Jess Willards athletic background

What was Willard's 40 time?

I will withhold my pronouncement on his athleticism until provided with an auto time.

 

Willard was a serious athlete .. he was an expert horse breaker .. does anyone here have any clue the strength and coordination and balance you need to do that ?

 

Some on here will tell you horses in Willard's day were smaller, weaker and lacked modern training and nutrition to counter that argument.

 

Maybe he should have persued high Jumping. cause he sure didnt have much Talent for Boxing....

 

When you adjust for shoes and track conditions of that time, it’s safe to assume he would be running a 9.57 today.

 

Corrie Sanders ran a faster 100m. (Sanders was 6’4 and Willard likely didn’t weigh 240 when he was running.)

 

Here's Jess' combine record while at school:

40-yard dash time: 4.7 seconds
Vertical jump: 35 in
Standing long jump: 10 ft 0 in
Bench press: 225 lb with 30 reps

Very impressive.

 

Priceless

 

What was his Wonderlich test result?

 

Well, I stand corrected.

He's a legit athlete.

Proceed.

 

Just my two cents, but I think you'd do better to doubt the veracity of the claim that Willard ran that time in the first place than to say it's not impressive if he actually did.

The claim itself seems to me pretty wide open to question.

 

Holy **** that _is_ impressive if it actually happened. You have sources? I'm pretty skeptical to be honest because I don't think (?) either the bench press or the forty-yard dash were commonly performed or measured exercises in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

 

By the way, when I was a kid my dad benched 225 for about that many reps, and his one-rep max at that time was 395. (Though I doubt this N of one is a reliable formula to tell you what Willard's one rep max might be.)

I remember when he took up weightlifting again at the age of 48 he did 275 ten times just a month after resuming from a ~ten-year lay-off.

 

So when people claim that Dempsey didn't beat a large athletic heavyweight, they're bullshitting.

This should've been common knowledge, honestly