Quixall wrote:Watching the fights, the first thing that i noticed was the lack of a jab and the first guy who seemed to have something comparable to the modern day jab was Gene Tunney.
I watched Tyson v Holyfield I yesterday. The first thing i noticed was that Tyson barely threw a jab. Pretty much just left hooks with the occassional uppercut or overhand right. Holyfield on the other hand had great success when he used the jab but rarely did for some reason. he did quite good with the big overhand right, especially mixing it in with a lot of Grappling and occasional bursts of speed punches. It was actually strang though because the body punch pretty much seemed to be missing from the repertoire of both fighters and i am sure this would have been very effective.
As people have said, the vast majority of the punches were uppercuts and big overhand rights and lefts, mixed in with a lot of grappling and occasional bursts of speed punches. anothing thing missing was the body punch, which would have been very effective in those days.
Where have i heard this before?
The fight with Jeffries looked so one sided and made Jeffries look an absolute nobody, but he was seen as the best of his day pre the Johnson fight.
As opposed to the last Riddick Bowe fight? Or Ali vs Holmes? Frazier vs Cummins?
Of course Jeffries was obviously further removed from his prime than the guys above, but i see your point about how good Johnson looked actually doing the job. By the way, where did you manage to see the whole fight, or are you just talking about the very limited highlights that are available on line?
Making comparisons is always going to be difficult, dealing with big guys like Holmes, Foreman, Lewis, the Klitschko's would have been very difficult and Johnson would perhaps have been a cruiserweight and the nearest to him as an example of size would have perhaps been Holyfield. If you put Johnson and his style up against a prime Holmes, Ali, Lewis etc, then he would have stood little or no chance of winning, but if you take Johnson's ability to make himself one of the best fighters of his day back then and mastering old techniques, then i'm sure he could have mastered the new techniques and done very well.
Johnson was not a cruiserweight at his very best, though if he trained hard enough, like holyfield, Adamek and many others he could probably make the modern cruiserweight limit. Johnson beat plenty of modern sized big guys who were very good fighters. The question is not how he would adapt to modern rules, because other than the probably change in the clinching rule and the neutral corner rule, there isnt too much difference. The question is more how modern fighters are going to adapt to Jack Johnson. You cant throw combinations when your opponent is mauling you and grappling at every occassion. In jacks case, (watch his head positioning, always tucked in, his hand positioning, always on the inside etc) and you will see that it is not possible to throw the many combinations modern punchers try to, against this style of fighter, and expect the modern giant to really struggle with their condition because of it. Dare i say, they might collapse from the heat or punch themselves out, two terms which only seem to be buzz words with modern fighters. Obviously much depends on the referees, but even if a modern ref is used, they will be under enormous pressure and it is very unlikely they are going to produce a rare Ruiz v Jones style performance. Johnson will flaunt the rules and will get away with it, because virtually no ref will have the courage to DQ him.
