Harry Wills v Gene Tunney15rds?

Please Tunney fought plenty of Jabbers, and quality jabbers at that. A plodding poking jab would have been easy meat for him.

Hope this clears up any questions you might have had.[/quote]

"A plodding poking jab"

A ringside observer mentioned it worked well against Langford.

Actually, it scores well against Madden in the about 2 minutes of film we have.

"plenty of jabbers, and quality jabbers"

All under six feet, as far as I can tell, without the reach Wills' had.

Wills' jab would be like nothing Tunney faced and reaching him past it might be a problem.

Also, this thread is prime for prime. The films are of a prime Tunney. The Wills' film clips are potentially 7 to 8 years past his best. Wills prime was probably when Willard was champion.

 

So what you are saying is, why watch all those old clips, it's a waste of time, cos it's not reality. Yeah, sounds about right. Folks you heard it here, don't waste your time watching those old clips, cos you're not seeing what you are watching, got it thanks.

 

I think you make a good point here that Wills was really from an earlier era. Tunney seems modern. Styles were changing rapidly because of fights being generally shorter.

I think if both of them came along at the same time, let's say the sixties, Wills with more modern training would be far more successful at heavyweight (in some ways he was in his own era). Tunney would likely be the light-heavyweight champion, but beating the big guys of that era might have been asking too much.

 

No. Only the speed is not real. It can vary up to 25% or more depending on the cranking speed.

I don't think this is all that difficult to understand. Was Charlie Chaplin real? Yes. He was a man who was living and who looked like he does on film. In his old films did he move at the speed he is moving on film? No. His walk is often speeded up by under-cranking.

For anyone who reads this with an open mind--film is just a series of still photographs run through a projector to produce the illusion of motion. A stop-motion dinosaur never moved at all, but it does on film. How fast the motion will be depends on how many frames per second it was filmed at and then how fast these frames are projected. If the film is filmed at 16 pfs and projected at 20 fps, the movement is 25% faster than real life. If you reverse the ratio, it is 25% slower than real life. As these films are hand-cranked, nailing down the speed is guesswork.

Now, no doubt Tunney and Dempsey were faster than Wills in my judgment. How much? That is harder to tell, especially with such limited footage of Wills. And how fast Wills was in 1924 doesn't necessarily tell us how fast he was in 1917.

 

"Dempsey could do the same but with way more power."

We are talking about Tunney on this thread. Tunney was no where near the puncher Dempsey was, and never fought, let alone stopped, a man nearly as big as Wills.

"Wills throw on the outside it's mostly swings and misses"

I saw him scoring with both left jabs and left hooks more often than he missed. He was easily handling Madden.

 

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What kind of jab was it? Was it a snapping jab? Or a ramrod stiff arm jab? A snapping jab is not a jab that snaps your head back.

 

Ed, size and reach alone don't win fights. Fighters in training learn to slip a jab and counter. If they are fighting HW's they learn what they have to beat a bigger, stronger guy. They would spar with bigger guys all the time. Fighters train to fight a specific guy and style, they work out a strategy. They train to capitalize on the opponents weaknesses and work on their strengths to defeat the opponent.
In training for a major fight the trainers bring in guys, that have about the same attributes as the guy they are fighting. Did you know that Dempsey was thinking of bringing in Wills as a sparring partner for the Willard fight?

 

Dempsey1234

Run out of time for today, but I'll be back on this and the Gibbons threads.

 

"Was it a snapping jab? Or a ramrod still arm jab?"

Both depending on what Madden was doing. He also scores with long left hooks when Madden is at a distance.

 

[quote=edward morbius;

Ed, try to understand jabbing a 5'7 1/2, guy when you are 6'2, is no big accomplishment, you guys rely too much on articles and reports. Reports also have Wills moving like a LW, he didn't, but somebody wrote it as factual.

Have to ask you what happened a month later? You were right Langford could still fight at the time.

 

Do you know what a snapping jab is? In both fights,Firpo and Madden he had a rudimentary jab, his main fighting tools was his size, his strength, a good uppercut, his left hook was a swing, his right was not delivered well mostly swings. He had over a hundred fights where were his skills. He seemed to have no plan except to go in there and try to overpower his opponents.