Packey McFarland - The Most Underrated Lightweight of All Time

As for JJ, I'm aware of that claim, but would like to have more info.

Chicago Boxing - by J.J. Johnston and Sean Curtin, 2005, page 31.
Packey McFarland-Crownless Champion.
McFarland came out of Chicago's Stockyard neighborhood and turned professional at 16. He lost only twice in a glorious career and both setbacks came in 1904, his first year. The two fighters who beat him--Dusty Miller and Patsy O'Brien--are long since forgotten.


Packey lost to Miller on Nov 16, 1903, not 1904.
And the thing is most of Packey's career was outside of Chicago, so whatever he found in Chicago newspapers is only a small part of McFarland's career. Had he been alive, we could compare who knows more, but alas.

 

Also, for people, who are at a loss as to why anyone would give the decision to McFarland, why not collect all these reports that I've listed, where the authors don't just say their opinion who they picked the winner, but provide argumentation to defend it. If someone like me, living in Russia, can find most of these sources, then somebody living in USA can do that easily.

I looked up and figured I forgot to add two more decisions in favor of Gibbons to the list, from Right Cross (New York Journal) and from J.P.N. (Newark Evening Star). Not sure who was writing as 'Right Cross' for NY Journal at the time, but JPN obviously stands for Joseph P. Norton.

 

Did McFarland ever discuss his retirement in interviews? He was actually a year younger than Gibbons, who went on to fight 7 more years after their meeting.

 

He had earned and invested over $100K by the end of 1913 and married a wealthy girl, and figured he'd not get a chance to fight for the lightweight title after all, so what's the point to continue his career. He was thinking to claim the welterweight title, but a couple of attempts to arrange a bout with Mike Gibbons during first months of 1914 had fallen through, so he gave up that idea too.

 

Thank you for posting all of these primary sources Senya, really interesting reading.

 

So your argument is that because Gibbons weighed in consistently in the mid 150s that he wasnt weakened by contractually being forced to make 147 the afternoon of the fight? Good luck with that. Ive never heard anyone but you try to claim that official weigh ins are meaningless. Getting to rehydrate for a few hours does not erase the ordeal of having to make weight. Thats exactly why McFarland fought so hard to have Gibbons make that weight. Which, again, is well documented. Ask any fighter. ANY FIGHTER if making weight TODAY when youve got 36 hours to rehydrate makes a difference. Now try to tell me that making weight a few hours before the fight is meaningless. What a crock. Like I said, your bias is beyond ridiculous. And again, Ive acknowledged that a lot of people picked McFarland as the winner. But having seen the fight, unlike you, I dont have to rely on their word alone. I can rely on my own judgement and I find those reports absolutely mystifying. I say again, for the umpteenth time, I fail to see how anyone excepting Ray Charles, could score a fight against Gibbons who threw more, landed more, landed the harder punches, forced the fight and was the better ring general. Period. It makes no sense. And finally, as Ive said before, I will take JJ Johnson's word over a biased Russian who has to cobble together whatever sources he can on the internet. JJ forgot more than you ever knew about McFarland and despite being a big fan of his he wasnt so enamored by him that he couldnt see through the rose colored glasses.

 

Argueing with points I never even expressed in the first place and never confirmed I support/agree with them would be a waste of time, same as argueing with somebody who has made up his mind already, they refuse to even listen to any alternate POV's, even when it's easily available. But, ok, I'll spend a couple of minutes.
1) I never expressed opinion making the weight didn't affect Gibbons.
2) I never stated my own opinion as to the winner of Gibbons-McFarland fight.
3) I never disagreed with the claim that McFarland had a couple of losses.

 

Youve spent a hell of a lot of time throughout numerous posts and numerous forums trying to contend those facts and others. Anyone wanting to waste their time can do a simple search and see your agenda. For someone who has supposedly never expressed an opinion on those facts and has tried to gaslight and say they didnt enter in those unofficial weights as official on boxrec youve spent a lot of time on your keyboard arguing against any other notion. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

 

Here is a thread from boxrec from 2012, when you supposedly quit being an editor, where we discuss you adding those unofficial weights. Notice how hard you fought for your position and how hard you argued about Gibbons not struggling to make weight. Yet here you want to lie and pretend that wasnt you that added UNOFFICIAL weights, which were told to the announcer by their managers, not even weighed in or weighed before witnesses and that you never made such an argument.


[url]https://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=150605&start=50[/url]


Like I said, methinks the lady doth protest too much...

 

Re: Mike or Tommy Gibbons?
Post by Senya13 » 05 May 2012, 01:31
It may not refute it, but neither does it sound as conclusive that Mike really had so much difficulty making weight.


But let's just ignore that.
No fighter ever reduced his usual portions of meals or water shortly before the weigh-in's to be sure he'd make weight, except Mike Gibbons in September 1915, I got that.
Besides, every single weight on Mike Gibbons's record entered in boxrec was confirmed by at least three notary publics, and wasn't just announced at the ringside with no journalist being present at the weigh-in to confirm it.

 

Like I said, for a guy who continues to lie about his agenda you sure seem to want to push it.

 

Some people continue to use the "straw man" fallacy, even when you point out you never said the things they are trying to argue with. But ok, we all figured that 151-152 lbs stands for mid-150's, and that the weights reported at ringside in fights where there was no cap or the upper bound was intentionally very high were always their genuine weights that you should trust 100%. Gibbons thought it was too easy, so he intentionally weakened himself by dropping down to 151-152 regularly to make it more interesting.

