Jack Johnson vs. Kovalev and Tua

Kovalev is UNPROVEN AS A LIGHT Heavyweight. He is not doing anything with a proven ATG hwt champion.

Tua is easily outboxed by an ATG boxer like Johnson.

BTW Johnson was known for his ability to feint and BLOCK.

 

Kovalev is larger than most of Johnson's greatest challengers. Kovalev is the same size as Johnson was for 95% of Johnson's career. Jack had a whopping half inch in height and inch in reach advantage. Weight-wise, Kovalev walks around at 190-195.

Trying to "block" Tua left hooks all night is not a strategy I recommend.

 

Don't recall the exact weight but about 205 for the Jeffries fight.

 

So, a 5 year inactive Jeffries who had to lose 70 pounds to appear in shape, who took no warm up bouts, who was so poor in sparring prior to the match that Stanley Ketchel threatened to KO him during ring introduction in order to save the pride of the white race, a fighter who according the Smith believed the fight to be thrown in his favor until a couple days before... that heavyweight is the best that Johnson beat in his career?

I would consider that damning praise to Johnson's legacy and an absolute relinquishment of any claim to Top Ten status.

 

Not true, because he was still considered the greatest HW Champion of all time. Regardless of revisionism now, at the time he was scene as the best. He got back into fighting shape over the course of a sustained period of time. He wasn't doing some crazy weight cutting in a 2 month period. While he took no tune-up fights, he was sparring all over the place, and regularly. I agree Jeffries had some things going against him in that fight. No question. That not withstanding, Jeffries always found a way to win. Even when he was getting battered by Fitz, he still found a way to win. He had never ever been done in his career prior to Johnson. His chin didn't all of a sudden fail him because he hadn't fought in 5 years. If anything, he preserved it from more beatings and weakening. He didn't all of a sudden lose his strength as he got older, in fact, he was likely every bit as strong. Yet, Johnson controlled him throughout with his own strength.

For me the reality is, Johnson simply was better than Jeffries. Whether it be a prime Jeffries or that Jeffries, imo a prime Johnson always wins. We saw enough thing in their actual fight to make that a pretty fair assessment.

 

Whether Jeffries was the best opponent or not is one question. Whether it had the biggest impact upon his legacy or not is another.

Would that version of Jeffries have beaten the previous opponents Johnson faced? No idea. But would that fight be crowned FOTC and be the legacy defining fight of his career, absolutely.

For the fight that he will always be remembered, I have no doubt he turned up in his best shape.

 

We aren't discussing legacy but performance as it is measured against a high degree of opponent.

You can assume that that was his best weight and shape, but does that mean he was not in his best shape for all his previous fights? He was not a young man himself. It's not like he suddenly matured into a higher, more fit weight in his early 30's.

I find your logic less than compelling.

 

Whether it`s Jeffries coming out of retirement, or Ali fighting with the court system or Dempsey going to hollywood, or even Tyson serving time, no heavyweight fighter who takes more than a year or two off ever comes back the same. As such, victories over these fighters, at least to me, have very little meaning.

 

It is a shame in a way that Jeffries only fought Johnson in this ill-fated comeback.

While he was undoubtedly well past his best a fight against somebody like Al Kaufman, would have given Johnsons win more context.

 

That's fine because I'm not compelling you to buy into my line of thinking, we've probably debated this same point for half a decade now

I must believe in a career defining fight he would be in his absolute peak shape.

 

Agree.

 

Like Willard beating Floyd Johnson.

 

Yes a bit like that.

The Floyd Johnson fight proves that Willard was still world class, even long after he met Dempsey, and that constrains the value of the fight.

There was talk about matching Jeffries with Luther McCarthy after the Johnson figth, but nothing ever came of it.

 

Does anybody have any good highlights of Jack Joshnon?

Id love to see what he was like.

 

We can get a very clear idea of what any heavyweight champion from Max Schmeling onwards was.

Before that they become a vague concept that requires a number of assumptions, and the situation gets worse the further back you go.