JEFFRIES V CHUVALO?

"his era was far superior to Jeffries"

And in fairness he wasn't all that good in his era, while Jeff was dominant in his.

Of the men you named, Chuvalo didn't beat any of them except Quarry, and that was just the weirdest ending I have ever seen. He also lost to Howard King, Pat McMurtry, Pete Rademacher, Bob Cleroux (2 of 3), Joe Erskine, and Eduardo Corletti.

I agree that the 1960's were a lot better than Jeff's era, but "golden era"? The top nine were Ali & Frazier and the seven dwarfs. Ellis winning that tournament exposed the division as very thin.

 

Then you shouldn't have included Janitor's quote.

 

When Munroe fought Johnson the sports writers said he didn't even know how to punch properly.Johnson used him as a punchbag. He was cr*p .

 

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You can spin this argument however you want really.

You bring up Dempsey's demolition of Carpintier, but fail to mention his fights with Miske and Gibbons.

You bring up Schmeling's definition of Walker, but omit the fact that Walker held Jack Sharkey to a draw.

You bring up Ali's destruction of an ancient Archie Moore, but fail to mention that he went life and death with Doug Jones.

Small defensively adept heavyweights, can give almost anybody problems, especialy if they are inexperienced.

Lets look at the facts here.

Jeffries won the lineal title 2 years 9 month after his professional debut, with only 12 professional fights.

Joe Louis won the lineal title 2 years 11 month after his professional debut, with 33 professional fights.

Floyd Patterson won the lineal title 4 years 2 month after his professional debut, with 32 professional fights.

Mike Tyson won the lineal title 3 years 3 month after his professional debut, with 35 professional fights.

Now this really puts Jeffries into perspective.

He was thrown in against fringe contenders, virtually from his professional debut, and moved to a title shot in a ridiculously short period of time, with a ridiculously small number of fights.

He was not really a precocious talent like Joe Louis or Mike Tyson.

He needed more time to develop than they did, and he basically learned on the job as champion.

 

Corbett had 13
Spinks 7
Joshua 16

I asked you who were these top contenders with more experience Jeffries was facing before he won the title?
Apart for Choynski ,out weighed by 67lbs, Sharkey outweighed by27lbs.Who else? Which fringe contenders was he thrown in with at the start of his career?
Lorraine 0-0-0?
Long 0-0-0?
Griffin 7-0-1?
Van Buskirk 4-1-1?
Baker 10-6-4?
Ruhlin 6-2-0?
Long [again now]0-2- 0
That's his first 7 opponents in descending order. Then we have
Choynski certainly experienced but 167lbs!
He is followed by three farcical encounters
Goddard 40 years old, he quits in 3 rounds
Jackson who was a 37 years old, alcoholic, consumptive wreck.
Everett who quit in 3rds and whose effort was described as
"Their meeting proved to be a veritable farce"& " there appeared to be fully 50 pounds difference between them when stripped for the fray."

 

Corbett had been fighting professionally for six years when he fought for the title, and we don't know how many fights he had.

Spinks did not beat any contenders before he fought for the title, and was basically gifted a title shot.

Joshu still hasn't fought for the lineal title, and he has been a professional

Hank Griffin was a ridiculous choice for his first professional fight at the age of 19.

Dan Long is reputed to have beaten Frank Childs before he fought Jeffries.

Van Buskirk was a gatekeeper who had beaten Joe Kennedy, and would go in to beat Joe Goddard.

Henry Baker had a win over Joe Butler.

Gus Ruhlin was 25 years old, and had already fought Peter Maher to a draw.

Joe Choynski was an absolutely merciless piece of matchmaking, whatever his size at the time.

Goddard and Jackson were seasoned veterans, even if they were well past their best.

Everett was a guys who should have given him some sort of resistance.

Sharkey had 30+ professional fights when they first met, and had bested Corbett, Choynski and Goddard. Now let that sink in given Jeffries career stats at the time!

