He is legitimately one of the better light heavyweight champions. Defensive counter puncher with good power, who might have been developed more as an offensive specialist, in another era. He was stopped once in over 100 bouts, and that was in his last fight against Joe Louis. He was a solid heavyweight contender to boot.
Reading ringside accounts of his long series with Maxie Rosenbloom is a revelation. He kicked Maxies ass but good!
Its crazy how the man fought 112 fights all by the age of 24. One might think he was burned out too early.
Wow! That alone should validate my assumption that you can't compare eras. Conditioning, etc...number of fights per year, etc. As a movie lover (Raging Bull), I always told my boxing buds that after LaMotta beat a young Sugar Ray in the early 40's (outweighing him by about 15 pounds) Ray fought him again TWO WEEKS LATER! Can you believe that! And won virtually every round (still outweighed). All the great fighters were great fighters, in any era, but how would Leonard, Duran, Hearns, Hagler, Mayweather, Jones, etc. records have panned out if they were fighting 10-12 times a year for multi-years?
There is definitely a very good reason why so many fighters ( even the best of them ) had multiple losses back then. Keeping a clean record wasn't easy fighting that often. Sometimes these guys would enter fights before the wounds of their last battle had even heeled, or before they even knew anything about their opponent. Also fighting with eight ounce gloves. Crazy stuff. And the sad thing is most of them didn't make **** for money.
