Nat Fleischer is a hero

Not at all.


First of all, guys like Dempsey and Louis are on film, although that may not have been available in watchable speed back then. Poster Old Fogey said he had not seen Dempsey in corrected speed until the 60's.


Dempsey has nothing on his resume that suggests he should rank higher than Louis, yet Fleischer ranked Dempsey much higher than Louis in the late 50's. Awful flaw of judgement caused by confirmation bias on his side.



On top of that, he had seen Jeffries when he was barely a teenager; it's impossible to reliably compare pieces of memory in that context because:

1. 20 years is an incredible long time when there's no film to refresh your mind. It would be hard enough just to remember a finishing punch. It's no surprise that eyewitness accounts of certain fights give complete different describtions of the nature of a knockout when asked about it only a year later. They didn't have the luxery of slow-motion replay, theaters, YouTube or anything.

2. Boxing was a total different game back then, based a lot on wrestling and lesser emphasis on combinations, jabbing, etc. This is very important because the observations one makes are automatically taken in the context of circumstances that time. Cus D'Amato commented on how he remembered a fighter from his youth to be very skillful, but when he first saw footage of the same fighter again, he was surprised by the lack of fundamental skills and apparantly mis-remembered fighting mentality for being skilled.

3. When Fleischer saw Jeffries, he was a teenager. Teenagers have idols. Idols receive irrational treatement. One only has to look back at SuzieQ's or ManassaMauler's posts when they were 16; endless irrational reasoning and defending of their hero's. And that's no knock on them, it's just human behaviour. That said, Fleischer does prefer Johnson over Jeffries.

 

Dempsey and Louis survive well on film (or "quite well" in Dempsey's case), but the I was refering primarily to the likes of Fitz, Corbett and Jeffries.

Fleischer obviously doesn't rank fighters on "resume", he analyses all their attributes as demonstrated at their peaks. Sure, you can criticize that method, but I assume his picks are well-considered within that method.
As far as I remember he ranked Dempsey two places above Louis, not "much" higher. Maybe I remember wrong.
Why dismiss it as awful judgment or confirmation bias ?

Fleischer saw these fighters fight live, usually from ringside.
The fight films weren't readily available in collections in the 50s when he made his list. I assume all his picks were based on memory, and his contemporary notes/accounts/reports. He was a journalist and writer after all, and made his career with his interest for detail.

If, as you say, men mis-remember things within a year, then you will you only accept lists and descriptions from people who are constantly re-freshing their memory with film ?
And if we then consider that film is possibly no substitute for a live ringside view we can dismiss the whole lot.

It seems a bit patronizing to say Fleischer mis-remembered, or was largely influenced by nostalgic memories of his youth.
There's really quite a lot of supporting evidence to believe that Jim Jeffries really WAS a phenomenal fighter. And possibly stacks up well against anyone who came after him.

You can cautiously assume that Fleischer mis-remembers, is tainted by jaded, nostalgic distorted memories BUT what have you got to go on to form a solid contradictory view against Fleischer's memories ?
The way I see it, Fleischer's opinion and memory is part of the overall bank of knowledge pertaining to those early eras. It's okay to say it doesn't hold much weight, but it's arrogant and foolish to mock it or attempt a thorough criticizism when we didn't see any of these fighters he's talking about.

 

Fleischer has had so many factual errors in his books, that there's little reason to believe he referred to contemporary (i.e. primary) reports, most of the time he wrote about something.

 

Because there is absolutely no rational argument to suggest that Dempsey ranks higher than Louis. Hence, confirmation bias.

It would be like saying "Roy Jones ranks higher than Monzon", because Roy Jones looks spectacular or whatever he sees in Dempsey.

What do you mean by "accept"? I never "accept" any list as an ultimate truth, whether it comes from average Joe or Muhammad Ali himself. Same goes for opinion or whatever writing; When possible, i go by actual film because that doesn't lie. However, i do read opinions, accounts, etc with interest, but they must be placed into perspective.

Why would we consider that? A live ringside view is great in terms of excitement, being able to say "i was there!", etc. But in terms of observing a fight, it's not the ideal position. The referee or one fighter can block the view and there's nothing you can do about it. There are many factors that can cause you to miss a finishing punch. Most people didn't see the punch that floored Liston.

On the other hand, now that we have several different camera's, we can see the fight constantly from a clear angle that shows the action without either fighter or referee in the way, and if you still manage to miss something, there's about 4 or 5 slow-motion replays from different angles. Indeed, it is far superior to ringside observation.

See, this is what i don't understand. A lot of people get angry when you say something like this while it is nothing against Fleischer personally. I would say the same thing about any person: no human being can accurately remember what happens in the flash of a second what happened for over several years or even decades in this case. One might think he does, but unconsciously, the memory is severly altered from truth.

Phenomenal? yes. Deserving to be ranked over Louis? Not in a million years.

I don't "cautiously" assume. It's been proven in psychological research time and time again that human memory is very unreliable.

Well, thing is, i've seen plenty of Dempsey, Johnson and Louis and quite frankly, Dempsey and Johnson have no claim to rank higher than Louis, yet he always did. And that's not just my opinion, but about 90% here (who have seen fight films and records of them) think Louis ranks above the former two.

Of Jeffries i've seen a few films, most of them in training (no, i'm not talking about when he was old against Johnson) and i wasn't really impressed, but the quality was poor and fighters have looked less than inspirational during training, so i won't make my entire judgement on that. It is clear however, that based on his record (Fitz was 36 and 38 years old and a supermiddleweight, Corbett didn't win a fight in 5 years time), he should not be ranked over Louis, Dempsey and a few others. The film does show how much different boxing was back then.

 

Head to head I favour Johnson and Dempsey to beat Louis and rate them accordingly,I guess I'm a dummy.

 

Not a dummy, just a blatant Frazier fan.:-(