Jeff or Johnson-best comp as champ?

the first Corbett defense is not a bad defense. Corbett was doing a very good job of handling Fitz for almost all the fight and got caught. Corbett may have also been the victim of his own long count...with Fitz holding on to Corbetts legs delaying the ref from counting.
Fitz should have probably have given Corbett a rematch, Corbett did dawg him for one. But he was making too much cash from his performances.
I don't think that fighting a guy who was champ three years ago, was winning pretty solidly against the champion you beat, lost to the number one challanger (whom you beat twice) is that bad of a defense.
Besides, it was teacher vs. student there.

Incidentially, Corbett was to have been Fitz's first defense. A rematch, but he went with Jeffries, because he thought Jeffries would be easier.

 

2: If he was dominant outside of that, probably in the top10. But definitly not top3.

3: This is true... but at the same time, i think we should go by what happened and not by what could have happened. We can conclude that looking back, historically seen, Jeffries was "lucky" to have only 1 deserving black challenger around. If that makes sense.

Maybe i am sounding a bit like a bore re-iterating that point about Mcvey/Langford/Jeannete, but i brought up the comparison with the 70's because no one here would rank Bonevena in their top3 if he avoided Foreman, Ali and Frazier for so many years. Yet many rank Johnson in the top3.
By the way, if you want to say that Bonavena did beat Frazier/Ali/Foreman before winning the title, then fair enough, but you should probably say that he beat them in the amatures (like Lewis/Bowe only the other way around). Because that's how experienced Jeannete and Mcvey were really. Langford did have quite some experience of course but he was a middleweight.

 

yeah, but Sharkey was at his absolute best at that time, the number one guy. Plus, Corbett was in a little bit of a slump, I believe, by legit personal reasons. That sounds like an excuse, in his case, or in any other fighters case under the same circumstances, I think its legit.

The Corbett that met Jeffries was probably the best Corbett that there had been since when he fought Sullivan and Jackson. He was bigger, stronger, and while he was not quite as fast, he had been in training condition for about a year.

Corbett also absolutely schooled contender Gus Ruhlin in training prior to the Jeffries match on a daily basis. If it had been modern day, they would have just met in the ring, Corbett outpoints Ruhlin, gets a shot.

I see what you're saying though. Jeffries and Corbett shared kind of the same management team. Corbett getting a shot at the title was kind of laughed at by Brady (Jeffries manager). Initially, it was kind of a favor.
But that doesn't change the fact that Corbett was in solid form and may have put up his best fight ever in Jeffries I.

 

get outta here, jokster!

 

There are also a lot of people who bet with their hearts and not with their minds. There is also going to be a lot of white people who are not going to want to put money down on the black guy, and many black guys who can't bet and if they dropped money on Johnson, they might get beat up, or worse. Also, many only have the Jeffries of six years ago to go by. He couldn't really decline that much could he? Well sure he could.

Jeffries, in reality, was not doing well in his sparing. He had huge amounts of ring rust. Sam Berger and Bob Armstrong were his sparing partners and even though Armstrong was not a worthy opponent years before, he was having to hold back. And he wouldn't have even stepped in the ring with Jeffries a few years before this. They both knew that Jeff had slipped big time.

Now we know, thanks to Foreman, thanks to Holmes, that if you are going to take large layoffs, you simply must have a couple of fights and almost a second career. You don't jump in there with one of the best fighters who ever lived and not have any kind of professional tune ups, or at the very least, be ruling your sparring partners a la Corbett and Ruhlin.

And losing that much weight in a relatively short period is not healthy and you can lose real strength doing this. I do not know if boxers of yesteryear
or now are better, but I will tell you this, nutrionalists and sports doctors have certainly learned a thing or two.

 

Ok, how is this, Jeffries is 6-0, with 4 KO's in title defenses vs Hall of fame fighters.

Johnson has three wins, two losses, and a draw where was edged by a middle weight vs his hall of fame fights in title defense.

While Ruhlin and Munroe were not in the hall of fame, they were much better than the Flynn's, and Ross's of boxing.

This is a better argument using your own templete.

 

In August of the prior year, Jeffries was around 280-300 lbs. Jeffries signed to fight Johnson in 1909 around the end of October. He weighed about the same then. Jeffries was losing weight over, at most, a nine month period, but did not lose that much weight until training camp was established in April...fight three months away when he really started to dedicate (he was doing a theatre tour before then).

25 and still learning? The Corbett that Jeffries fought was far and away a much better fighter than the Jeffries that Johnson fought. We are talking six years, a hundred lbs to lose, no dominating sparing, let alone tune up fights, mentally he wasn't in it...etc...etc...etc.