 

Its no straw man at all. I literally didnt name you when I made the comment on here about what you entered in Boxrec and yet you came on here defending yourself saying you hadnt been an editor on boxrec since 2012. Why come out of the blue to defend yourself and pretend you didnt enter that faulty bull**** into Boxrec when I didnt name you? Because you know and I know that you did! Yet you keep denying you entered that information and made those arguments when in fact you were making them with me back in 2012 and the posts show you admitting you entered that information and defending it.

Go back and show me how many fights throughout history that required a weigh in gave a limit to how much a fighter could rehydrate. Do it. People didnt start doing that until the 2000s and even today its rare. You know damn good and well that the official weights were 147. There was no official 151, 152, or 153. You also know that those weights were literally given to the announcer by their managers. For all anyone knows Gibbons could have weighed 160 and McFarland could have weighed 145. Hence an official weigh in. Again, if you are going to pull that kind of bull**** then why not go back and change all of the records where an unofficial weight was announced ringside? Go look at Gatti-Gamache and tell me what Boxrec says the official weights were? Here: 140.5 for Gatti and 140 for Gamache. You wont even find their unofficial weights from the HBO weigh in taken place in the locker room before the fight with witnesses in their wiki and yet Gamache weighed 145 and Gatti weighed 160. That weigh in was far more formal than the weights announced for Gibbons-McFarland and yet NOBODY considers those the official weights. The only time ive ever seen the unofficial weights listed officially in any fighters record was for this fight when you entered them because youve been denying for years that Gibbons had to make weight and it might have effected his performance. Thats it and again, anyone can search your name here and on boxrec and see that simple fact.


And Im not even sure what your comment about Gibbons supposedly dropping down to 151 or 152 is about. That only makes sense if you think the fight was officially contracted at the announced weights, which it wasnt. It was contracted at 147, a weight Gibbons hadnt fought at in 2 years and a weight McFarland PUBLICLY argued very hard for because he knew it would weaken Gibbons. Why argue so hard if that weight was were Gibbons would be comfortable??? Oh, you want to ignore that fact and pretend that the fighters weighing in at a contracted weight on the afternoon of the fight was meaningless or never happened. And this is, again, all besides the point because Gibbons was the aggressor throughout the fight, landed more, threw more, landed harder and was always in control. Which is exactly why Ive said all along that the numbers of people supporting McFarland the following day are mystifying. They say "McFarland outboxed Gibbons." How??? By holding, running, and landing 1/5 the punches Gibbons did? Jesus, what a biased tool. Anyone can go on Youtube and watch the 10 minute highlight of the film and see that even though its edited to make it more exciting its still Gibbons dominating the fight. I know, you hate it. You hate that JJ found another loss by McFarland and refuse to consider it but thats just another example of how biased you are.

 

I'm absent from the forum for half a year (because I got tired of looking for new VPN's every now and then to visit a boxing forum of all places, after they banned anyone coming from Russian IP's accessing the site some time last year, I guess it's too dangerous to have Russian people talking about boxing), then I decide I'm ready to resume working on the history of bareknuckle boxing again and visit the forum once more to ask for a clipping that was mentioned long time ago, and I see a recent alert of my name being mentioned in one thread and in an very insulting way. I don't even remember any boxrec threads from 10+ years ago, but naturally I expect if somebody was so upset by my entering the weights announced at ringside to a bout, there's a whole section at boxrec forum where anybody can request some information added or altered if they think it's missing or incorrect, more than a decade has passed since then, but I guess some people will look for a reason to whine rather than eliminate the reason of their displeasure in no time, I'm sure there are some boxrec editors who can be found even at this forum and could be asked to change it.

I decided to even spend an hour looking through Gibbons' record in 1914-1916 and to find quotes from primary sources wherever the weights were mentioned in the report to show that it was common practice to *announce weights at ringside* and some of them being listed at boxrec (not entered by me), but for some reason that doesn't bother anyone, nobody is complaining. I know for a fact that most of those bouts had no upper limit of how much the fighters could weigh, and one time it was even reported that "both fighters weighed in at 160 lbs" or something like that, not in the way that they actually weighed so heavy, but that they were both within that limit, same as Gibbons and McFarland likely didn't weigh 147 lbs exactly, they were below that mark, the arrow didn't move when they stepped on the scales. But even taking these unofficial weights, it was common for Gibbons to weigh in at 151-152 range in bouts where he didn't have to make that weight, he was obviously perfectly comfortable with that weight, and reducing another 4 pounds from that mark is not something one have to go through Hell to achieve, not easy, but far from impossible, with the weigh-in being 7 hours earlier than when they have to enter the ring. Many fighters from that era had done that and didn't use that an excuse for their subpar performance (again, I'm not saying who deserved the win, I wasn't present at the fight and I haven't seen the full film either, so I'm not qualified to pick the winner).

As for another loss by McFarland, it was me who corrected the date for Dusty Miller bout at boxrec, adding comments about that loss from primary sources. I have no source for another loss, so I couldn't enter it in boxrec database, naturally, I never did that on anybody's record if I didn't have a primary source to confirm it.

 

I've learned two things in my life. 1. Packey McFarland was great. 2. Never paint a radiator.
If you don't learn both of these things completely, it will lead to unnecessary complications.