Jeffries vs Wills

No one from Jeffries time would have been competitive with Wills. Langfords probably the only guy pre 1910 who could be competitive with Wills. Maybe the best version of Johnson. Thats it. Wills is a top 10 HW H2H ever.

While his age is disputed when Jeffries had his last win Langford was an 18 year old WW not even a MW. No Langford was not a peer. Langford was not a fulltime HW until the end of 1907.

190-200 even 185 its the same principle. Langford had sacrificed a lot of the speed that made him such an overpowering force of nature in his early HW reign. Peak HW Langford was 160-165 pounds. Someone whose under 5 ft 7 isn't supposed to be nearing the CW limit.

It was 1909. Jeffries was the undefeated GOAT of the sport who was only like 35, Langford was a 21 year old ex MW who'd lost to Jack Johnson and didn't have many HW feats. Most of these people had never seen Jeffries fight any more then we have there was no internet only newspapers. But they knew he'd cleaned out the previous generation and they knew he was much bigger than Langford. Them picking Jeffries to beat Langford means nothing. Of course they'd think Jeffries would win. That doesn't mean they were right.

While it was 1905 Jeffries mostly fought 19th century retreads so it might as well have been 1898. I think when he retired the best LHWs would beat him. If I'm going overboard with the difference between 1915 and 1905 a bit I stand by the overall point. IMO the guys from the late 1910s were on a different planet then the ones in the late 1890s. I'm flexible on the exact timeline of how quick that happened but I'm fairly confident that it was the greatest jump in quality the sport ever experienced in the shortest period because you had the first generation who'd grown up with gloved boxing opposed to learning it as adults as the transition from London to Queensbury and illegality to legality happened. Thats the greatest evolution the sport has ever seen and I will defend that assertion.

Some of the younger fighters in the late 1900s evolved with the times like Jack Johnson IMO so calling them peers of Jeffries is not neccessarily relevant. Jeffries might have beaten Johnson in 1905 but IMO would have stood little chance against 1907-1909 Johnson.

 

And Langford was magnitudes better than Sharkey.

 

1)Langford is 11 and 13 years younger than Jeffries and Sharkey. Starting your career as one is finishing it does not make one peers. And as stated Jeffries beat 1 opponent who wasn't from the late 1890s. Jeffries feats up to 1903 are still wins over people from the 1890s even if it was the 20th century. This is something we see in many eras and shields how good fighters from the incumbent generation are compared to the new one.


2)The late 1910s were much better than the early 1910s, and the late 1900s were a lot better than the 19th century.

2)Johnson defended his belt 3 times in 5 years after beating Jeffries and Willard is not the standard bearer for the late 1910s despite being champ. Willard was only a little younger than Johnson and only fought a few times thereafter. As I've said in my previous post Johnson got way better later in his career. Some fighters were young enough to adapt with the times.

And when did Jeffries learn to box? In the early 1890s. McVea and Jeanette came into an established sport. Jeffries did not.

3)You're just ignoring the fact that Langford weighed more than 185 for a signifigant part of his career.

While we don't have scorecards Sharkey was not far from beating Jeffries which doesn't speak to his ability to win against better small fighters who could actually hurt him which Sharkey plainly could not. Jeffries physical advantages were a big part of his game and any giant short of an ATG level(not resume level) was not going to matter to Langford.

He wasn't nearly as good but Fitzsimmons at times weighed WW at HW. It didn't matter because Fitzsimmons could overpower guys nearly twice his size. Langford being smaller doesn't matter here because hes Langford. He could knock out guys a foot taller than him. Langford has wins over every big HW hes fought except Fred Fulton. Old Langford knocked out George Godfrey in 1 round who won a HW belt in 1935. We've established Langfords ability to beat and knockout HWs of any size at any level short of ATG. So it really doesn't matter hes smaller than Tom Sharkey. Langford is probably the best P4P HW ever. Tom Sharkey is not. Its not a 1/1 size comparison.

