Jack Johnson's Power ???

Strongly agreed. I always thought that if Johnson's style was closer to a Joe Gans or Joe Walcott on the black dynamite spectrum he would have been a spectacular boxer-puncher.

 

I believe he held back in a lot of his fights and thus we never saw his true power aside from the Ketchel KO. Usually he would settle for softening his opponents up effortlessly before putting them away. Even in the Ketchel fight you have to feel that he could have KO'd the middleweight a lot sooner. Ketchel looked ready to crumble the moment Johnson put some pressure on him in the second round, and Johnson basically had to hold him up so Ketchel could stay on his feet and survive.

 

Perhaps harder than Ali, but not harder than Holmes.......:-( Close / same...:deal

SR.BILL:hat

 

Various paralels have been suggested so far e.g. Ali, Holmes etc.

A better model might be Jersey Joe Walcott.

Another cautious defensive fighter, who could turn tiger in a second, and potentialy change the dynamic of the fight with a single combination.

 

I too, was thinking of Joe Wally when I picked Holmes being closer to Johnson's power.....
bbb

MR.BILL:rasta

 

I think we have established that Johnson had excellent power for a middleweight.

I would say his power is that of a poor man's Bruce Seldon.

 

I think this thread has inadvertently stumbled on a pretty interesting topic. Who hits harder out of Ali, Walcott, Holmes and Johnson. I would have thought Holmes was probably on the bottom of this group, but obviously it seems i may be in the minority?

 

Walcott seems a clear pick for number 1.

 

He has enough pop in his punch make most boxers respect his power. His right uppercut was a great punch but i woudl still say both Ali and Holmes hit harder, although his right uppercut is probably on or just above their average punching power.

 

Ketchell was not just some middleweight who was getting his head handed to him when ever he stepped up to heavyweight.

He could probably have beaten 90% of the white hopes out there.

 

Wasn't he partying pretty hard by then? Chasing the dragon, also?

 

I am not sure when the dragon took hold of him, but it certainly had him when he retired.

Either way he was still able to demolish some of the white hopes.

 

Middle Weight or Super Middle weight? Johnson was not a big time hitter. Most lineal champions before and after him hit harder than he did.

 

The short answer to the question is that Jack Johnson DID hit hard enough to knock good fighters flat because he did this.

His criteria was to always pull the legs off a spider. stopping the other guy from working, toy with him, take his time hit him only hard enough so that he could do it again -and don’t miss.

If you watch his technique he knew what he was doing and was very strong. He hit hard but maybe because of the gloves or maybe because it was still so close to the "fight to the finish era" he didn’t look to do it all with one punch unless he lost his temper. mostly he liked to use all his tricks and grandstand but the punch was there. He wasn’t looking to exchange blows at all. he had a lot in common with the klit brothers in that respect. 90% of the time he was holding back.

The gloves were so small then you could swell up a guys face pretty good without putting too much steam on a punch. shovel hooks were literally inside arm punches but they did damage and hurt like the dickens when you used the other guys momentum. Johnson would push down on a fighters forearm forcing him to push up against his clinch. jack would release his grip and use the other guys upward momentum to clip him in the face with these inside hooks.