Tommy Burns as champion. Did he face top ten ranked opponets? How many did he beat?

The quality of Burns's title opponents, kind of shows why Jeffries retired when he did.

Given that he was not willing to fight the top black contenders, he was going to be sweeping up the pick of a bad lot, and probably traveling increasingly far afield to meet them.

Can you imagine Jeffries Squires, or Jeffries O'Brien, or Jeffries Moir generating a lot of excitement?

 

From memory there was a little bit of talk about Jeffries Squires wasnt there?

Burns O Brien I wasnt so much a title defence as it was a unification bout, so Burns can hardly be criticised for that one. Also the idea of him fighting against the best Britain fighters and Aussie fighters can also be considered a unification since each had as good or better claim to a championship than his, which was based simply on beating a randomly chosen american fighter.

He also tried to unify against the coloured champion.

Burns reign can be criticised for a lot of things, but choice of opponents is not one of them.

By the way, as an interesting side note, after he held the World Title, Burns held the second strongest title in the world, the Commonwealth title for years. Why are langford/McVey not criticised for sitting on their Australian Titles and not chasing Burns, the Commonwealth champion.

 

Burns didn't have the luxury of travelling forward in time a couple of years, nabbing Hague shortly after he defeated Moir for the European championship and then dragging him back to 1907 to face instead of Squires. At the time, facing the champion of the Commonwealth and Australia probably was considered a greater challenge than facing the then-champion of Yorkshire. So, Burns faced the hard-punching Squires instead...

...And handled him just about as decisively as he would have handled Hauge. Like Squires, Hauge was crude and relied on his power and Burns excelled against that type of fighter.

Honestly, had Burns faced Hague instead of Squires, his resume wouldn't look any better. Hague's best victory was against Moir, coming off a layoff and a loss to Burns...at a point when Burns had already lost the title. Had he faced Burns, you'd happily be referring to him as a "bum" and you damned well know it.