Gene Tunney was an awful fighter

Jack Dempsey was a force of the times and Tunney beat him 2 times also bested Harry Greb...watching tunney I would have to say he had the best footwork the Heavyweight division knew up to that point and I would say of the Champions he falls under Ali and Walcott only....Tunney was a great fighter

 

That's a ****ing absurd statement. Most MMA fighters have horrendously ugly two-fisted striking, I saw two elite MMA fighters (Bisping and some other guy) fight and when they were on their feet, it was worse than a ****ing bar fight. The guy Bisping was fighting was beating his English ass with punches that were just plain illogical! Tunney was an ATG, your statement is just plain evil.

Haha, Janitor you're a great poster.:good

 

Not nearly as misinformed as you stating Tunney looked the best on film of any fighter pre joe louis. Watch Tunney's punch technique, it was all arm punches. Did you ever see him torque his body into a punch and use leverage? I never have. all his fast flurries were arm punches...quite sharp but not the same. This kind of leverage and body torque in punching technique was not taught on a regular basis during the 1920s which is why most fighters of that era had poor punching technique on film.

Not many fighters pre 1940 threw combinations. in fact I count the number who did on one hand. Did Harry Greb? Possibly so, and that very well makes my point because greb beat tunney 2x, and tunney never got the better of greb until tunney weighed above 175lb. Usually Tunney had a good 10lb on greb in most of there fights but greb still managed 2 wins over him.

Carpentier was washed up by this time, not to mention not that good in the first place. I did not see any fluid 3-5 punch combinations from carpentier.

Your entitled to your opinion. He does not look any faster to me on film than Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, and Floyd Patterson.

I don't think we disagree here. but who was it proven against? Tunney drew the color line, that pretty much eliminates 50% of competition when you eliminate fighting colored fighters. Tunney also never took on men above 200lb. The lightheavyweights he did pick on were either old (Gibbons, Carpenter) or much smaller (162lb Loughran and 162lb Greb). In fact Loughran was just a teenager at the time and tunney outweighed him by 12lb, yet loughran still outboxed gene to win the newspaper decision. Its hard to see gene ever beating a bigger better more mature 175lb loughran in a rematch.

Never said I wasn't impressed. I am just not more impressed with tunney than I am with Sharkey or Schmeling. These guys would have given gene all he could handle, and may have beaten him.

 

Those arm punches KO'd plenty of opponents. The proof is in his record. Furthermore, he suffered from some very fragile mitts. His KO record would have been plenty higher without this limitation.

Debatable points. It is generally accepted and published that Tunney got the best of all the fights but his single loss. I have read some of the newspaper accounts recently posted here that suggest otherwise.

I'm not worried about fluid, rather effective. He was throwing some fast, multiple punch combinations. I will leave fluid up to dancing judges.

Floyd Patterson is about the fastest HW I have ever seen.

Did black fighters really make up 50% of the competition at this time? Even though they represented around 10% of the overall population? Loughran was a hell of a fighter buy Gene KD'd him and the fight was considered fairly even afterward. Again, it is generally viewed as a NDL.

Sharkey could be very, very good on a given night. Still, I don't see him beating Tunney. I see him getting pasted and disheartened. And I don't think Max finds a home for his right with Tunney's footwork, sense of space and reflexes. Furthermore, according to sparring partners and management, Tunney was improving right up till the end. I certainly do not think we saw his peak at HW.

 

Tunney was one of the smartest fighters who ever lived!!!

 

Tunney is rated where he is because he fought most of his career at light heavyweight. He may have had only a few KO's less than Dempsey but he was no where near the puncher at heavyweight that Dempsey was. However at light heavy, Tunney was a big puncher ... as far as a fighter he was terrific ...again at light heavyweight he was extremely fast, very strong, had a hell of a chin, was extremely well conditioned, very fast leg speed, extremely bright ..with a learning curve he would have been terrific in any era.

 

Aside from SuzieQ49, post #78, I don't think anyone has had any concrete criticisms of Tunney's technique; just 'It was so long ago, how could it be good as todays', or 'he's only good in flashes'. OK, well, the Youtubes have been posted, can you say 'He sucks at 'x' minutes, 'y' seconds of so-and-so fight, and here's what he's doing that sucks?'

 

Patterson could be the fastest heavyweight ever and charles and Walcott were no slouches either even if he ewasnt as fast as them dosent mean he is slow

 

Marciano looked like horse ass yet you idolize him-- what gives? I welcome anyone to make the absurd statement that Marciano was a better boxer, athlete or more skilled than Dempsey, yet you penalize Dempsey and those of his era for being primitive? Marciano was a ****ing caveman yet he beat everyone. In some of the fights I believe Janitor posted, Tunney looked like hot ****. If you disagree, cool, but you're not convincing anyone. We see different things. As for his boxing, look at how he handled Dempsey. Dempsey looked a heck of a lot more sophisticated and physical than most modern contemporaries and was a dangerous swarmer with thunder still, yet Tunney kept him away and held his own in close fighting.

Win.

Great post.

Yeah, Patterson was impossibly fast.

I think Tunney needs his hands high to avoid getting tagged by Schmeling, personally. Until then he'd probably outbox him pretty strongly.

If Tunney had come along in the 60's or later I bet he'd have been a thing of beauty.

 

Tunney scored 48 kos in 80 fights for a near 56% ko percentage, pretty impressive "arm punches",imo.

 

Just wanted to put a face on the guy who had 'bad punching technique' and was 'mediocre' on film so people can look at him while saying BS like that.

 

Tunney looked like that after he retired with 80 fights under his belt .Strange ,such a mediocre fighter was unmarked after all those battles.:huh

 

Pretty strange indeed... Could it be possible he was not that mediocre after all ?
I don't know...

 

Wow i have just seen my initial post in this thread, and realised how old this thread is! That was one of the first posts i made, crazy!

 

Seriously, where did this "Black fighters make up 50% of the competition" **** come from?? You only need to look at the rankings to see the vast majority of contenders at LHW and HW at this time weren't black.

On top of that, Tunney legitimately tried to make a fight with Harry Wills for over a year, and Wills was probably the most highly rated black fighter on the planet at that time. It was Wills who chose not to fight Tunney, not vice versa.