The underrated Jimmy Young

My sentiments exactly, joebeadg!!

 

Thank you for posting. Very good read.

 

Young defintely knew how to fight. His win over prime Foreman is outstanding.

 

Great stuff. I like Frank's pieces alot. Thanks for the articles on Parker too.

 

Yes, outstanding,..and ranks as aesthetically satisfying performance as Barrera over Hamed...and almost as good as Locche-Fuji. Young-Foreman is immensely satisfying to watch for me.

 

Excluding the Roman and Ballard fights, Jimmy Young was very good from 1975 to 1977.

Unfortunately, his career spanned from 1969 to 1990.

And he only had 26 wins to go along with 19 losses or draws during the other 18 years.

Most top-tier fighters with a 20-year career have a lot of success over 17 or 18 years, and may have three bad years toward the end. They don't have three good years and 17 or 18 bad years.

Jimmy Young is anything but underrated. I never saw someone with a career like that so OVERRATED outside of Emanuel Augustus.

 

Great article.

Young was probably the number one HW for a short time in 1976-1977.

 

You seem to be a champion at throwing out numbers w/out context.

Do you really think many of the Boxing Geeks on here are going to fall for that amateurish ploy.

This isn't youtube.

Jimmy Young began to fade after the Norton fight and the losses piled up.

It is irrelevant what his final stats are in measuring his prime worth.

 

He didn't BEGIN to fade after the Norton fight. He reverted to form. The Jimmy Young who stunk out the arena against Roman and struggled to get past Jody Ballard showed up against Ossie Ocasio twice, and it wasn't good enough, either time.

I starting watching boxing in 1975 when Jimmy Young was beginning his climb up the ratings. I sat in front of my TV and rooted for him against Ali. But it's not the 1970s anymore. We saw who Jimmy Young was over the course of his long career. We also watched Young look like complete garbage in a number of fights in the 1970s, which everyone here is totally ignoring. And I watched him totally blow one opportunity after another to get another title shot after the Ali and Norton bouts when he was still a relatively young heavyweight.

When I saw he was going to fight on TV, I always tuned in, hoping he'd turn it around. And 99 percent of the time, he disappointed or didn't seem to give a rat's ass about his conditioning or the fight he was involved in.

The guy had a 20+ year career. He had three good years in the middle there. THOUSANDS of fighters put together winning streaks. Thousands of fighters are bad, then good for a spell, then bad again.

I can understand someone who just started following boxing, like I was then, seeing an underdog almost win a title and then rooting for him after that. But, after 40+ years, you realize Jimmy Young was just one of thousands of guys who put together a short streak and then receded into the background again.

It's fun for a while. But come back to freaking reality. There really wasn't anything special about him, just like there wasn't anything special about those others who were mediocre for 18 years and had a good two or three years in contention somewhere in there. At some point, all the top guys have a bad night and lose to someone. That doesn't make all those "someones" the BEST EVER, too.

Whatever. I was done talking about this until you called me out.

 

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I agree with Dubblechin as well.
He lost more the he won.
The Norton bout was razor thin it wasnt a robbery.
The Ali fight stunk. Young actually ducked his head outside of the ropes to avoid being hit at times.

 

nothing special about guy who is smaller, not a big puncher beating a prime Lyle 2x, arguably beating ali. arguably beating a prime Shavers and Norton and beating a prime foreman, ? He should have got the nod in occasio and dokes. the man had crazy skills. he was nuanced in the ring, the little things he did were huge for those who saw them.

 

I vaguely remember Jimmy Young . Because there was a radio broadcaster here in the UK with the same name, Young was a headline writer's dream. I remember the Ali fight and the discussions afterwards. The consensus was that Young blew it as, although Ali couldn't land a decent shot and looked bad, Jimmy was content with this and didn't put his foot on the gas in the last third of the fight when he should have.
Whether he was any more of a hard luck story than Eddie Machen, Zora Folley or so many others is, I guess, down to your point of view but thanks Phillyphan for taking the time to post such a considered piece. Also nice to see a civilised discussion.