Joey Maxim at heavyweight

He was definitely definitely inconsitent at the weight which makes him so extremely difficult to peg. I'd say you could kick off his prime in '27 when he beats Risko and say that it ends with Levinsky's yo-yoing reverse of his earlier loss to Tommy in 1931.

In these five calender years (Rather than two), he beats Risko, Young Stribling (might be at LHW though), Pat McCarthy, Peterson, Gross, Lohman, Schaff, Levinsky, Renault, Pierre Charles, Max Baer, Uzcudan. That's nice, nice.

He losses to Sharkey, Schaff and Sekyra and lets give Levinsky the credit for beating him in his prime to end his prime, it's an inexact science after all...all these defeats were avenged/were to men he had already beaten. So, it is reasonable to say he beat every man who faced him (at some point) during his prime. That's pretty astonishing I reckon.

Maxim - the thing about Maxim is he gets three bites at Charles and three bites at Walcott and goes 1-5. I think that, although Walcott's hands were hurt against Maxim in the win, the other fights are close enough that we can honour that victory, or some **** like that, that's inexact but I feel comfortable with it. It might make a journeyman type of him to go 6-0 though. I mean if he went 6-0 it'd be very concerning. Meanwhile Loughran went 1-1 with Sharkey (without looking, i don't think there was a rubber) and 1-0 with Baer. This helps me to peg their quality in their respective primes. I wouldn't expect Maxim to beat top .1% style quality small heavies. It would be a 1/6 type event, about what i'd expect for a whole squad of class small heavies (two draws with Valentino, too, who may be the next best heavy he met at this time). On the other hand Loughran proved that he can beat fighters approaching the quality of Charles and Walcott, if not inarguably those fighters themselves. Lougran speaks to me of a higher quality of fighter.

Get me?

Anyway, to give him the same treatment regardless. I'd say his prime begins when he reverse that KO1 loss to Shepard and ends when Joe Kahut takes his revenge, so 1943 through to 1948. But chew off 1943 and you have the same length of prime as Loughran got.

Maxim beat Buddy Walker, Frank Androff, Phil Muscato, Jersey Joe Walcott, Marty Clark, Olle Tandberg, Bob Sikes, Tony Bosnich, Joe Kahut, Bill Peterson.

He has that disturbing unavenged loss to Lloyd Marshall, a close unavenged loss to John Flynn (this needs looking at according to my notes, not sure why), avenged losses to Phil Muscato and journeyman John Thomas, two avenged losses to Jersey Joe and Joe Kahut.

So I think this information, for what it is worth, signals that Loughran is above Maxim by a dunt - but I do think that i've underestimated Maxim in relation to Loughran, not least because he did a good bit more work at the weight.

If you feel like it, take us through their pre- and post-prime (as I see it) best wins/losses. That might be very interesting indeed, not least because, according to me (and these terms are flexible), Charles never met Maxim in his prime. If you don't, i'll do it but this post is too long now.

 

Yes, imagine Maxim had had power.

Good thread this, got way more than I thought I would.

 

Anything is possible. I've never seen a document that says "he lost because he's way past prime" and you do see them sometimes. But on the other hand, Boxrec has him going 1-3 the following year, which indicates to me at least that there was a very real chance he was dealing with some new problems. Up to '35 he manages just 12-6-4 for this three year period, and after that his competition takes a real tumble.

If his problem is inconsistency, then he was way more inconsistent after this than before and that in itself is equal to past-prime.

I don't see it as such. But i'm also not sure how it would compare to beating a prime Walcott but with two damaged hands if you see what I mean. I guess I could pick Walcott to beat old Sharkey with a dislocated knuckle and all that there, but I wouldn't feel good about it. Also, I would very much like to see a win over old Charles for Maxim. I would like that win for him, it's certainly better to be 3-1 with the 1 a hurt version than the 3-0 he got.

I would too, but I think a young Baer is a superb win very much in the neighbourhood. I think someone like Roy Jones or Bob Foster might better that 5-1 against Walcott/Charles, but I think they would get murdered by Baer. I think there's a hint at a class issue there.

He was a SMW. SMW's beating HW's makes me uncomfortable about the class of the HW, unless the guy doing the beating is Bob Fitzsimmons It's a problem for me as regards Maxim's legacy.

I disagree with you for two reasons, the main one being that close examination of losses can result in a redress of how that loss can impact that fighter. So for example, the fact that Walcott had confirmed hand injuries coming out of the Maxim fight gives me reason to at least partly "excuse" that loss. I don't think it's unreasonable for a fighter to lose a fight in which he has serious damage to both hands. Normally, that would also impact the level of credit I would hand Maxim too, but at the moment i'm seeing those fights as close as they look, and until I learn otherwise I'll kind of credit Maxim just for making it so tough and probably "deserving" to take one of those.

If Walcott-Maxim's trilogy ends up looking less close overall than I think it is now, that would hurt Maxim for me because his best win would be heavily impacted by the knowledge that he probably only beat Walcott because of injury.

And that can be very important.


I have Loughran way, way above Maxim p4p.

 

Maybe, but there's a drop off before that statistically. Who knows, though. Primes are generally around this length, i'm pretty happy with this date as a guide. You may have pinpointed another drop off.

Sure, but everything I said about this still stands and is very reasonable. I mean Shep isn't even in the discussion and this type of thing is the reason.

Agree.

 

I agree that the circumstances should always be of interest, but I reiterate that a special heavyweight shouldn't lose to a SMW. Unless he has...i don't know, broken ribs and loses to a body shot? Or something crazy like that. Again, Fitz is excluded, he's just ****ed up.

 

Yes, I rank Maxim as a heavy, I'm just explaining to you the more major reasons why I'd rank him below Loughran. I'm sure you yourself would acknowledge, despite your attempts to justify/quantify it (whichever it is) that a loss to a 168lb fighter (or whatever it was may have been 166) is concerning for a top heavy?

Maxim had everything he needed to be an absolutely outstanding fighter outside of power, and I mean great.



I'll do the past pre prime breakdown tomorrow i'm a bit knackered.

 

Nah, Marshall's HW resume was dirt. He did nothing up there. Maxim is far, far and away his best HW win. I don't rank him at all at that weight. That loss shouldn't have happened.

As for skill, it could be Roy Jones and i'd be disturbed. It would always hurt a HW legacy, a loss to a SMW. It's easy to stomach with punchers, but Marshall isn't one at this weight.