Nat Fleisher's Top Ten Heavyweights -1971

[Ambling Alp II]

Just for comparison,

6'2 Sullivan Barrera was 190 on fight night vs 6'1 187 pound Joe Smith

They were fighting at LHW.


Now consider that compared to a 5'7 guy who was 168 without draining himself. Size isn't everything, I'm not one who thinks it is, but Johnson had some downright silly sideshow type of 'heavyweight' fights, and sure, it was a product of the time. It would be like the champs today fighting middleweights and below. Wilder vs GGG or Lara! It's pretty humorous when people try to explain this stuff away...as if it should have no bearing on how he is rated as a heavy or how he compares to other heavys

And then Jeffries had of course been retired for over half a decade.

Johnson to me is probably the most overrated of the consensus HW ATGs

Yes I know fighters nowadays supposedly weigh 15 pounds heavier when they enter the ring. Whatever.

What should Johnson have done? Just waited around until a bigger guy beat Burns, then fight him?
Take a look at his record. He beat many fighters much bigger than Burns.

[margaret thatcher]

Not his fault if that was the times, but I'm not going to ignore it when rating him, just like Wlad Klit beat most of the best of much of his time but I'm not gonna act like that was something great. Those fights wouldn't even get sanctioned today yet he won his highest honour vs one of those tiny guys. Those types of matches were some of his biggest fights, along with his beating of a 6 year retired guy. Imagine someone today trying to pass off Wilder vs Brian Castano as a legit HW title fight and then acting like Wilder deserves big credit as a heavyweight for winning, or that because he could easily outjab the 5'7 guy that he must have some type of great heavyweight jab.

Jack's record is very spotty at an atg level and reads like a sideshow in parts. Of course that has to be considered when comparing him to other atgs. Doesn't mean he wasn't very good, but it's just head in sand stuff to ignore it or excuse it as nothing. Jack's got a proto, wright brothers version thing going on with his career. Influential but relatively crude and underdeveloped

Gotta agree with Manny Steward on our boi JJ

[Ambling Alp II]

We should not give him a ton of credit for beating Burns. However, it should not be held against him either.

Rate him on what he did against fighters that were bigger than Burns and Ketchel. Rate him on what we see on film. He was a fighter with a lot of ability. He knew what he was doing. His ability to parry his opponents punches made him very hard to hit. He was not the greatest heavyweight of all time. However, he was up there.

[Cap]

Jack Johnson was called the Galveston Giant because he was bigger than the average 'heavyweight' of his era. The light heavyweight class was not really recognized, so anyone over 158 or so was classed as a heavyweight. [If Johnson was in his prime now he'd likely be around 6'3" or 6'4" and 220-230. ] Guys like Jack Root, Marvin Hart, Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, Bill Squires, Fireman Jim Flynn,, George Gardner, Mike Schreck, were among the top 'heavyweights' of the day and most never weighed as much as 190 in their prime. Many fought at 170 to 180 (weighed at ringside). Al Kaufman was an exception at 6'1" and 200 pounds but he was never considered a first rate heavyweight.

Johnson beat a great pound-for-pound fighter in Tommy Burns, but he would have had a better legacy if he had fought Sam Langford, Joe Jeannette and Sam McVea after he won the title instead of Ketchel, Kaufman, Flynn, Jim Johnson, etc. It can' t be denied though he did fight men as big as himself (Ben Taylor, Denver Ed Martin, Frank Moran, Bill Lang, Peter Felix, etc), they just didn't have his boxing prowess, particularly his terrific defensive ability.

[Ambling Alp II]

Nicknames are made to hype someone. Tony Tubbs was "TNT"-- He couldn't break an egg.

There were several heavyweights of his era (many of whcih he fought) that were as big or bigger than Johnson. Besides those already mentioned, that would include Jeannette, McVey, Ferguson, Ruhlin, Kennedy, and of course Jeffries.

I do agree that Johnson' title reign and his legacy would have been greater had he defended the title against Langford, Jeannette, and McVey; or at least 2 or even one of them.

[margaret thatcher]

Ha, come on now, the regulars in this section usually sh!t all over the eye test, the same standard that people get bashed for using to pick a less proven guy over a more proven (and usually older generation) guy

Sure, Jack could parry a punch. I guess in that day it was some sort of amazing innovation in boxing. Helps to be able to try it out on little guys too.

[pound per pound]

Nat Fleischer did contribute a lot to boxing. However, like most of humans he had his biases. It's not a secret that he didn't like Ali, nor that he was ridiculausly biased in favor of fighters from years ago.

