If Bob Fitzsimmons moved his hands like this, would he be mocked?

I've seen it questioned on here on many threads.

 

Well those whom do reveal more about themselves than Joe Louis

 

Yeah but fighters like Buddy Baer and Abe Simon get the same criticisms although to my knowledge only their fights vs Louis is on film.

 

Yep.

 

I see people talk about Fitz's ineffective leaning back style, but I don't think it's really different to what some modern fighters do, especially against bigger opponents.

Chris Byrd leaned back quite a lot

This content is protected

This content is protected

You can notuce Saunders putting weight on the back foot too

This content is protected

 

If you didnt attach the revered name of "Fitzsimmons" to the footage of him and just showed people how he actually fought he would be mocked. Fitzsimmons looks like **** in 99.9% of the footage of him barring one punch which rendered Corbett (who doesnt look great either) unable to continue. I know its sacrilege to say but these guys were fighting a very archaic era in which there were very few full time professional fighters. The level of talent just wasnt there even at the top.

 

Steve, when would you say the average talent across the top ten in divisions peaked? And when would you say the average champion across boxing divisions peaked?

 

Sometimes good fighters just look ****. Imagine if we got Frampton Vs Quigg from this era, especially recorded like this. Joe Gans was from a similar time, and the footage of him is much better looking.

It's two very awkward fighters, and their in a finish fight, so they're not trying to win judges, they're trying to wear each other down, or land a massive punch.

As for the depth of talent, how do we know? The records from this time are really incomplete. I also think Fitz's longevity is pretty strong evidence against things improving, atleast soon after. I think the talent was obviously there considering Corbett's incredible speed, and Fitz's incredible power, I think it's more the schooling that's in question, but there was already a well establed base of knowledge of boxing atleast going back over a century at this point. If you look at what Jem Mace did, he could obviously fight, and the people he taught, when you look at what they did, could obviously fight.

It's funny that you say it's sacrilege, honestly your opinion seems to be the far more popular one.

 

Blackburn BEGAN boxing 15 years after Fitzsimmons turned pro and had the benefit of all of that prior knowledge PLUS another THIRTY FIVE years of the refinement of boxing technique under his belt when he BEGAN training Louis. If you really want to sit here and tell me that you can look at footage of Fitzsimmons and tell me that technique didnt improve and pass him by as the years went on then you either dont know what you are looking at or your being disingenuous to protect the reputation of a boxing great. You cant tell me that Fitzsimmons looks like a pimple on the ass of guys like Mike Gibbons or Jeff Smith 20 years later, or Ray Robinson or even Jake LaMotta 50 years later. Certainly nowhere near the level of technical ability that Joe Louis, who was, in my opinion the most technically proficient HW ever.

 

I think boxing skill across the whole of the sport peaked in the 1950s and 60s, very slowly declined through the 70s (largely because so many tried to borrow from Ali when Ali wasnt that technically proficient) and then has gone on a deep dive the past 20 years.

Im not sure what you are asking when you ask when the average champion peaked? If you are referring to skill then I would say again on average in the 50s and 60s. With outliers like Louis being the best technically at HW peaking in the late 30s or early 40s.

 

I think Fitz longevity is a product of the lack of competition. You can debate that but you cant debate that full time professional fighters with a large body of work and alot of experience were a rarity in Fitz' era. Thats simply a fact. Guys like Fitz, Corbett, Sullivan etc were fighting the local bully and the local blacksmith to see who was tough. The number of professional fighters who worked at their craft day in and day out and refined their skills against equally well trained opposition is a rarity in that era and that is to say nothing of great trainers with a body of experience behind them. In short, in that era the sport as we know it was literally in its infancy and it shows. The talent pool was more of a puddle. You cant even dispute that. It wasnt until the teens and later the twenties when you had the sport explode into what we would recognize today and so its no mystery why all of sudden in those eras you start seeing guys fighting in a more refined and professional style. If you saw a guy fighting like Jim Corbett or Fitzsimmons today youd laugh him out of the ring or think he learned to fight from his sister.

 

At which point did you start to get decent competition?

They had fights like that, but they weren't the fights that mattered, that was just a way to make money. Off the top of my head FItz beat Billy McCarthy, Jack Dempsey, Jim Hall, Dan Creedon, Peter Maher (twice), Joe Choynski, Corbett, Ruhlin, Sharkey, Gardner, and Jack O'Brein all of whom were considered amoung the best at thier weight.

How do you know the level of competition with such incomplete records? There are ways you could asses it, but you have to actually back this up.

Given you have some of the biggest freaks of nature in boxing though, it kinda suggests the overall talent pool can't have been that shallow, thinking statistically.

I've never been that convinced the eye test is a great way to evaluate a fighter, a good fighter makes their opponent look bad, and a bad fighter makes their opponent look good. And like I said, modern boxers still seem able to lean back and keep hands low effectively.

 

As with anything on an evolutionary scale you dont get a single point that we went from archaic to modern. Its a long slow process encompassing decades not a single moment in time.

Lets take your list of fights that you consider among Bob Fitzsimmons best opponents. Your contention is that their records are incomplete. Ok, lets say that might be true. But incomplete by how much? Are we missing 3 fights or 300? Because I could there is a very good reason these records are incomplete and it serves my point not yours: its very likely these records are incomplete because they were informal, unimportant fights staged in the back of a saloon against a local street tough and thats why there is little to no documentation on it. In fact, the odds are that Im closer to the truth than your assumption that someone like Billy McCarthy is missing 100 fights against 100 Muhammad Alis by the time he fought Fitzsimmons despite his extent record showing him fighting one single opponent with more than 11 fights to his name before facing fitzsimmons and having gone more than 6 rds 7 times out of 25 fights and having failed to win 7 of those 25, and many of those recorded fights are little more than rumor. My point is the fights against well known men who considered worthy of the cost of ink got covered.

I can keep going scroll down Jack Dempseys record and see how many of his fights came against nobodys with no fights. You can argue that all of these men, and there are a lot of them, also have incomplete records, amd you might be right, but to suggest their records are so incomplete that they were talented well trained fighters with significant body of work that somehow stepped out of the mists of time to fight Dempsey, lost, then receded back into the mists of time never to be heard from again despite their supposed ability, strains credibility. In reality what was happening was you had fighters here and there like Fitz and Corbett who put everything into boxing and because of the time they invested and their god given ability they stood out from the vast VAST majority of men at the time you see on their records who at best were hobbyists and more often than not were men employed full time elsewhere in trades who did little training as we recognize today, had no backing and/or support, and who just fancied themselves as or had reputations as unusually tough or strong. Thats it. And you can go down the records and see this. Which shouldnt be surprising considering ALLorganized professional sports were fledgling at this time. Like I said, its not even really a debateable point.

I think its hilarious that you dont trust your own eyes because frankly you can look at the footage of men like Fitz, Corbett, Ruhlin, etc and see that while there were seeds of what would be developed and perfected later these guys were crude and would be laughed out of most arenas a half century later to say nothing of being taken apart by their descendents in the sport.

 

That's fair, but what is the period of tranisiton?

The thing is it's not so much the missing fights of Fitzsimmons or even McCarthy, it's the guys they fought and the guys they fought etc. etc. That's what you need to assess depth.

Like I've said you have to back this up, reporting was terrible around Dempsey's time, and there's the added complexity of bareknuckle fights. We do know his opponents included some of the best boxers of his era such as Billy McCarthy and Dominick McCaffery.

The footage is potato quality, I've not even seen any legit footage of Ruhlin. There are plenty of later examples of awkward or odd looking but effective fighters, which is the point of this thread