Can someone school me on Jimmy Slattery? How good was he? Looked to have very good skills in the excerpts of his fight against Paul Berlenbach that are available on youtube.
He had phenomenal reflexes, and might have had the most potential of all of the light heavyweights of that era. Unfortunately he lacked discipline, and partied hard between fights. This inevitably caught up with him in the end.
As alluded to above, first class boozer along with the life events that either follow or precipitate that state.
Slats was one of the best dancers of his era, and had very good defense as well. He was pretty inconsistent though, as he didn't train as often as he should've. He had close fights Loughran and Rosenbloom.
He would have easily had his way with the likes of an Artur Beterbiev or any other modern fighter for that matter
I recall that Robert Thornton, a boxing writer whose articles I always enjoyed, compared Jimmy's style to that of Muhammad Ali. He wrote for several magazines in the '50s and '60s and had for the era an extensive collection of GFC boxing films. He relied on footage of the Berlenbach-Slattery fight, which is to my knowledge the only surviving footage of Slattery. Thornton was an editor of Boxing Illustrated in the '60s, I believe, which is my favorite boxing magazine of all time. I am not sure what magazine this article appeared in. I have it in the basement somewhere.
At first the Berlenbach fight had me skeptical of Slats, but upon rewatching it becomes clear that most of the shots I thought landed on him actually didn't, his reflexes were just that good. Seems like an Ali or Roy Jones of his time.
