Boxing biggest Myth Jeffries ""I could never have whipped Johnson at my best" Never was uttered.

[tiny_acres]

The one I always questioned about Jeffries (and it's on his wiki page bio) is the common citation that "To train for the bout Jeffries' daily training included a 14-mile (23 km) run." In that era people ran in leather shoes that would cause blisters on even the most calloused feet. As someone who has run long distance for more than 40 years in modern gear, I am skeptical in that era that anyone ran 14 miles every day, particularly a heavyweight. He was supposedly a super athlete and my guess is he ran that distance on occasion, but "every day" is an exaggeration

I don't know Rocky Marciano they said ran 10 miles every day even on Christmas. I imagine quite frankly people had tougher feet back then. Probably pretty calloused.

Meh, I think it’s BS. Also, a big difference between 10 and 14 miles per day if your know running, but I don’t believe it either in the case of Rocky. IMO there are probably a lot of myths about the training/toughness of the old-timers because there was no way to check whether it was true or not. Nobody ran 10 miles a day in Rocky’s time. 5-6 miles a day maybe, which is no small feat considering the wear and tear on your legs/knees/feet/hips, etc. … and Rocky was as dedicated in training as any of them in that era

I have to agree with you. I think people want to believe these incredible stories about supr human abilities to run 10 miles everyday and have no knee, feet or hip problems.
It is just not believable.
No doubt he worked out like a beast but the body can only take so much

[HomicideHenry]

I'm surprised how easy it is for people to believe that people couldn't do such things considering an ancient Greece you had people running over a hundred miles to deliver messages.

I think we have gotten so used to businessmen pretending to be fighters only boxing once or twice a year only doing the bare minimum training for eight weeks that we have completely forgotten there was a time when people were constantly in shape.

Then again that's why fighters retired much earlier than they do nowadays because they went through more wear and tear and grind continuously staying in shape. Once upon a time if you were in your late twenties or early 30s you were considered old in boxing. If you were in your mid 30s or older you were considered ancient.

[gilgamesh]

I'm surprised how easy it is for people to believe that people couldn't do such things considering an ancient Greece you had people running over a hundred miles to deliver messages.

I think we have gotten so used to businessmen pretending to be fighters only boxing once or twice a year only doing the bare minimum training for eight weeks that we have completely forgotten there was a time when people were constantly in shape.

Then again that's why fighters retired much earlier than they do nowadays because they went through more wear and tear and grind continuously staying in shape. Once upon a time if you were in your late twenties or early 30s you were considered old in boxing. If you were in your mid 30s or older you were considered ancient.

This is still the case even in the recent past.

There's a HUGE difference between Muhammad Ali at 32 years and Muhammad Ali at 35 years old.

Archie Moore was one of the few fighters prior to the 1980's I can think of who accomplished big things in the sport in his 40's.

The rule of thumb that you were ancient by your mid to late 30's, for the most part was accurate. And in many ways. It still is.

For instance the best of Canelo has come and gone already. He's not shot, but he's not what he was, and it's downhill from here.

But he's also been fighting since the age of 15. So that's a factor as well. Bernard Hopkins started fighting seriously in his late 20's when he got out of Prison.

Then again, some guys get Pugilistic Dementia or other long term effects from the sport, and some don't. Everybody's body is different. But things that become commonly accepted stereotypes in the sport, usually became so for good reason.

[HomicideHenry]

I'm surprised how easy it is for people to believe that people couldn't do such things considering an ancient Greece you had people running over a hundred miles to deliver messages.

I think we have gotten so used to businessmen pretending to be fighters only boxing once or twice a year only doing the bare minimum training for eight weeks that we have completely forgotten there was a time when people were constantly in shape.

Then again that's why fighters retired much earlier than they do nowadays because they went through more wear and tear and grind continuously staying in shape. Once upon a time if you were in your late twenties or early 30s you were considered old in boxing. If you were in your mid 30s or older you were considered ancient.

This is still the case even in the recent past.

There's a HUGE difference between Muhammad Ali at 32 years and Muhammad Ali at 35 years old.

Archie Moore was one of the few fighters prior to the 1980's I can think of who accomplished big things in the sport in his 40's.

The rule of thumb that you were ancient by your mid to late 30's, for the most part was accurate. And in many ways. It still is.

For instance the best of Canelo has come and gone already. He's not shot, but he's not what he was, and it's downhill from here.

But he's also been fighting since the age of 15. So that's a factor as well. Bernard Hopkins started fighting seriously in his late 20's when he got out of Prison.

Then again, some guys get Pugilistic Dementia or other long term effects from the sport, and some don't. Everybody's body is different. But things that become commonly accepted stereotypes in the sport, usually became so for good reason.

Good points but I think you can agree with me there are more people in their thirties or forties boxing than ever before largely because of them not fighting and staying in shape as often as the old timers did.

[AngryGoon38]

I don't know Rocky Marciano they said ran 10 miles every day even on Christmas. I imagine quite frankly people had tougher feet back then. Probably pretty calloused.

