Is James J. Jeffries the most underrated HW champ?

He was the best heavyweight champion of all time when he retired. Beat 2 former champions and made a few title defences along the way. Should‘ve stayed retired.

 

Probably. We don't really have a body of footage to be able to evaluate him properly

 

Underrated? Yeah probably, but as BCS8 pointed out there's not a lot of footage so much like Greb you have to go off of his resume.

 

Yes - with no footage except some training footage and the post retirement Johnson Debacle it’s very hard to evaluate him properly. However based on resume he could conceivably still make all time top 10 lists.
He defeated the two preceding lineal champions before him 2x apiece. He also defeated his number 1 contender 2x. He crossed the color line before becoming champion beating some quality black opponents. Retired undefeated. His resume is quite strong.

 

He's up there. He used to be disgustingly overrated until about the 70s, before then many lists had him as the greatest heavyweight of all time. Nowadays most seem to remember him for the Johnson fight, but even among hardcore fans Jeffries still kinda gets shat on.

I think he is pretty underrated, but I'd say someone like Sullivan even moreso.

 

At the time he was the HW GOAT. He was the first truly undisputed HW champ, was undefeated and had beaten most of the 1890s greats. Prior to his rise the HW picture had been a mess and he put it together. The reason he is underrated today is the era he fought in. It was the sports wild west days. Jeffries was born in 1875 and was born before the HW title of the world was. And most of his opponents were older then he was.

If we take his career at face value most of the big names on his resume he beat were considerably older or smaller than him. Tom Sharkey who was 5 ft 8 gave him problems twice. On the other side of the spectrum Armstrong who was the largest top HW of the day almost beat him too. Corbett and Fitzsimmons had success against him too. We don't have scorecards to tell us how close he was to losing any of these fights but I don't see him being competitive with top HWs of future eras. With the likely exception of Burns and Johnsons era. But even 10 years later hard to see Jeffries dealing with a Fred Fulton.

 

Who didn't Jeffries deck in his prime years? He dropped them all, even when he fought draws or won decisions. Mostly, he won by knockout. And he didn't pad his record with a lot of nobodies. He fought 20-round bouts from the start with real fighters, wearing 5-ounce gloves. No one put him down and he put them all down. Anyone in history without excellent defense, chin, and conditioning would be in trouble with him, particularly the version of Jeffries that existed from 1899 - 1904.

 

On my all-time Heavyweight List I still have him at #10.

 

He’s probably the hardest guy to evaluate at Heavy. Little footage, a record you can both laud & pick apart to a degree, not too many fights, excellent characteristics with some obvious flaws. It’s really hard to say but I would have loved to see him in there with a Marciano or Frazier.

 

From everything I've ever heard he had to sustain terrible beatings in some of his wins before rallying, including against Fitz who was a great fighter but not a heavyweight by a long shot. Take him out of his time period and he likely gets stopped on accumulation or drops wide decisions over 15/12.

 

It is pretty hard to gauge how good Jeffries was defensively, because he seemed to prefer taking the easier route in the vast majority of his fights and try to impose his size (pause) on his smaller opponents. It seems like Jeffries was particularly poor at rushing moving targets though, judging from the descriptions of his fights.

However, even with the footage of Jeffries against Ruhlin and in his training footage his defense and overall patience is solid. Apparently he got even more technical after Fitzsimmons started training him in 1902-03.

Still an anomaly by any means, same with John L.

 

If he was half as good as people thought in prime, then he is somewhat under rated today.

 

Some HLs with Ruhlin and Tom Sharkey, training footage and of course the Johnson fight when he was past it Hard to judge him in a head to head sense, but he was the best of his era before the rise of Johnson.

 

Well there were more people who had actually seen him in those days so we can't discount their testimony. As more and more of the older folks die, their aura and reputation goes with them.