Why shouldn't Barney Ross be judged on par with Benny Leonard?

Johnny Summers was a fighter, not a boxer, and when he figured he was outclassed, he was doing a lot of clinching. Welsh chose to do infighting in that bout. Thus the fight looks ugly. But if you are talking about the Welsh-McFarland bout, then it was hard to expect anything awe-inspiring from Welsh, he was badly outclassed just like almost every other Packey's opponent.

 

Doesn't look very good against Jack Daniels before he scores the KO. I was more referring to that (hard to knock anyone for not looking great against Packey, although I wasn't exactly wowed by McFarland either...in fact, I was more astounded by a past prime Packey against Gibbons, even if Gibbons looks to get much the better of the contest)

 

Perhaps because Leonard had both skills and POWER ?
Ross was a wonderful boxer but not a puncher ,Benny had an underated right hand.

 

By that rationale you might say Ross was more durable. Although admittedly he had far fewer fights.

 

I don't remember seeing Welsh-Daniels. McFarland-Gibbons was disappointing for both fighters, kinda of like Hopkins-Jones 1, both too clever and skilled for the bout to be exciting.

 

I believe Roy Jones injured his right hand in that bout.

Did McFarland or Welsh complain post-fight about any niggling injuries?

Admittedly, the footage of Welsh-Daniels, whilst clear as day, is sparse. Daniels seems gutsy, but when Welsh turns it on he is clearly a class above.

I also don't judge bouts or rather the skills displayed in bouts on their entertainment value.

 

No, neither McFarland nor Welsh complained of any injuries. I don't know what you are looking for if Gibbons-McFarland impressed you more than McFarland-Welsh. Footwork, feinting, looking for openings at all times, throwing punches from all positions and angles, blocking, parrying, it's there to be seen in the latter bout.

 

Ross was more susceptible to body punishment than Leonard, although his stamina and toughness carried him through at all times. I'd like to have seen young Ross vs Benny Yanger for that matter, Yanger was a terrific body puncher.

 

Because when you take everything into account, the size of Gibbons, Packey's long lay off, and the stylistic matchup, the work Packey was doing showed off his talents far more in my opinion. This goes back to what you were saying about weighing up all the details. I tend to think that McFarland-Wells might've been the best showcase for McFarland in terms of seeing him really go to work when in his prime.

Yes, there were more nuances to McFarland and Welsh's games, but there were also problems with their work that was dealt with in a lot more detail in the thread about it on here a few years back. They both looked quite sloppy at times, and as you have already alluded to, both cancelled each other out to the extent there wasn't much impressive work to judge.

 

He basically showed only his defensive skills vs Gibbons, while his counter-punching and offense were rather poor, even though he did slap Mike often enough to gain the newspaper decision. He neutralized Gibbons' right hand, and he couldn't do much to Packey with his left. Here're some of the things he said after the fight:

As for looking sloppy... Ray Robinson looks sloppy a lot of time, too.

 

You might say that.
I'm just suggesting that Leonard might have been the more complete fighter because he carried power. Both great boxers.

 

We have a lot more footage of Robinson to go on.

 

As per your quote from Packey (thanks for that by the way) it seems perhaps the newspaper men took Packey's age and lay off into account just as I did when evaluating whether his performance was particularly good, because Gibbons got much the better of it.

Packey clearly felt his punching could've been better, but the fact is that the only footage we have of him he didn't demonstrate much in the way of decent punching.

I've long thought that the writers of the day that we hold up as proving good technique existed where telling the truth, but that it was the best thing they'd ever seen, and, even accounting for different rules, boxing got much better from the '20s onwards.

Still great but not necessarily better.

McFarland, Gans, McGovern, Fitzsimmons, are top 20 ATGs/P4P for me regardless.

 

The point is there are very few fighters on film who almost never look sloppy. Nearly every fighter who was considered a master technician by contemporary experts and by historians has a lot of flaws in their technique. It should be judged by how often they get punished for their mistakes, in my opinion.

 

I don't think it's that simple. Despite what we can see in the footage that survived (which is not a complete fight), the majority of newspaper men thought Packey outpunched Gibbons. Ie, landed more punches. You can read it in multiple round-by-round, punch-by-punch reports, too. Reporters who had seen hundreds of fights before.