Sonny Liston vs James J Jefferies

Why does Jeffries supposedly have superior stamina? Because he couldn't get any of his band of midgets out quicker than 20 rounds and had to play the attrition game with them? Meanwhile Liston was icing his opponents early and enjoying a Scotch at the point the 20th round gong would have sounded. That's hardly a ringing endorsement of fistic prowess.

 

Takes them in a Biblical Way? That's the only way I can imagine he could pull such a thing off.

 

I seriously believe Primo Carnera would ko Jeffries whose only real skill was the ability to get the crap knocked out of him but survive to defeat someone weighing 20-30 less. Carnera coulda also absorb punishment and had better boxing skills. Anyway Jeffries would take a bundle from the mob to take a dive.

Regarding Liston...Sonny wins via TKO6.

 

End thread/

 

A fighter taking a shellacking in one or two fights but not most of them, does not make them a guy who relied on absorbing punishment to wear their opponent down.

It just means that they came up against somebody who found a way to penetrate their defence consistently.

Then if secondary accounts are based on that fight, a misleading picture can start to emerge.

Jeffries certainly wasn't some prehistoric version of George Chuvalo.

 

This sort of thing ill informed comment is painful to read!

People need to look at what people were actually saying about Jeffries at the time.

 

You would then seem to be perpetuating a bias on the other side of things. We know the flowery language used by writers at the time to describe fighters. It reminds me of this:

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You'd think some of these fighters could shoot fireballs from their arse... The press knew heroes and people bigger than life sold papers, ya know the business their in... to sell papers. The fact that you'd like us to take the flowery language of the time over what we can see with out own eyes about a fighter says enough about your evidence.

 

Because he fought with injured shoulder ( round two after flooring Sharkey ) against a hall of fame fighter thought of as the Rocky Marciano of his times under white hot lights for 25 rounds. People in the crowd passed out in that heat. Just imaging fighting in it. Reports say Jeffries lost 15 pounds during the match.

As for midgets and runts, that applies to Marshall, who Liston had 25 pounds on too.

 

I don't think that you can dismiss everybody around at the time, as either a nostalgic or a racist.

While of course these factors are prevalent among them, there are people who call it correctly in every era.

 

Again though, knowing the times, and knowing what they are trying to do...sell papers and appease the minority in power by perpetuating myths and racial bias... I should somehow view this flowery language as same level of proof as what I can see with my eyes?

 

If you believe this, I am happy for you. It must be nice.

 

The problem is that this flowery language is all that you have, because there is nothing much to look at with your own eyes, and what little you have is very inconclusive.

Now while it is possible that many people in the era were biased in the way that you say, it does not seem very credible that everybody was biased, or that everybody was wrong.

Has there ever been a champion where the conclusions about them became inescapable (say Muhammad Ali or Wladamir Klitschko), where every contemporary observer got it wrong?

That is what you are asking us to believe!

 

The injury is very reliably verified.

An x ray still survives.