It is understandable if the reason that he didn't rate Ali or Frazier was that their careers weren't over. Patterson was also still fighting and Foreman was only in the beginning stages of his career. Sonny Liston had died a couple of year before, had kind of an odd career, and I suppose you could excuse him for not rating him. ( I doubt Fleischer would have rated him anyway.)

I think a realistic Top 10 in 1971 would have looked something like this:

1. Louis
2. Johnson
3. Marciano
4. Dempsey
5. Jeffries
6. Tunney
7. Charles
8. Langford
9. Wills
10. Schmeling

You certainly could make a case for Fitz,Corbett,Baer,Sharkey,Jeannette, McVey, and Walcott towards the bottom the Top 10.

While Nat didn't live to see Holmes championship days,, Ali beating Frazier, Foreman and Norton, Foreman at his best, Tyson, Lewis or Klitschko, he did see one Charles Sonny Liston.

[pound per pound]

Jack Johnson was called the Galveston Giant because he was bigger than the average 'heavyweight' of his era. The light heavyweight class was not really recognized, so anyone over 158 or so was classed as a heavyweight. [If Johnson was in his prime now he'd likely be around 6'3" or 6'4" and 220-230. ] Guys like Jack Root, Marvin Hart, Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, Bill Squires, Fireman Jim Flynn,, George Gardner, Mike Schreck, were among the top 'heavyweights' of the day and most never weighed as much as 190 in their prime. Many fought at 170 to 180 (weighed at ringside). Al Kaufman was an exception at 6'1" and 200 pounds but he was never considered a first rate heavyweight.

Johnson beat a great pound-for-pound fighter in Tommy Burns, but he would have had a better legacy if he had fought Sam Langford, Joe Jeannette and Sam McVea after he won the title instead of Ketchel, Kaufman, Flynn, Jim Johnson, etc. It can' t be denied though he did fight men as big as himself (Ben Taylor, Denver Ed Martin, Frank Moran, Bill Lang, Peter Felix, etc), they just didn't have his boxing prowess, particularly his terrific defensive ability.

Cap,

With all due respect, Johnson's resume isn't as good as it looks on paper if you look at who his opponents were and more importantly when he fought them.

Burns was at the super middleweight limit when he fought Johnson, at 5'7 1/2 inches tall and 168 pounds, and he lasted 14 rounds.

Langford was very young, 19 or 20, and not even a full middleweight when he fought Johnson

Jeannette was a novice with no amateur experience.

McVea, just a teenager when he lost to Johnson.

Jeffries, old, and with 6 years of ring rust. He lasted 15 rounds.

Credit Johnson for winning here, but note the circumstance for which it happened.

Johnson could have had a really good legacy outside of being the first African American Champion had he fought prime versions of Langford, McVey, or Jeannette as champion but avoided these matches. A match with Smith to avenge being knocked down in the exhibition match, and McCarty had he lived long enough would have been good opponents too. Jack was set to go vs. Langford in 1909 in the UK, and pulled out of a signed contract. That could have been his best win. Or Sam might have been the next champion. We'll never know.

Losses to Choysnki, Hart, Klondike, and numerous draws make you wonder why. One theory is these opponents were not greenhorns like Jeannette and McVey were, nor were they very small like Langford was before he grew into his heavyweight body. Were Klondike, Choysnki, and Hart in fact better heavyweights than the Langford, Jeannette and McVey Johnson beat? You can argue yes, they were.

[Ambling Alp II]

Ha, come on now, the regulars in this section usually sh!t all over the eye test, the same standard that people get bashed for using to pick a less proven guy over a more proven (and usually older generation) guy

Sure, Jack could parry a punch. I guess in that day it was some sort of amazing innovation in boxing. Helps to be able to try it out on little guys too.

To some extent you have to use the eye test. Everyone does even if they don't expressly say it.
People that know the history of the sport know the heavyweight division has been terrible for a long time. How do they come to that conclusion? The eye test.
The problem is that some people pick and choose performances, often without regard to the opponent. i.e. when people go gaga over a devastating KO over a stiff. (usually for a guy they like) Or go the other way and rip a guy for a one not so impressive performance. (Usually a guy they don't like)

An example I like to give is Felix Trinidad. Watch his fights against Vargas and Joppy. Looks great. Then watch against Hopkins and Wright. Looks awful. You have to count it all.
You have to count the big wins, the great performances, the mediocre performances, and everything in between. You have to take into consideration the stages of the fighter career as well as his opponents. And yes, film if available.

As Jack Johnson, yeah being great at parrying a punch is a big deal. He didn't invent it, but was great at it. It's seldom even used in modern boxing.