4)If Jeffries fights Langs SOS after the Fraser losses he would do worse. The Fraser losses were early in Langs careers like many greats have. Jeanette took years to get over .500. After this Lang went on a 18-2 run with losses to Johnson and Burns. With the Fraser losses 1 was a DQ and 1 was a decision loss neither of which we know the details on. Fraser had a career 18-13 record and went the distance with guys like Cripps at a time the level of Australias local scene was fairly high.


I don't know why you're bringing up the "White Hope" thing when we've established Lang beat Arthur Pelkey the "white HW champion" at the tail end of Langs career and Pelkeys prime. The white hopes of the 1910s were not the white counterpart of the "colored HW title" they were a joke until Gunboat won and then he promptly lost via DQ to Carpentier. Johnson opponents stopped the whole thing by beating all the white up and comers. Kaufman and Lang really predated that whole era anyway but they were always among the top white HWs. There were no white hopes until 1914 or 1915 except Gunboat who was Johnsons friend.

No one considered Burns and his peers at MW and LHW better than Jeffries. The truth was most of them probably beat him and that people are wrong based on their perception. Yeah people are going to pick a much smaller unexperienced challenger from a lower weight class who wasn't a dominant champion. Said no one ever. The successful fighter of the prior era will be better regarded then the up and comers. It is a natural bias and is not always correct. Schreck, Burns, Gardner, Root, Hart, O Brien, Sullivan. Jeffries might not have went winless against this crew but hes not leaving with a winning record. Dave Smith would have easily beaten him.

IBHOF is a stupid stat because its 30 years old. Fitzsimmons was 46 not 51 years old and won his final 2 fights after losing to Lang. The old sections of the Aussy HOF should be inducted into the IBHOF which has been around 30 years. Dave Smith and Cripps should be in the IBHOF already and the fact they aren't would be a disgrace if not for the fact the IBHOF hasn't been around long. You're making modern ignorance of Australians boxing golden era Langs problem. Squires will eventually make it because Burns fought him thrice.

 

So first off, I'm enjoying reading your revisionist approach here. It's at least interesting to see these questions discussed from a different angle than usual.

Second, it seems so far that you're doing pretty well demonstrating that *IF* you assume that the 1910s guys were much better than the 1900s guys, you can read the historical record consistently with that assumption reasonably cohesively.

I guess my question would be, what justifies the assumption that the 1910s guys are a quantum leap over the 1900s guys? Is it something like: "I would expect fighters entering a developed sport to be better than the first transitional generation, so I will interpret the historical record with this in mind"?

Or is there other evidence that the 1900s guys sucked compared to their successors? Fight results? Film? Patterns you've noticed in their records? Later guys commenting that their predecessors were really bad? Something else?

 

Up to his last KO loss to Langford in early 1916 Wills record against top fighters was 5-4-4. After that loss Wills went virtually undefeated for 10 years until he lost to a much better Sharkey. He had a doctor stoppage loss to Jim Johnson in 1917 and a DQ against Tate he was winning in 1921. 3 draws with Langford, Tate and Thompson. Thats it. Wills like Langford has a disputed age but Langford was green going against more experienced Langford and McVea. At the time he fought Cotton, Cotton was his best opponent. Cotton while a sub .500 fighter was a good fighter with an amazing SOS. While maybe(maybe) Jeffries could beat Wills in early 1912 like Cotton did you can try that King Herod going after Jesus as a baby stunt with a lot of ATGs.

You know when we say "if so and so fought 10 times they'd win 9?". Well thats how black boxing worked. It is hard for the best fighter to go undefeated with no draws when you have endless rematches against top fighters. And this often started very early on in a fighters career. You have to grade any WL record on a curve during this era but you have to grade black fighters with an even bigger one. And Wills fought in by far the most challenging era of "black boxing". He got the Langford, Jeanette, McVea, Jim Johnson, and Clark generation on the way in and Tate, Thomson, Lester Johnson and Norfolk in the next wave. He went unbeaten for 10 years with a few draws, an injury stoppage and a DQ. Beat Fulton, Firpo and Weinart too. Thats immaculate.

