Info on Mysterious Billy Smith

Very mysterious...

 

Billy's clear win over Walcott in 1898 makes this claim seem reasonable.

 

i knew Jersey Joe was old when he won the title but … I kid, I kid.

 

Borrowing my own post from a previous thread on Mysterious Billy:

The late, great AJ Liebling quoted Doc Kearns (who fought Billy Smith) on him:

“He was always doing something mysterious. Like he would step on your foot, and when you looked down he would bite you in the ear. If I had a fighter like that nowadays, I could lick heavyweights. But we are living in a bad period all around.”

 

He certainly had an aptitude for getting DQ’d so I figure that’s a likely outcome.

 

Fine fighter, but he doesn't have a credible claim to be the greatest WW in his own era, let alone until SRR, imo. Both Ryan and BJW clearly got the better of him in extended series. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, he won 1 out of 12 against those two ATG's.

 

Aw. he wasn't bad, if you read contemporary fight reports he was competitive with Ryan, Walcott and McCoy, three greats. The best before SRR, well now thats a stretch.

 

There was a lot more going on in the welterweight division back then, than meets the eye today.

For example George Green is a fighter with a surviving record of 15-10-2.

His main claim to fame today is having lost to Smith, Walcott and Ryan, but when you read the contemporary newspapers, he is very highly respected as a fighter.

This was an era inhabited by three titans, and it was the misfortune of fighters like Green, to share an era with these men.

 

If they were 3 titans, 2 did much better in fights against each other, than the other did.

 

A well researched book on this period of welterweight history, would be a major eye opener.

 

Stift ,McKeever, Green, West, Byers etc were also decent fighters but overall Ryan, Walcott(and McCoy) were better than Smith.

 

On the face of it yes, and that is my conclusion, but the matter merits a closer look.

Smith won the title at the age of 21, nearly a decade before Walcott obtained it, despite their dates of birth being fairly close together.

He lost the title to Tommy Ryan, and helped himself to it again, after Ryan grew too big for the division.

Ryan was a very powerful middleweight champion, so he likely just got too big for Smith.

There are a lot of draws happening between the three kings, and we might want to know a bit more about what was happening there.