Once And For All: Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jeffries

Tunney didn't like Jeffries. The two went at it in the press. You see, Tunney was Irish, and Jeffries beat his Irish hero Corbett and to a lesser extent Sharkey. Jeffries also had a falling out with Ryan and his old trainer Billy Delaney.

Jeffries said Tunney was a no account fancy Dan. Regarding Fitz hitting power, you badly mistaken if you think his weight of 167-172 did not equate to real heavyweight power. Many who saw Fitz to Marciano felt Fitz was the best hitter. Better than Dempsey, Louis, or Marciano. Nat Fleisher said this.

You seem to be hung up on weight McVey. If you infer that Jeffries never beat a top ranked 220 pound fighter in his prime or near prime, then does the same penalty apply to everyone else?

I love to see your top 20 list. In fact I ask for it. My hunch is there will be several hypocritical double standards. Post it here.

If Jeffries could take many bombs from Fitz, who likely had loaded gloves in the second fight, his chin was proven.

 

The charge that Fitz had loaded gloves came froman old rumour that he would fight with plaster of paris on his wraps,the same charge was put about by Doc Kearns ,after he had fallen out with Dempsey,in the 60s Boxing Illustrated conducted an experiment to see if this was a realistic possibilty,they used Cleveland Williams the big hitting Heavyweight for the Fitz /Dempsey role,trials showed that the plaster refused to harden and was useless,I have the isuue this appeared in ,and have seen a short film clip of the trial.End of Rumour.
I mentioned the amount of damage Jeffries sustained in his fights with Fitz because Fitz was likely the biggest hitter he faced while champion,and to demonstrate Jeffries biggest asset,and conversely his biggest weakness,ie 1 he could take incredible punishment ,indeed reporters remarked 2he didnt seem to care if he was hit ",2 he was often forced to take that punishment ,weathering the storm ,before coming on and administering the quietus,due to his lack of defensive ability,and head movement,the footage is grainy ,but I dont think anyone watching what film is available of Jeffries would call him defensively evasive.In that repsect I think Tunneys assessment is valid,All the old timers called their contemporaries superior to the modern guys eg Johnson felt that Jeffries Corbett and Fitz were superior to the champions of the30s and 40s,Corbett ,and Sharkey said Johnson was the greatest"boxer",of all time,Dempsey rated Jeffries the best,its a rather natural thing,coincidentally the Champion in my teenage years was Muhammad Ali,and I rate him the best of all time at Heavyweight,as generations die the Champions of their youth often fall out of favour ,when fans that had grown up with Dempsey died his popularity took a nose dive,Ive Ring magazines from the 50s decrying Marciano as a poor imitation of Dempsey and emphasisng his clumsiness ,today he is revered ,similarly Walcott and Charles were regarded as lack lustre,[thats the way you spell it by the way],and the best of a bad bunch now they are called great. Regarding Jeffries chin ,find a post on this forum that gives it more fullsome praise than I have,I recently twice described it as granite,the fact remains it never felt the punches of a modern big heavy hitter so ,as I said we have to take it on trust,as to how it would react.I dont infer that Jeffries never met beat a top 220 fighter in his prime,I STATE IT CATEGORICALLY!

 

PS THE MAN HAS COUNTED 10 OVER YOU! I think I might change my name to Gentleman John Jackson,its seems appropriate,given Ive just kod you!


And I didnt have to hold you by the hair to do it!

 

You can count to ten all you want after its over. Fitz handlers say he had loaded gloves, and Fitz himself does not deny it. I have the information. Posting it won't change your mind. I'll list two web reports. You see, I back things up.

Oh, and Corbett was 33 when he first meet Jeffires ( Learn to count ) and Johnson never KO'd Jeanette or Ferguson as you claimed here.

1....2....3....4....5....6...

There was no top rated prime or near prime 220 pound for Jefrires to fight.
Your point means little, unless you penalize Liston, Marciano, Tunney, Johnson, and many others.....hold them to the same satndards.
In addition, if you man enough post your top 20 list.

 

Good post. It has nothing to do with boxing, but it's simply human nature to consider things of your youth to be superior to current circumstances.

 

Its been proved on film Plaster of paris doesnt work,if you dont beleive the BI article try it yourself.As a self styled "historian" you should be aware of another possibility,the application of e;lectrical,adhesive tape to the wraps,GunBoat smith mentions this in his interview with Peter Heller,Smith wore the tape in his fight with Willard,when one of Smiths rights allmost tore Willard ear off.This does work I know ,Ive used it,it was common practice in the early 1900s as the GunBoat says,you need a lot of bandage under the tape to cushion your fist but it is very effective,as I know,of course if you throw your gloves into the crowd the tape would easily be apparent,so its very unlikely that Fitz would do this if he was wearing tape. The Collins Resto tragedy is a different thing entirely,where padding was removed ,Lew Jenkings the hard punching Lightweight used to push the stuffing back in his gloves,Fritzie Zivic said,Im surprised a "historian like yourself didnt know these things,werent they in your newspaper?
My top 10 rankings for heavyweight have been on this forum a couple of times in the past in the appropriate post,I cant be arsed to do them again for some one I have no respect for ,and whose opinion means Jack **** to me,look them up if you want.