Jim Johnson and Jeff Clark were elite fighters. Johnsons record isn't very good took 27 losses to the big 4(Wills, Langford, Jeanette and McVea) but was not at all far from their level. He was only stopped twice in those 27 losses and got 3 wins and 3 draws against them. His record against Tate, Jack Thompson, Jeff Clark is 3-1-2 with 3 knockouts and he drew Jack Johnson. Going from 1-4 to 5-7 he goes from being almost winless to being almost undefeated but he fought the former group 6 times more.

 

That sentence is a reasonable interpretation of what I'm saying. But theres the H2H success over guys who beat guys I am impressed with and know more about. Like Wills beating Fulton. Which I guess you can call "patterns on the record". But the quote in paragraph 3 is the main point of my argument.

It is also informed by my experience watching the first 30 years of MMA which underwent this same transition in our lifetimes. One that we could actually observe. At the start no one knew what they were doing compared to fighters who grew up with it as an established sport just a few short years later.

 

You can add Western (mostly American) kickboxing to that list, coming out of point to full contact karate.

 

Very good fight, both known for their strength but Wills is also taller and longer on top of being dangerously quick and an underrated technician himself, as is Jeffries.

Whoever wins the test of strength in the clinches will probably win the fight.

 

That said, I think it's harder to argue based on common sense and the MMA experience that, say, the guys from the 1900s were definitively better than the 1910s guys. MMA is indisputably superior in 2024 to the version from 1994, but it's a bit trickier to argue that the guys from 2020 would absolutely roll over the 2010 guys. The timing is too exact. Especially if we're saying that 1909 Johnson destroys 1906 Jeffries because Johnson benefited from a 3 year advantage in modernizing skill development.

Long processes aren't always easy to divide into small units like that, IMO. It's like going bald: You know when you've reached the point of no return, and you can still look back on your old pictures from when you weren't bald. But you can't pinpoint the day and the hour that you went from having hair to being officially bald. Same deal with skills. We know when the development period was basically over, but the mushy period in the middle is harder to make precise statements about.

 

No I'd agree with both those things.

If Dempsey didn't duck Wills I'd pick Dempsey to beat him because hes more proven against the best fighters of their shared era. This is a situation where the ducking changes the whole way I view it.

Langford was a teenage WW. He was fighting at the championship level. But Langford was a career HW doing a relative brief climb up the ladder. He wasn't Langford.

Hes a 5"6.5 man weighing almost 200 pounds who became a HW claimant fighting inside the MW limit. How did he not sacrifice a lot of speed? Langford was 206 for the Anderson KO and was probably around the same for the Tate one. Vutucas keeps saying 185 is Langfords high weight but from 1913 onwards thats one of his lowest weights on boxing rec. 181 is the lowest one he has.

Theres no doubt Langford had more power at 200 and it stands to reason he needed to weigh this much to have the power to knockout the superheavys(who he usually wasn't fighting), at least quickly. But the Langford in the 160s still had HW power and is the period he was at his most dominant. It was technically a DQ but Lang was 203 when Langford destroyed him. If we take Wills and guys like Fulton, Tate and Anderson out of the picture I don't see why he'd need to weigh that much to beat Jeanette, McVea and Barry over and over. Langford became a HW champ at 158 pounds with the easy Iron Hague win who was a short 196.

 

Exactly. Only the 2nd generation is clearly better than the 1st one and maybe the 3rd to a lesser degree. After that the rapid development stops as everyone knows what they are doing and techniques and orthodoxy has been tested.

Yeah you can't pinpoint the moment only that the change occcurred only the window. In combat sports the prior generation has the advantage of incumbency and we cannot tell right away when the next generation is better they actually have to climb the ladder and prove it. Like I think the LHWs and MWs I mentioned could beat Jeffries in 1905 but they couldn't get that fight so they couldn't prove it and this is just me speculating.