Bob Armstrong was a tough assignment, and Jeffries fought him with a broken hand.

None of these are easy matches for a young fighter learning his trade.

 

More BS " reputed" .Baker at175lbs was described as very fat! " According to the San Francisco Call, "...Henry Baker, the fat boy of Chicago, came first. He looked like a New York Alderman; layers of fat hung over his waistband..." and "Baker looked like a pigmy alongside the California champion" Butler weighed 165lbs for that fight.
Seven months before fighting Jeffries ,middleweight Baker scaled 159lbs!
Kennedy was a novice at the time! Ruhlin was a novice too,and he lost to Maher and had been kod by Yank Kenney 5-1-2!
Jeffries didnt fight Armstrong with a broken hand he did it during the fight!
Tom Sharkey who disliked blacks and refused to fight them said it was criminal to put Jackson in the ring with Jeffries he said he was a wreck,even Jeffries described his as a shell!.Goddard was 40 years old and quit cold.Same with Everett.


Its official you are full of it!

 

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Ruhlin x2
Sharkey x2
Fitz x2
Corbett x2

If Jeffries era was a deep one for heavyweights he wouldn't have fought his best opponents twice!

 

Just a point--the number of supposed fights Jeff and his opponents had--as listed by box rec--has been used both for and against him by Janitor and McVey. I disagree with the arguments both make.

Was Jeff as inexperienced as Janitor says in comparison to Louis and Patterson and Tyson? Well, we don't know. There is a film on you tube in which Jeff answers press questions (toughest opponent--Sharkey. How many fights did he have--he had no idea) and said in reply to when he had his first fight, "1893"--Who knows how many fights of one sort or another he had between 1893 and 1896. Newspapers just didn't cover second-tier fights, or sports generally, that much back then. What we do know is that he was 24 when he won the title, older than several other champs and the same age as Dempsey, and had been fighting top men for at least two years, and apparently boxing for six years in all.

McVey puts down Jeff's opponents as inexperienced, but we don't really know how many fights most of them had either. A gross example is a non-Jeffries opponent, Al Limerick, who lost to Munroe. Limerick had one listed fight, a KO of top man Jack O'Brien. Perhaps this guy had never been in the ring prior to KO'ing a world class fighter and future champion, but my guess we just don't know about the fights he had. Ruhlin was 25 and a world class fighter with a win over Steve O'Donnell. Painting him as inexperienced is simply running from a lack of information to a conclusion. My take is caution is called for when we have such probably spotty records to deal with.

*a related point is that "prizefights" were illegal almost everywhere, but they got around that by staging "boxing exhibitions"

Were these just exhibitions? My guess is they were often "shooting matches" and thus real fights. Corbett, for one, seems to have had dozens of these type of exhibitions.

 

Also, I am not on board with the way "evidence" or facts are selected. Take Henry Baker. It is true that the SF Call called him a "fat boy" with rolls of fat hanging over his belt,

but

The SF Bulletin had this say about Jeff being installed a 2 to 1 favorite over Baker--

"Baker is accredited with being fairly clever, can hit like a mule and is remarkably game. He is strong and his powers of endurance are above par. It seems absurd to lay such prices against Baker. At these odds he should be played. Billy Kennedy saw both Jeff and Baker yesterday and pronounces them in tip-top shape. He says the Chicago man will be a genuine surprise."

Okay. Fat boy or tip top shape?

And what about these huge weight gaps. Who knows exactly. Jeff was credited with weighing 198 for an exhibition in LA in 1897. The Call has him at 201 for Baker (who is listed at 175). Choynski's weight guesses from the press range from 163 to 171. Unless Jeff suddenly put on scads of weight to take on a small, fast moving boxer, the most likely gap is more like 30 to 40 lbs. (this would be my guess judging by the photo of the two posing before the fight). A lot but not out of line with the weight gaps Harold Johnson and Bob Satterfield overcame against the big fellows of their era, Nino Valdes and Bob Baker.