 

How do we evaluate a fighter? By the opponents he beat? And how close they were to their primes when he beat them,this of course is tricky because as I said earlier Boxing by its very nature is about age giving way to youth,very seldom to we have to greats from the same weight class meet in their respective primes,Ali and Frazier ,might be the nearest to it,the usual thing is for a fading champ to be suceeded by a rising star,and the greater the Champs was the older and more faded he is likely to be,as his reign likely lasted longer.Therefore we have Sullivan bested by Corbett , Fitz by Jeffries,Jeffries coming back a shell of what he had been to be thrashed by Johnson, a dissipated Johnson being kod ,legitimately I think,by Willard , a savage hungry |Dempsey half killing the fat and complacent Jess,Dempsey softened by Holywood,no longer the Mauler being comprehensively outboxed by the cool precise Tunney,After a mediocre period we get Louis who finally meets his young stag in Marciano. and so on|The King is Dead etc,It isnt to decry Champs like Jeffries I mention that for the most part their wins were over faded vetrans ,but to put their acheivments in perspective,its a free country,well mine is,you can rate who you like where you like,but keep a sense of proportion.A 4o year old man weighing 172 who has been inactive for 2 years isnt going to start favourite in a fight with a 26 yearold reigning champion who weighs220 and is in his prime,theres a reason for that,the long list of champions who have been kod by Father Time that Ive mentioned are the reason,and we have to factor the abilities of those men at the time they challenge the champion,and rate the Champ accordingly,it seems qquite simple to me really,no hidden agenda.

 

He looked pretty defensively evasive in his sparring footage, and the remaining bits (Sharkey, Ruhlin) don't look too bad either. It's difficult to tell for sure on the latter two, since they're not very clear.

 

Well his nose was broken 3 times he sustained a lot of facial damage against Corbett in the first fight ,in both the fights with Fitz and the 2nd one with Sharkey,plus the accounts of his fights from contemporary observers ,and latterday writers all mention his lack of defence,no worse than Fitz I suppose,who also was easy to hit,the thing with Jeffries is he may have been easy to hit ,but he appears to have been nigh impossible to hurt.

 

Sparring film is very misleading though isnt it? Does Harry Greb look the great fighter he was in his sparring footage?Plus , as I said the films are grainy,I expect if we were ringside watching a prime Jeffries moving around the ring training in the 1900s we woud be suitably impressed,the footage of him showing his footwork preparing for his disastrous comeback shows a big man quick on his feet,and for his size fluid in his movements,but the actual fight shows a plodding , predictable ,slow has been,who would likely be booed in a modern ring,at the time I expect he was an innovative revelation to fans used to slow moving big men.

 

It should be noted that the large amount of superficial damage he sustained was also caused by smaller gloves. I don't believe smaller gloves lead to more KO's (in fact, more likely to less) but i do think it cuts you up much worse, bruises, broken noses, broken jaws, etc.

 

First, I will note that Jeffries was considered considerably more evasive in his later career than he was early on. Also, as ChrisPontius noted, the facial damage would be expected from those tiny gloves--and by all accounts, Corbett and Fitzsimmons knew how to shred faces apart.

On to the sparring footage:

Greb looks worse in his sparring footage than he did in the ring--that is undoubtedly true. And the same trend seems to hold in general--fighters look pretty crummy when you see them in sparring compared to how they look in the ring. This makes sense, since sparring is only practice.

Given that the sparring footage is the only clear footage available and that Jeffries looks good in it, wouldn't it be reasonable to say that Jeffries was probably fairly good at evading punches? If it gives an inaccurate portrayal of his skills, that portrayal may be worse rather than better.

 

You could say the smaller gloves contributed to more facial damage ,but wouldnt that be the case for all fighters? Did you ever read of Corbett beingbadly marked in the ring? and he fought a big hitter in Choynsky ,who was wearing skin tight carriage driving gloves,he also went over 60 rounds with Jackson without sustaining a lot of facial damage,ditto his fights with Jeffries,how often was Johnson marked up? I do think Jeffries looked good in training for his come back,Ive said so but he looked pathetic in the fight didnt he? the most extended footage of Jeffries is his defence against Sharkey,do you think he looks good defensively in it?Im not trying to belittle Jeffries abilities but to ascribe clever defensive moves to him ,just because he adopted a crouch seems to be egging the pudding to me,he was super durable and he needed to be,Corbett hit him at will in their first fight,His corner ,after begging him to quit ,told him he had to knock out Fitz before he was blinded,the Iron Man came through ,but it doesnt suggest a Floyd Mayweather type of evasiveness does it.?

 

A few thoughts:

1) Jeffries didn't look that good training for Johnson. In fact, compare his earlier training footage to his Johnson training footage and you'll see a tremendous difference. Even in his Choynski sparring, he looked rather slow and sluggish.

2) I don't think his defensive skills measure up to Mayweather's by a long shot...but then again, which heavyweight can make that claim? From what I've seen of Sharkey and Ruhlin, it's difficult to judge his defensive skills because much of the movement is too subtle to be caught with the blurry cameras. It's difficult to tell which punches landed and which were evaded. I will say that he appears to fight in much the same style as he does in the training clips (where he displayed good evasive skill).

3) Most observers considered Jeffries vastly improved by the time he fought Ruhlin and Corbett for the second time. He was no longer a human punching bag, but a fast and skilled fighter who had started to exploit his speed and reflexes.

4) I'm sure Corbett didn't look great after fighting Choynski and Jackson either. Besides, Corbett is one of the slickest defensive fighters around. Fitzsimmons (also a very skilled defensive fighter) was not so lucky. He was pretty badly mashed against Sharkey, Ruhlin, and Corbett.

 

I find judging ability based on these grainy films to be an artform, and one at which I am not yet at all adept. Too much gets lost.

For perspective, in the sport I cover professionally, the various Youtube videos are *extremely* misleading for judging anything, including raw athleticism. And the depth and quality of those far outweighs that available for pre-modern fighters.

I try to remember that when inclined to judge older athletes too rashly (usually in the negative, in my case).