JEFFRIES V CHUVALO?

Three years!!!Get out of here!

 

If Oscar Bonavena can beat Chuvalo, I pick Jeffries too.

 

'blown up middleweights"

You mean like Jimmy Ellis who easily defeated Chuvalo.

 

Ellis was 191lbs for Chuvalo, he hadn't seen middle weight for 6 years. If he had fought Jeffries he would have been the second biggest class man he fought,as champion.

 

Well, which one of these men Jeffries fought as champion easily beat Jeffries?

I saw Ellis on TV fighting at middle at 24 years old. Whatever, he qualifies as much as anyone as a puffed up middle, and his success points to the huge gap between Ali and Frazier and the rest of the heavyweight division in the 1960's.

 

Some points

Foreman and Frazier--stopped Chuvalo in 3 & 4 rounds respectively. In contrast, Jeff going into the 15th with Johnson might be viewed as a better effort, and Jeff was 35 and had laid off six years.

big wins--Williams was a memory. Certainly nothing more than Jeff beating the 1903 Corbett. Jones was a puffed up light-heavy, but probably Chuvalo's most impressive win. Durelle was another puffed up light-heavy. Quarry was probably the least impressive big win I have ever seen and I've been watching boxing for about 65 years.

I agree with the point about boxing improving greatly over the two generations separating these men, but Chuvalo was an ordinary contender (other than being tough to stop). I think someone like Billy Miske or Lee Savold would probably have beaten Chuvalo more often than not. Jeff completely dominated his era until the rise of Johnson. But I wouldn't favor Chuvalo over Johnson by any means.

 

Nope Fitz was a puffed up middleweight as was Choynski. Eliis was a full fledged heavyweight and had been for 6 years.

Chuvalo beat DeJohn,Ramos,Besmanoff too , I'd pick them to beat Munroe,and Finnegan.

 

Jeffries did not have to defend his title against Corbett in 1900, but who else was there?

He had just beaten Fitzsimmons and Sharkey, who were the two best heavyweights in the world, within a space of a few months.

Corbett as a former champion was a name fighter, so the match made sense at the time.

Now regardless of Corbett's credentials going into the first fight, he deserved a rematch based on his performance in that fight.

But actually most of the great heavyweights have had problems with small defensive specialists at one time or another.

This is a kind of fighter that is always going to be difficult to beat, unless you have a prohibitive reach advantage.

That is the problem though, you take a narrow view of the evidence.

You look at Boxrec, and the reported weights of the fighters, and assume that this tells you everything.

You cant understand a fighter like Jeffries, without going back to the original source material.

But we are not looking at relative circumstances here.

You have hand picked two cases where the bigger heavyweight dominated the smaller heavyweight, while I could just as easily pick counterexamples that showed the opposite i.e. Louis Conn or Klitschko Byrd.

You are also not factoring in the matter that Jeffries was thrown in against the best in the division over a shorter time frame than any heavyweight champion apart from Louis, who had a lot more fights over the same period.

 

Who else who was white?
Corbett didn't deserve a rematch 3 years later,there were several more deserving challengers ,they just didn't happen to be white.
Jeffries had 7 defences three of which were farces.

 

So who would you have had Jeffries fight in 1900, instead of Corbett?

There was Kid McCoy I suppose.

Jeffries had to give Corbett a second title shot based on the result of the first fight, and his subsequent win over McCoy.

 

Not in 1903 he didn't , by then Corbett was a joke.If he wanted to set the record straight he should have re-matched Corbett at the end of 1900 or in 1901 instead of fighting Kennedy and Griffin.

 

Think about the timeline.

Jeffries took 14 month out after the Corbett fight due to injury, and there was serious doubt whether he would return to the ring.

He takes a couple of tune up fights after this period, which is fair enough under the circumstances.

His most pressing priority when he is ready for a serious title defense at the end of 1901 is to rematch Fitzsimmons, based on his incredible recent run of form, and Ruhlin is probably second in line.

The order of his priorities is effectively:

1. Fitzsimmons
2. Ruhlin
3. Corbett

 

Jeffries should have re-matched Fitz after Fitz ko'd both Sharkey and Ruhlin in the space of two weeks,instead he did so two years later.You have a pocketful of excuses for whatever Jeffries did ,but you cant convince me that fighting Corbett in1903 was justifiable.

 

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You have hand picked two cases where the bigger heavyweight dominated the smaller heavyweight, while I could just as easily pick counterexamples that showed the opposite i.e. Louis Conn or Klitschko Byrd.

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You are also not factoring in the matter that Jeffries was thrown in against the best in the division over a shorter time frame than any heavyweight champion apart from Louis, who had a lot more fights over the same period.[/QUOTE]

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