Gene Tunney was an awful fighter

I think that was the case around 1920.

 

As you say it dosnt do to generalize. Joe Gans might have developed boxing technique as far as it could practicaly go even if he was not representative.

On the other hand you have people who continued to use the old school methods right up to the 1950s often with considerable sucess. Charley Burley for example was in many ways in the mould of Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons.

 

I have many things over the years about the fighting Marine, but never that he was an awful fighter...thats just plain antogonstic. Gene was a brilliant tactician, a superior boxer/puncher, conditioning second only to Marciano, and could take one heck of a whallop.

 

The sport stopped evolving around the sonny liston era, hes considered as the first modern day heavyweight great. I would pick sonny to beat all of those guys before him.

 

But Liston did not bring anything new.

There were heavyweights with better technique before him and bigger heavyweights before him.

 

But not his combination of size and power, along with that sexy jab. Admit it janitor, his jab has to turn you on.

 

More historical revisionism!!!!! No, make that HYSTERICAL REVISIONISM!!!! All of a sudden, a great fighter becomes an "awful fighter"! I agree with the previous posters, that Tunney was a great fighter, good enough to school Jack Dempsey twice, but wait, by your logic, Dempsey was a bum!!! Right? Hey it's fun being a hysterical revisionist, why you can make up any crap you want! Like, if it came before the eighties, it's gotta be crap, right? Or, if you like, Muhammad Ali, Roy Jones and Baby Floyd Boy are the greatest of all. Yeah, that's the ticket!!

 

everyone is horrible. Especially the fighters from past eras who were too stupid not to be born now, but especially these modern day PPV sissy boys who refuse to fight each other. They are all terrible.

And you know whats really terrible? All athletes, God, I hate them.

 

A great boxer and an underrated KO artist, people forget he knocked out only 3 less fighters than Dempsey

 

Tunney had fast hands and feet, proberly the fastest hands until Patterson and the Fastest feet until Ali, he also took a good shot and recovered well when hurt and had good power for a guy on the move. Tunney is underated

 

Absolutely true. Beautiful jab, terrific power at times (much like Ali showed) and studied the opponent like few before him.

 

Your last sentence says it all! Gene Tunney is the most persistantly and consistantly the most underrated and underappreciated of all past heavyweight champions. I've seen posts that actually OVERRATE guys like Primo Carnera and Gene Tunney is called an "awful fighter". Back in the late seventies on one of the greatest of all boxing friendly tv programs, Wide World of Sports, Muhammad Ali was interviewed during an extended viewing of some rare and not so rare footage of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time and how, in the opinions of Ali and Howard Cosell, who was there with Ali. Dempsey, Louis, Baer, Charles, Johnson, Marciano, etc., were all candidly assessed and evaluated by the two of them, with of course, Ali seeing himself winning against all of them. In the mix was Gene Tunney, whom Ali deemed as the most sophisticated, and most like a "modern fighter". Tunney was still alive at the time, and who knows, may have even seen the show and heard Ali's complimentary views and opinion of him. Ali frankly thought that Tunney would have been one of the easist for him to beat, since the Fighting Marine was too much of an orthodox, pure boxer, which incidently, I agree with, but Ali had high praise for Tunney and again, remarked as to how modern looking, and sophisticated and polished Tunney was. Tunney was a brilliant boxer, a "textbook" boxer, to be sure, but a studied, tough as nails early practitioner of scientific boxing who would be far too smart and disciplined for most fighters he would meet in any era you can name.

 

The interview, and the viewing of the films was at Ali's Deer Lake training camp, and this episode, probably from 1976 or '77, would be a treasure on unearth, as I remember it was Ali, making frank, candid and lucid commentary about the great champions of the past that made it so interesting and enjoyable. Does anybody else remember seeing this episode?