Why Is Jack Johnson Given Credit For Beating Jeffries

Ken Burns is about hero-building and not rigorous analysis. I like some of the raw footage in that documentary, but outside of that it's a predictable exercise in glorification. Pure rubbish.

 

I didn't come to this conclusion when watching the biography or reading the book. But I knew plenty before I read/saw it. Keep in mind this was a biography about Johnson, not about Jeffries or Willard.

I think Jeffries was still as good or better as the white hopes Johnson beat during his prime and Johnson get's as much credit for it.
Johnson was overweight and undertrained against Willard but still was better than him in the first part of the fight. Willard simply outlasted Johnson. Considering Johnson still had a decent career after he lost his title. Willard get's full credit from me. But thing is mos people only remember tthe old Willard that got thrashed by Dempsey and this overshadows the Johnson win.

 

I think the fact that Jeff and Tommy Burns lasted as long as they did with Johnson raises questions about Jack's punching power. Much of Lil' Artha's credibility for Reno comes from Jeff himself and Jack London. Jeffries claimed afterward that even at his best he couldn't have beaten Johnson, while London conceded that the champion had no yellow streak after all. Jeff's physique looked impressive, his reputation as a fanatical trainer was legend, he'd never been beaten, and he was just a year older than Corbett was when Gentleman Jim came out of a two year hiatus to give Jeff hell.

I equate Jeffries-Corbett I to Willard-Johnson. In both matches, it wasn't the superior boxer who won, but the tougher and more durable man. I've remained adamant that 15 rounds is the true championship distance for determining pugilistic superiority, and that longer matches are mere endurance contests. Jeffries and Willard prevailed over Corbett and Johnson strictly by outlasting them. (It's fortunate for Jeff's legacy that the film of the first Corbett fight failed to develop properly.)

Willard boxed a smartly conservative match according to the demands and opportunities presented by the 45 round limit, relying on his relative youth, conditioning, size, strength and toughness to see him through to the finish. But an aging and overweight Johnson still outboxed him handily over the initial 15 rounds, and that footage thoroughly convinced viewers that Jess could not have been competitive with Jack if confined to 15 rounds as the time limit.

Johnson obtained a lot more mileage than he deserved for claiming that he took a dive, even after Nat Fleischer debunked him (and this before the footage of Willard-Johnson resurfaced to further support Fleischer's assertion). Whether over 10, 12, 15, 20 or 25 rounds, Johnson would have clearly deserved the decision over Willard, while Jeff was never really in his match with Jack.

 

I think a motivated Willard has a better than good chance of beating Johnson at any stage of his career over a 45 round limit. It is not that he simply "outlasted" Johnson. He knocked him out well under the limit. He won the boxing boxing match, ergo he outboxed him.

 

I never thought Johnson a terrific puncher ,but,I disagree with you here. Johnson often carried opponents.Kaufman and Ross to name two ,he did not really open up on Burns till late in the fight ,and he could have put Jeffries away earlier imo,he wanted to inflict a sustained beating and he did.
Because fighters went the distance with Johnson can be very misleading , I doubt he would have kod Ketchel, if Stan had not got frisky.

 

I've never seen anyone trace this quote farther back than the mid-1940's. That inludes Geoffrey Ward, who did the 'Unforgetable Blackness' text for the film docu., and wrote a (good) tie-in biography; and also recent Jeffries biographer ('Ultimate Tough Guy') Jim Carney Jr..

If you notice in Ken Burns docu, when the quote is shown, he blacks out any surrounding image that might supply a context for this alleged quote.

This quote was purportedly uttered by Jeffries to journalists on a train ride from Reno. Did it exist as oral tradition for three and a half decades before anyone saw fit to print it?

Until anyone finds an earlier citation for this quote, I regard it as very, very poorly attested.

 

Up to the 12-15th round it was all Johnson just after it Willard took over. Yeah, that's not outlasting it's outboxing. Sure. :roll:

 

It is a boxing match. There are many approaches to gaining the victory but the victor- by definition- has outboxed the vanquished.

 

Willard beating Jack Johnson is still a great win for him. It's just that outside of that one win he has little else on his resume.

Would he be in the boxing hall of fame and more known to the average boxing fan than say, a Tommy Burns, if not for his win over Johnson? I doubt it.

I don't think Johnson is given such a huge amount of credit for beating Jeffries but considering the circumstances it was a big deal.

 

More importantly to Johnson, it was a huge pay day , and ,for an easy afternoon's work.

 

Johnson was not a Mike TYson type of fighter ... he was not offense, balls to the wall ... the closest comparison we have today is Bernard Hopkins ... both knew every little trick and angle to throw the other guy off and strangle them ...

Johnson won almost every round of the first twenty v.s. Willard and often looked terrific doing so despite being overweight and 37 years old. Willard did win this by outlasting Jack.

Despite legend Jefferies /Corbett 1 was a very even fight, actually an ebb anb flow bout for the first 20 rounds .. the story of Corbett winning the overwhelming majority is simply false.

Jeffries did not belong in the ring with JOhnson in Reno. He did not fight in five years, he had taken off forty or fifty pounds (not the 100 myth) in a short time and he was not prepared ... if anything it was like Holmes / Ali ... if Jeffries was in the ring that day with Langford he would have been KO;'ed in a few rounds. Johnson instead did a boa constructor type number on him and wore him down.

Jeffries is largly forgotten by history today and Reno is a huge part of it. It is his own fault that he gave in and took the fight and his legend has suffered for it but it distorts what a terrific and tough fighter Jeffries really was. In his prime, say the Corbett rematch, he would have given a prime Johnson all he could have handled and then some. When healthy, with a working left hand, Jeffries was enormously strong, deceptively fast, had terrific stamina, power and a great chin. Maybe Johnson decisions him, maybe Jeffries crushes him. Let's not forget that Jack did not have a great chin. Like Roy Jones he was able to dominate by not getting hit. I feel with all my heart this would have been a completely different fight than Reno, that;s for sure. Even if Johnson got robbed v.s. Hart the bottom line is that he did not dominate they way he should have in a fight of that magnitude. If Hart proved tough, Jeffries would have been a nightmare. Too may have this image of Jeff as some sort of balding, pudgy dancing hippo holding an umbrella when in reality he was a physical marvel closely resembling something carved by Michaelangelo.

 

Prime Jeffries would undoubtedly have given Johnson all he wanted,I believe he would still have lost ,but it would have been a close fight imo.
Your post is one I agree with,but, why is Johnson's chin so often called in to question? In 18 years through 76 fights, he was stopped twice. His next stoppage was when he was 37 years old, in tropical heat in the 26th round.In 18years he has the same amount of stoppages against him as Langford had in 12 years,does anyone think Langford's chin was suspect?

 

Because he was flattened and did not get up v.s. Klondike, Choynski, Gunboat ( in a well documented sparring session) , Jim Johnson (had him hurt badly) and Willard not to mention decked by a middleweight. It had to be decent because he was hit in his career but it is of the Lennox Lewis variety at best. There was a reason he was a defensive minded, cautious fighter. Langford on the other hand fought men much bigger all the time and traded with them.