Whch other lineal heavyweight champions could Tommy Burns have beaten?

It tells us everything. Boxing is not an accumulation of the predictable and explainable but a drama of the unpredictable and the unexplainable.

Vitali Klitchko beats the **** out of Byrd for 9 rounds and suffers a separated shoulder. Fluky? No, it's Life. Byrd wins fair and square. How many fighters have I seen knocked downed only to suffer ACL, MCL injuries or broken ankles? At least a dozen live! That is not a fluke. That is the price of getting in the ring.

 

Burns was stocky, but short..... He really doesn't fair well with "Modern" heavies at all............ Burns, fighting between 170 to 190, has a chance against anyone...... Tommy Burns was a talented athlete of the early 20th century... Peace...

MR.BILL

 

Byrd won fair and square, but it doesn't really tell me he is better than Vitali.

How much money would you have put on Byrd in a rematch?

I have seen a great many fights and broken ankles are pretty rare and fluky also.

 

Look up what happened with Langford after his boxing career and you will have tears in your eyes.

 

I heard Sam Langford wound up blind and broke.... I'm not sure how he died or what the "People" did with his body, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty....:|

MR.BILL

 

Folks, it sucks about these stories, etc... However, that is life.... I know all too well how hard reality hits..... Look, in truth, MOST folks like to live-it-up and enjoy themselves while the goin' is good.... MOST folks don't like to sit on cash-flow and stay home and watch the tube sippin' a Pepsi with popcorn.... Peole like to hit the show / club for adult entertainment.... I sure as hell do.... Well, same thing for these old-time athletes and actors in show-biz.... However, once these folks grow old and stale, and find out their careers' are going in the crapper, and the money well is drying up, they find themselves screwed over later in life.... I hate seeing a former rich / popular star of some kind living in a small apartment and using the bus for transportation when they are 70 years old..... SEE "Bela Lugosi" and "Laurel & Hardy" for that matter.. Christ, look at Joe Louis..... That's bull**** for that to happen.... BUT! That's life....

MR.BILLatsch

 

It was a robbery, not a draw. Jim Battling deserved to win the fight, the trouble was it was Jack Johnson's show. The news read is below.

[url]http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9806E1D6103FE633A25753C2A9649D946296D6CF&oref=slogin[/url]

 

I've seen at least 4 I can think of, severely sprained if not broken. My favorite was King Ipitan getting his ankle broken after David Tua hit him in the chin. More often, you see screwed up knees after a fall or knockdown.

And, no, I wouldn't have put a dime on Byrd in the rematch.

 

This closer to my point... and again farther away from the subject of this thread.

 

Another poster asked for my reply regarding Jack Johnson vs Battling.

Back to the topic at hand. I have seen some of Burns vs Squires, and O'Brien. vs men his size, Burns is a real attack dog type of fighter in the ring. The trouble for Burns in this thread is he was the shortest heavyweight champ of all time, and one of the lightest.

 

Burns at 5' 7" tall takes the cake there... Weight wise, I suppose Ol' Bob Fitzsimmons was the lightest at roughly 178 or so pounds.?.?

MR.BILL

 

1. The evidence from the French papers posted on this thread strongly indicates that this fight was scheduled for 10 rounds, despite the endlessly repeated argument that it was stopped prematurely.

2. The NY Times is entitled to their opinion, but it is only their opinion. The French papers describe a bout in which Johnson was winning easily for the first five rounds until injured. The man who had the responsibility for calling the decision, the referee, called it a draw.

3. You can make of this fight vis-a-vis Johnson's historical ranking what you will. My take--a 35 year old Johnson fought a second-rater who was probably not among his top thirty opponents. He was winning easily until injured. I consider this a fluke fight which tells us next to nothing about Johnson as an ATG, except that he had the courage to finish the fight with a broken arm.