grew up reading about these guys, idolizing them, and yes, he saw them on occasion when he got the chance, but they were who peaked his interest and as such they have a special place in his heart. Nothing wrong with that but it doesn't make him the most objective observer when discussing them. But lets be fair, most of us are guilty of that. Im pretty surprised when, on the odd occasion, you hear some guy from a different era give props to the younger guys.

 

Fighters, like artists and others, tend not to be appreciated in their time.

Larry Holmes was not regarded as highly in his day as he is now. Ali was ... after he had proven himself time and again and become an icon, but not before. Etc.

 

Well the list is long but it confirms something we all know as we are all human and have our own biases.....Fleischer was biased to that particular time period almost all his writings and opinions reflect it that's OK as long as fans understand that about him then we can have a healthy heavyweight great discussion

 

So cane wagging didn't just start? It's been an old phenomenon

 

Max Schmeling, Floyd Patterson, The Rock from Brockton, Ezzard Charles, JJW

 

Marciano might have beaten all of them

 

You called me the other night trying to argue me down that Corbett would beat a young Tyson and prime Holyfield in the same night

 

100 years from now Wilder will be canonized as a GOAT master boxer

 

"His right hand, thrown with an effortless but deadly grace, enchanted his opponents with its sheer aesthetic beauty before laying them prostrate, separated from their senses in a way not seen since the halcyon days of Sullivan and the only-somewhat lesser fistic prowess of Louis."

That sort of thing?

 

Fleischer is like that ancient uncle that you put at the end of the table at holidays and just smile and nod at times and under no circumstances allow to control the tv remote.