Was Jack Johnson Overated? (fighting ability and stylewise)

jack johnson is underrated I see him as the most skilled Heavyweight boxer out of all of them!

 

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notice how Burley hops out of range for most of the punches and when hes against the rope he does all taht tricky head movement and counters the punch Smith throws before tying smith up and working the inside

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Johnson fights the same way , but instead of the tricky head movement he catches the punches and ties up and works the inside
Johnson was very good at leading too I have noticed he lands his jab even when the opponent has his hand in a parry position(look at the ketchel fight)

He had power in both hands , and was better in the clinch than just about every heavy , leads and counters well it is a shame how under appreciated he was.

 

Not a fan of JJ. Never saw much to him.

 

He was just about on par with the rest of the heavyweight champions from that time. Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Jeffries and Johnson in their primes could probably defeat each other on any given night. Johnson loses me a bit when he would insist on holding onto his midget opponents for dear life, putting such a death grip on their biceps during clinches that they would barely be able to raise their arms by the end of the round. Makes you wonder how he would get by with modern gloves that didn't have the opposable thumbs, but that's neither here nor there.

It's very funny to see people hit the comment section on YouTube after just watching that PBS documentary for the first time, and they're quoting lines from it verbatim and confidently ranking Johnson above Ali and Joe Louis, or other such nonsense.

 

Why doesn't this surprise me

 

I think Jack is one of the 8 or so HEAVYWEIGHT Champions who could beat all the others. Easily he fits there.

 

He is overrated by modern fans but that’s not his fault.He was the best heavyweight of his time and that the best anyone can strive to achieve

 

Let's take your points in turn.

1. Was Johnson lacking in technique?

Obviously not. Boxing is about hitting and not getting hit, and he clearly excelled by this metric, whether his style is pleasing to the eye or not.

2. Did Johnson make his bones against smaller opposition?

No, he actually fought more men over 200lbs, than any champion before the 70s, with the exception of Joe Louis. He was the smaller man in a number of his key career fights.

3. Did Jack Johnson fail to meet his most qualified challenger?

On this question, I have to conclude that he did. This is an entirely legitimate criticism, but he is not the only all time great that it can be leveled against.

 

For his time he was ahead of the pack but let's be honest, compared to modern boxers he doesn't impress. If he was at heavyweight today, even in the current steaming heap that is the HW division, I think he'd be a ham and egger.

 

Vastly overrated but then most men are attracted to fairy tales about hyper masculine effectiveness.

 

In order to comment on Jack Johnson I'm going to bring up an entirely different style of Lineal Heavyweight Champion, Rocky Marciano. Why? Because, as an adult, I lived through Marciano's entire career, and followed it closely, and there are some striking similarities with what's said by critics about him today and what was said when he fought. From what I've read, I suspect it was and is the same with Jack Johnson.

I won't get into the details. Anyone who follows this Boxing Site knows what they are. There is no point in regurgitating them in a new post.

What it boils down to is, for various different reasons, they couldn't compete today because...take your pick. In Rocky's case the same exact thing was said most of the time when he was getting ready to face an opponent: Louis, Walcott, Charles. I heard a lot of people say Mathews or even La Starza would be too much for him. They all made great, convincing arguments for why the Rock would lose for sure. They all fell apart during the fight in question. It was probably the same with Jack Johnson, and still is to this day.

IMHO, Jack was an all-time great. It's not remembering one's youth through rose colored glasses, because I doubt if anybody's still alive who saw Jack fight in his prime. There's no criticisms I've ever read about him on here or elsewhere that would convince me he wasn't an all-time great in the Heavyweight Division.

 

I think the idea that Langford would ever have a chance against Johnson is way overblown. Jack handled him easily prior to winning the championship. The claim that Johnson was afraid to fight Langford was propagated in large part by Langford's manager, Joe Woodman, who falsified the facts of the first and only Johnson-Langford fight to drum up interest in a second fight. Johnson also had established his superiority against Jeannette and MeVey before he became champion as well. Langford put on weight later after Jack became champion, but it slowed Sam down, and he still wouldn't have been to defeat Johnson, IMO. As far as the claim that Johnson avoided Langford, it's true that he didn't want to fight Sam for peanuts, but Jack had agreed in principle to the match with Australian promoter Hugh McIntosh in the fall of 1912. According to Clay Moyle's excellent Sam Langford biography, Johnson had agreed with McIntosh to fight both Langford and McVey for a total guarantee of $50,000. Negotiations had proceeded to the point where Jack was bickering with McIntosh about where the $15,000 forfeit should be posted (either in Australia or the USA) when final deliberations were upended on October 17 with Johnson's arrest in Chicago for allegedly violating the Mann Act. So the idea that Johnson avoided Langford has to be weighed against the fact that he had virtually agreed to the match when circumstances arguably beyond his control eliminated the best opportunity for the match to take place.

 

Taking your points in turn.

1. How good was the version of Sam Langford that Johnson beat?

Not very good in my opinion. Langford at this point was a regional level fighter, just testing the waters at heavyweight. I do think that Johnson beat a very good version of Sam McVea, for comparison. I don't care how old McVea was, if he was being touted as the outstanding contender for champion Jim Jeffries, then that is obviously a very good win. In Langford's case I do think that he needed to fight him again.

2. Would Langford have had a chance?

Possibly, because he hit his prime when Johnson was perhaps past his, and you can never count out a finisher like Langford. I imagine that Johnson would have been the betting favorite, but if there was anybody who could beat him, it was probably Langford.

3. Was it Johnson's fault that they didn't fight?

Quite possibly not. As you rightly point out, significant obstacles were thrown in his path. However, whatever the reasons for the fight not happening, the bottom line is that it didn't happen.