Selecting the 67 lb. advantage is simply selecting the wildest and least plausible estimate.

Now I don't know what the weights really were, as there was no weigh in, but why relentlessly dwell on such likely exaggerated estimates in a historical discussion?

 

We know what Corbett told Tommy Loughran, and we know that Jeffries was boxing at his local AC 3 nights a week in contests which were labelled exhibitions so as not to upset his Mother. If you can come up with more verified fights for Corbett ,Ruhlin etc where dedicated historians such as Pollack have failed then I for one will be happy to include them.Until then Ill go with what I know.Limerick is not relevant to this discussion.

Why not read Pollacks biography and get up to speed? Have you seen what Baker weighed in his previous fights?

role Boxer
bouts 30
rounds 181
KOs 27%

global ID 11539
alias Slaughterhouse- (Harry)
death date 1908-10-08 / age not known
debut 1890-06-06
division middleweight
stance orthodox
height 5′ 9½″ / 177cm

Jeffries v Choynski.
The Chronicle "Jeffries weighed 220lbs to Choynskis 171lbs"=49lbs
The Stockton Evening Mail "Jeffries 230lbs Choynski 167lbs "=63lbs

 

It sounds like your principle doubt about Corbett is his number of fights, more than his weight on fight night.

On this I must advise you that the numbers can be misleading.

Cobett's career started in a time when boxing was outlawed in most states, and boxing matches had to be sold as exhibitions for legal reasons.

It finished during Jeffries title reign, when the line between boxing matches and exhibitions was much more clearly defined.

Therefore his total number of fights on Boxrec, give a misleading impression of his ring experience.

This link outlines his ring activity, to the best of our current knowledge, based on research in Adam Pollacks biography:

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/corbett.htm

Lets face it, Louis, Tyson, and Holyfield are all regarded as great fighters, and partly because they took the title with so little ring experience.

The only fly in the ointment is Leon Spinks, but I have never heard anybody denigrate Louis or Tyson based on what Spinks accomplished.

I think most people accept that it is not really the same accomplishment, but what Jeffries achieved clearly was.

The idea of Jeffries being this indestructible freak of nature only seems to emerge in the last few years of his title reign. Early in his title reign he was regarded with some skepticism. Some people said that he was not as good as Sullivan, some said that he was too big to be a successful champion, and some criticized his failure to put certain fighters away. He was not so much a Dempsey, Louis, or Tyson like fighter who was regarded as a force of nature from the start. He was more of a Wladamir Klitschko where the idea of his invincibility crystallized over the course of his title reign.

Not necessarily.

It could just as easily mean that he really was as good as his proponents claimed.

 

At one point Baker was a middleweight, but his weight is given as 170 lbs. on fights-rec for his fight with Frank Slavin in 1896. His weight is given by Pollack on page 56 as 175 lbs. to Jeff's 201 lbs. Those weights make him a heavyweight in 1896 and 1897.

"Up to speed on Pollack"

But Pollack is the source for the SF Call estimating the weight gap between Choynski and Jeffries as 30 lbs. Now 30 or 40 lbs (or 26 in the case of Baker) seems a rather strong size advantage for Jeffries in and of itself. I have not maintained that one can't find 230 lb. claims for Jeffries (as one can find claims from 235 to 312 lbs. for Dunkhorst against Fitz), but it boils down to what is more likely.

It is sort of like the Biblical Goliath. One ancient source lists him as six cubits and a span (9 feet, 6 inches). An alternative source lists him as four cubits and a span (six feet, six inches). Now the 9 foot plus source was used for the modern Bible. But scholars know about the other source. For myself, I will stick as an historian to what seems more reasonable.

You have your 230 lb. sources. But having read the SF papers back then, I know that weights like 195 to just over 200 lbs. were common estimates for Jeffries. I will stick to what I think is reasonable, so for me, at least, focusing on extreme estimates weakens rather than strengthens the argument.

"dedicated historians"

No historian can find a record which was never kept.