He has outstanding record with a lot of good wins against LHWs and HWs. Do you think that he's underrated compared to other masters of his division like Tunney, Moore, Charles or Spinks?
There was a thread recently which showed ATG Light Heavy rankings throughout the years. O'brien went from being high top 10, to not on the list at all, out of around 25 people. So I'd say yes, generally.
He has wins over: Jack Blackburn Bob Fitzsimmons Young Peter Jackson Tommy Burns Jack Twin Sullivan Joe Choynski Marvin Hart Peter Maher Joe Walcott Charlie McKeever And other greats I don't even know or remember.
I find it hard to rate O'Brien simply because of the stench which surrounds so many of his fights. He published a signed newspaper statement stating outright that his fight against Fitzsimmons in which he'd won the Light-Heavy title (as well as a lot of his other bouts to that point) was a sham, after all. I've seen some say that this was just a mark of O'Brien's offbeat sense of humour, but I'm at a loss to see why he'd pick that as his way of showing what a card he was. Even if we take the Fitzsimmons win as legitimate, Bob was 42 years old by that point, so I'd take that win in general with a pinch of salt. He essentially admitted that the Burns fights (the first one for sure in any case) were similarly faked, albeit on that issue there's slightly more evidence to suggest he might have been trying to destroy Burns' reputation due to animosity between the pair. Either way, there's enough doubt for me to generally refrain from placing him, albeit it's interesting that the considerable work he did (if you give him the benefit of the doubt) at the lower weights tends not to get mentioned that much.
Absolutely. Top 10 light heavyweight staple. P4P top 100 staple. Yet most people don't even know him now
Quite possibly, not the easiest fighter to assess, a long record with a lot of ups and down, and question marks about fixes. I think he is better seen as a Middleweight than a Light Heavyweight.
From what I’ve read, he’s one of the fighters whose esteem suffered the most when future generations actually got to see film of his fights (via Jacobs).
As far as I know, his only fight that we have on the tape is against Burns. I wouldn't judge him based on such a small sample. I can't say much about him because the footage we have shows him running and not fighting that much. He couldn't do that in all fights, because he has decent amout of stoppages on his resume.
This is what I was referring to, btw: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...acobs-films-views-on-old-heavyweights.623760/ https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/1966-sports-illustrated-article-on-jim-jacobs.585395/
McKeever was a great? Sullivan was a middleweight,Blackburn a lightweight , Walcott a welterweight. O Brien never beat Burns, and he only beat an old Fitzsimmons.
