I sent the link to historian Monte Cox. Below are his comments. Ive been watching that "uppercut" of Corbett. It looks like a punch from Northern and some southern styles of Kung Fu. Notice how the punch lands he is hitting with a vertical fist not like an uppercut that modern western boxing would see at all. I would say it could be a specialized sneak punch that would be situational. Probably not legal in today's boxing but I wouldnt say it was worthless, it would be quite damaging if it landed and is just as awkward to anticipate as say Razor Ruddock's half hook uppercut. Corbett's jab is a vertical punch, he doesn't turn it over like in modern boxing, similar to the way Ali through his jab but he commits more. It looks just like a Wing Chun vertical straight punch, this is also used in Bruce Lee's JKD, White Crane (where it likely originated) and in Isshin-Ryu Karate. In the sequence prior to Tunney throwing the right to the body Corbett uses something similar to a wing block from Wing Chun and is in position to parry. When Corbett is demonstrating the aggressive clinch which includes some holding and hitting going right to the body to jaw several times- he first breaks his opponents Kuzushi upsetting his balance which makes the follow up possible. I see a lot of martial arts related techniques in this old style of boxing which really makes me curious because I have heard about links between the two styles before. Makes for a fascinating study
Interesting, thanks for sharing. It doesn't look unsophisticated, just different. Any relation between Oriental striking arts and old boxing are worth noting.
The emerging picture seems to be that Corbett had a highly unorthodox and probably unpredictable style. I think it incorporated a fair few of his own aditions some of which were followed up by later fighters and some of which were not. If you put him in with a contemporary fighter I dont know exactly what would happen but they would see a few things coming at them that they had not seen before.
To be fair to Mendoza a lot of fights of that era were billed as exhibitions for legal reasons. This makes it verry hard to establish exactly what Corbetts true record was.
From Edmund Price's Manual from 1867 http://www.geocities.com/cinaet/price.html Vertical Punch This content is protected Uppercut This content is protected http://www.geocities.com/cinaet/price13.html In Dempsey's Championship Fighting the author discusses the vertical punch and the treatment of the upppercut here seems totally modern. http://www.freecirclefighting.com/jdbook.pdf
His style was tricky, bizarre, almost slight of hand. He threw what was known as a cork screw punch quite often in that demonstration/sparring session. Looks strange and uneducated at times, sloppy even, but effective. Its hard for me to believe when looking at some of these films, that the guys were so great as their records show---but then again it was a different time, and people picked shots, were methodical about it, than they are now, where punches are wasted for no reason.
So in the absence of hard truth what should we do? Go with what we are sure of ? Or go with what may have happened?
If I had it you would have it too:good ps I read somewhere that Johnson sparring with Firpo was filmed.
Well,according to that shrinking violet Johnson ,Firpo was totally outclassed,in actual fact he may have been ,because Firpo for all his strength and power ,was woefully lacking in the fundamentals. You might have shown him a few moves:good
Acepting that we dont know would be a good start. A lot of John L Sullivan's "exhibitions" have been changed to fights in the light of research by Adam Pollack and others.
It was not just Johnson who said it other sources have coroborated it. It seems that Johnson did embaras Firpo in sparring.