Steve Lott not a Mike Gibbons fan

I dont know. I know Tommy was involved in Mike's gym and training fighters there etc. I have Tommy's scrapbook but it doesnt mention working with mike on the boxing courses etc.

 

You actually bring a good example regarding low lefts pretty, Mayweather who likes to keep the low left, getting smashed by Mosley with his left down before going peekaboo to stop it happening again. Mayweather likes to keep the left low to invite punches he can counter but brings his hands up against quicker powerful punches who can take advantage of it.

Indeed all examples are very good, you can be a top fighter with low hands but it's a risk. It lets you punch better in my opinion, al

Patterson took other risks which was leading with left hooks and leaping in with them, leaving him open to counters.

Then there's Ali leaving low hands against Frazier and leaning back from punches. Ali started bringing his hands up more after he slowed.

So I don't think all old school fighters could get away with low hands, they would have trouble against quicker boxers, especially big punching quick boxers.

Also peekaboo technicians like Winky Wright and Ottke would have allot of success against low handed quick boxers. Winky Wright incidently is a boxer who started out with lower hands and changed his style after picking up painful losses. Both shower up quicker lower handed fighters. Much like Barrera-Hamed or Bradley-Witter.

 

Patterson might be a bad example. Despite his reputation for being chinny he was only legitimately knocked out 3 times in 64 fights and those stoppages came against two of the most hellacious punchers in history.

 

What about the number of times he was down though?

 

This has been suggested as a key flaw of the peek-a-boo style, compromised squared-up balance with limited vision. These knockdowns were usually early round occurrences. With a screwed up back, he took a round six knee in Ali I from accumulated distress. He got decked in the fourth during his penultimate win over Bonavena. Otherwise, all his official career knockdowns occurred within the opening three rounds. He only appeared genuinely stunned by punches against Ingo and Liston. He remained upright against Moore, and in Ingo II [although he wobbled a bit when Johansson did connect with his right].

Machen, Powell, Chuvalo, Cooper, Ellis and Daniels did not drop him. All punched well enough that they might have been able to deck Patterson during Floyd's title reigns, when he may still have been maturing physically. Ali did not floor him in his career finale.

I think he was more susceptible to early round flash knockdowns when he was starting slowly and was less physically mature and experienced. Certainly he didn't have a first rate chin, but that was only really exposed by Ingo and Sonny. Excellent conditioning made him resilient though. He had no business getting up from the second knockdown Ingo could have killed him with in their first match, yet was actually punching back between all those knockdowns when Goldstein was finally persuaded to stop it. And he was getting up and barely counted out both times against Liston. Floyd was never KTFO the way he regained the title from Ingo, or the way Sonny was by Leotis.

Only Bonavena dropped him during the ten bouts he had in the 1970s. After he turned 30, the knockdowns he sustained were to Ringo, the knee in Ali I, and the three second round flash KDs in the two bouts with JQ.

He never took on Cleveland Williams, Mac Foster, Leotis Martin or Joe Frazier, in which case we might have a more consistent baseline for the quality of his chin. [Shavers, and Lyle came along too late to have been reasonably expected as viable opponents for Floyd. George Foreman was somebody nobody wanted to see Patterson in with by the time Floyd returned from his two year hiatus following Ellis. He did however knock out Levi Forte in two rounds immediately after Levi became the first to take Foreman the ten round limit.]

Why did Tyson's peek-a-boo not result in the same rash of career knockdowns Floyd had? For one, he was a much faster starter than Floyd, and with a much sturdier physical template. Also, Cus was able to iron out earlier flaws in it.

 

Well, another criticism of Floyd and his style is the fact that he would often leap in with both feet off the ground. This is a major no-no in boxing and leaves you off balance and extremely susceptible to knockdowns.

 

But the fact of how his "kangaroo/gazelle" hook from hell nearly killed Ingo has insulated him from some of that criticism. But to pull off the cross arm of an Archie Moore or leaping attack of a Patterson successfully, one had better be gifted with the reflexes and speed of a Moore or Patterson. No, I would not be using their footage as instructional material on how to box correctly.

Not entirely sure what historical example I'd use for an aspiring boxer using an orthodox stance [maybe Benny Leonard among ATGs], but I've always felt that Jim Watt [a natural right hander who was simply more comfortable jabbing with his dominant hand] was an exemplary southpaw, not blessed with great speed, tremendous natural punching power, talent or an extraordinary physical stature for his weight, just hard training with solid, jab based fundamentals.

 

I think Joe Louis is as textbook as it gets.

 

The article was entitled: Fleischer vs Jacobs- The Great Debate....which isn't strictly true as one of them presents a very good argument, the other just inlcuded old quotes, lists and talks about Jack Johnson for 90% of his "debate". I'm not joking either. :yep

Jacobs's section was called "pictures don't lie: modern superior to oldtime boxers" presents a view that, in all honesty, a lot of us have reached when we can be true to ourselves, in that we are often disappointed in some of these old time fighters after seeing for ouselves rather than read the opinions of others. He acknowledges that these fighters were excellent...for their time but that modern boxers (1960s in this case) were generally far superior to those 50+ years before.

Fleischer spends a paragraph or two saying the film doesn't represent a true vision of what he has "in his mind" about these fighters; Jacobs answers that you can still tell techniques and that he had was often in "disbelief" at what he had seen of some of these old-timers and that the clearly became far more legendary as time passed and that there was a massive inconsistency with what he'd heard and what he then saw on film...which is obvious to most of us. Like I said, Nat doesn't counter any questions about techniques, styles and methods....he just talks about how Jack Johnson was the best and lists a big load of people who thought so....including his father-in-law and anybody else who was a day older than grass.

 

Not sure what Steve was on about, I think Mike Gibbons would have no problem competing today. Same with Tommy. They both look very impressive on film.

Also, them carrying their hands low was important to their styles. It was essentially bait.