What's the truth behind Jeffries' weight loss?

johnson being the guy he was, would not have ended it early. He’d have purposely prolonged it so the racists would have to watch him pummel their champ for longer, all while he was wearing that giant **** eating grin you can see in footage from the fight.

I love the kind of men of history, sports or otherwise, who face a society/situation that hates them, and give a giant middle finger to it all. Half the **** Johnson did in his life was probably just as a middle finger to the society of the time.

can’t blame him. If I were a black man back then? Can’t say I’d have been happy. Wokeness is dumb, but racial blindness is great, and they sure as hell were not racially blind back then.

 

I quoted you again here because I am also very interested in same but haven’t been able to turn up much to date.

Totally agree. Some say he didn’t support fellow blacks or provide as a sufficient role model but completely miss that he gave many the example of a man who defied prejudice to live his life his way - that’s a pretty good damn role model.

Just on Jeff’s weight, I recently found Jeffries’ rare book Two Fisted Jeff free, online (see below - very much worth a read).

In it, Jeffries himself said he trained down from 260 lbs - so other claims have been somewhat exaggerated.

Another takeaway from a quick scan of the book is that Jeff was bitter for years over the loss - still bitter as at the time of writing (in 1929) still holding that hard evidence of him being drugged would eventually be revealed.

In his book, Jeffries also claimed that Johnson was highly overrated and that Jack hadn’t really fought/defeated any great men. He really only gave Johnson credit for his defence.

Tbh, the way Jeff described himself the night before the fight and going into the fight the next day - he read like a man who had basically experienced a breakdown - overwhelmed by and in denial of the task set for him.

I think Corbett expressed the same opinion - a nervous/mental breakdown, causing Jeff to not even be capable of concentrating on regular poker games whilst in camp.


TWO FISTED JEFF: -

https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll21/id/2986/

 

thanks for that link brother!

 

You’re welcome. Enjoy.