Pick one lightheavyweight to fight Jack Johnson

Disagreement is fine ,personal opinion is what makes this forum,biased hatred is not.

 

We want to squash this foul fest between you and Mendoza.

Its not what this forum should be about.

 

Different papers had different stances, to swear by single reports of information not even always entirely factual, but spruced up to help a story is a trait of revisionism.

The American public were not fans of the way Johnson fought and, consequently, would replace 'defensively adept' with 'boring' and 'ring generalship' with 'scared'. If one was unaware of the stark racism at the time, the reports could be easily misinterpreted.

When you had a group of good ol' 'whities' fighting their hearts out against a smug 'Negro' the papers felt almost obliged to downplay Johnson's control over his man for the sake of the white race.

From the reports Ted Spoon has read of the O' Brien fight, your average story goes - Johnson showed up out of shape and completely uninterested in a game O' Brien, yet had no trouble in negating his advances.

By your average measure, Johnson is due criticism for his lazy nature as champion, but you must understand this was his control over the division at the time.

Johnson’s reputation was highly revered and is what gave him that historical shot at Burns. Nobody doubted Johnson’s ability in the ring - if the true test was to take out his man, good fighters like O’ Brien and Moran would have been rid of with little fuss, but as Georges Carpentier said - “He seemed to take a ghoulish pleasure’ in stringing out his fights and frustrating his rival (Carpentier refereed the Frank Moran bout).

 

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Stop with your baseless acquisitions already. I think everyone here who has followed this thread knows who started the personal stuff in this thread first. I agree with Janitor. Let's move on.[/FONT]

 

Thats what Ive allways understood as Johnsons character,kos and blood weren,t important to him,rubbing the whites noses in the mud was ,and to some extent who can blame him ?Ithink he brought a lot of it on himself being the kind of man he was,a strutting ,preening ,egoist,unreliable,and conceited.Joe Jeanette or Langford would probably have been accepted easier,but thats the kind of man Johnson was .Your take on the OBrien 6 rounder is in line with everyone elses ,bar Mendoza,s,who says OBrien had much the better of the affair and on the strength of it should have got a title shot,the fact that OBrien was kod 3 weeks later by Ketchel ,and only won 1 out of the remaining 9 fights he had doesnt seem to matter.If OBrien put up a good show ,wouldnt the White press have clamoured for Johnson to defend against him? Since no clamour was forth coming , what conclusion should we reach ?Ive read various books that state Johnson was out of shape ,and treated the whole thing as a joke on the public,no book says OBrien did well ,in fact both were castigated ,Johnson for his disdain for the paying customers ,and OBrien for his timidity.Since Johnson knocked OBrien down twice ,one wonders what OBrien did to win " 3 possibly 4 rds "as Mendoza asserted.