Tell me about Harold Johnson

check greatA's awesome tribute:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE8xqtIkXsk[/ame]

 

Watch his fight with Charles instead. I think it does the great man better justice.

 

No man ever devoted himself more to the study of the technical side of boxing. He was the technician's technician. I know his deficit was that he was percieved as "boring" by some. He was shunned by the top marquee names...and Teddy Brenner thought he knew why.."Harold Johnson represents perfection in the art of boxing...and in this world there just isn't any room for perfection"..a left handed, bull**** "compliment" if there ever was one.

 

He reminds me of hopkins a lot for some reason

 

Basically he is a well schooled boxer-puncher with solid fundamentals. His jab is a thing of beauty, he uses it consistently and pops it out often, he has a slight left hand orientated offence and this combined with regular use of his jab left him vulnerable to a right handed attack (see vs Oakland Billy Smith), but his jab he used well to keep opponents off balance and set up combinations, especially that left hook or straight right.

The Charles fight is a good example of Johnson's good, steady left hand work. As he sets up Charles for combinations and counters with his consistent jabbing and feints.

His offence aside from that left hand is solid. Despite being generally considered as a craftsman, he could whack and become a very tidy and efficient boxer-puncher as his blow-out of the tough Von Clay shows. Johnson hardly wasted an ounce of energy as he turned his straight right into left hooks and vice versa. Very tidy combination puncher. Also he demonstrated a real crushing right hand in KOing Paul Andrews with a lovely 1-2, he timed his counter-punch well for it. Throwing the jab, seeing the opening on Andrews and firing the right hand down the pipe.

On the defensive side of things, he was nothing fancy. He parried shots well with his right glove, but generally favoured foot movement (not overtly though just steps and moves much like Juan Manuel Marquez) but he combined it well with blocking (again like Marquez), he could be a little stiff with his head, which combined with his consistent left hand use left vulnerable to right hands. But he generally covered this weakness superbly.

While it looks like his offence is superior to his defence, he was not an offensive fighter. He tended to let things happen of the counter, even if he was leading with his jab he was waiting for the countering oppertunity to unleash his combinations and hard counters. So when faced with movement and a counter puncher he tended to look less than stellar (as Pastrano proved, forcing Johnson into an offensive stalker role, which he did fairly well.)

Hope that is what you'r looking for. Johnson is a favrouite of mine. Is there anything else you want to know?

 

Johnson was textbook perfection..like GP says, he did nothing flashy or fancy...all by the book

 

Yep, and hes great to watch because of it IMO

 

I'd rate him lower top ten.

His career was solid. I mean he was the clear number 2 Heavyweight of his time until Archie Moore decded to concentrate on the big boys, then Johnson had a nice dominant reign. He had a few anomaly losses but generally he was consistent. It would have been interesting to see more of him after he lost the title IMO.

Also his Heavyweight resume is underrated he was a solid contender for a while and has good wins over the likes of Charles, Machen etc...

 

Great fighter curtousy of a lot of big wins.

His last fight came when he was ancient, getting stopped on cuts in the 3rd round. One of the sadder comebacks ever in my opinion since he had a zillion kids to feed and he never made any money during his career.

 

Yeh he was older because Moore was in his way. You take away Archie Moore and Johnson would have been champ alot earlier an a lot longer IMO