I’d comfortably favour Young, but maybe you have a different opinion, one thing that is guaranteed though is that this fight goes the distance. Who wins this matchup?
Mismatch. Easy win for Sharkey if he's on the level. He's vastly superior to Young in every way. Stronger, much harder hitter, a better boxer, too.
Without thinking about it too much I favour Sharkey, Jimmy never impressed me as much as this forum I’m an old record but I think he gets propped up for Norton and Foreman’s sake.
I picked Sharkey on points. I know he was inconsistent (so was Young), but it’s implied we get the best out of a fighter in a fantasy setting. Accounting for a real-world fight would not be a betting man’s contest, to say the least.
Sharkey has the lowest KO rate of any HW world champ even if its 4 points higher than Jimmy Young. Jimmy Young was bigger fighting bigger people.Jimmy probably hits harder. Not that it really matters. Young is a better boxer too. Young at 15 rounds beat Foreman almost beat Norton and had a good chance against Ali. Sharkey at 15 rounds couldn't beat Mickey Walker the smallest man to fight for the HW title in the past century. Youngs inconsistancy was more due to having to fight 10 round decisions in the sports toughest era. But besides Ali and Gene Tunney I don't think theres been many many better pure boxers than Jimmy Young at HW. Jimmys also more durable than Sharkey. Only Shavers and Cooney got him out.
Jimmy Young clowns him. Utterly clowns, embarrasses and emasculates Sharkey. A laughable contest by every measure. Sharkey never boxes again after this.
Sharkey via UD on account that he actually threw punches. I have trouble picking Jimmy over any upper-tier slickster with good punch output -- he was just too darned gun shy.
I agree with this and I always liked Young. But the Ocasio fights made me realize he just didn't do well when the opponent was throwing non-stop punches his way. The first fight with Ocasio there was room to talk as Jimmy was out of shape, but the rematch was the same against the fast light-hitting Ocasio. And like you said @clinikill , if there is one thing Sharkey did well was throw punches.