Meh, I think it’s BS. Also, a big difference between 10 and 14 miles per day if your know running, but I don’t believe it either in the case of Rocky. IMO there are probably a lot of myths about the training/toughness of the old-timers because there was no way to check whether it was true or not. Nobody ran 10 miles a day in Rocky’s time. 5-6 miles a day maybe, which is no small feat considering the wear and tear on your legs/knees/feet/hips, etc. … and Rocky was as dedicated in training as any of them in that era

The way I understand it Rocky Marciano knew that he was so undersized that the only way that he could really overcome his physical limitations and lack of skills was to be the most conditioned boxer possible.

If he wasn't running 10 miles a day he certainly was walking up to 20 or 30 miles in a day because there was a lot of hills in around Brockton Massachusetts and going uphill worked his legs quite a lot.

If I recall right when Marciano first started out boxing he had read an article that claimed Joe Louis did 30 rounds of sparring per day or something to that effect and it left such an impression on Marciano that he said he would have to double whatever Joe Louis was doing.

So if that story is indeed true you have to figure if a regular boxer was doing four or six miles a day running then Marciano was doing 8 to 12 miles a day. The only people who would know for sure would have been his brothers, Charlie Goldman, and Lou Duva. I know Duva always insisted that Rocky Marciano was the most conditioned fighter he had ever known other than Evander Holyfield.

But I do know that this sport is one prone to exaggerations because I am reminded of stories told about Jim Jefferies, like him being on a hunting trip and killing a deer and throwing the deer over his shoulders and walking nine miles to camp without a stop. I'm not exactly sure I believe that one since I've tried to carry a dead deer before and it felt like the heaviest thing in the world but maybe he gutted it before carrying it.

I remember Way back in the day, watching some random video about James Jefferies, and the narrarator stated that Jefferies once carried an injured hiking buddy on top of his shoulder, for 5 miles, back to the cabin, or something to that effect. Also I remember the narrarator describing about Jefferies self-medicating himself with multiple bottles of vodka daily while he had Pneumonia. I'm guessing that if this one isn't a myth then probably people did stuff like that Way back in the day, as a means of dulling the pain of having Pneumonia. I myself was afflicted with bi-lateral pneumonia Way back in December of 1999, and it Did eventually put me in the E.R, on December 31st, 1999. I was hospitalized for 5 overnights, released on the 6th day, in the middle of that day(January 5th, 2000).

I remember coughing quite a bit and each cough felt literally like getting stabbed in the upper middle section of my chest. I felt out of breath just puttering down the hallway in the hospital. At 29, I felt like An Elderly nursing home patient.
Going back to the days when they apparently thought well of drinking piles of Vodka while afflicted with the deadly affliction of Pneumonia, I think that they reasoned that it was the only way to approach that particular affliction, especially if that person had to continue to trudge onwards(Doing necessary chores/specific work-duties and whatnot. Different Times as they say. You had to do what you had to do, in order to remain productive, workwise.
It also reminds me of what I've redd about the old-time factory laborors, who were given free cocaine, in order to be able to pull off working double shifts(16 hour shifts), five and six days per week, every week, for many weeks, until they collapsed or dropped dead.

[Caractacus]

pretty sure it was a deer he carried on his shoulders while he was hunting in the mountains,
and it was longer then 5 miles.
and Vodka ? pretty sure a real American like Jim J. Jeffries it would have prefered whiskey .
I think you may want to read Jim Jeffries 1910 autobiography
MY LIFE AND BATTLES.
its only 64 pages long, but a lot of words on each page.
It is really good reading.

[BroughtonRulesRefuge]

- Thanks guys. These sorta topics typically devolve into locked threads because of the usual suspects, but the header is an interesting concept along with the Great White Hope moniker that DKing used to great enough effect in the Cooney/Holmes fight such that the FBI had rooftop snipers poised in case of a riot.

Many are the contradictory post fight quotes attributed to fighters then and now, and certainly Howard Sackler did as much as Jack London in his day to extend mythology of the Great White Hope. Jack Johnson certainly contributed with his own autobiography that sees him as a skinny teen fighting a 23' Shark in Floriduh to a draw.

But where did the Great White Hope first enter into the lexicon?

As to Jeffries training and mental state, he didn't want the fight but couldn't turn down the purse more than his career earnings. He mistakenly trained down to his formerly robust fighting weight while dining on a diet that would leave a sparrow as feathers and bones. He looked physically ready, but was shot before he ever entered the ring, and he had to know it. Had he showed up at 250+lbs which would only being about 60 lb weight loss, he would've been well fed and mentally stronger.

As to oldtimers toughness and legend, Phidippides when he ran his marathon as a messenger was barefooted as I understand it. Age 28 I entered our inaugural 10K having never run more than a mile with those punishment laps by coaches in my day. If I beat 54 min I'd get a race Tshirt. I figured I could walk at that pace, but ended up in a steeplechase as the local rag was poorly organised like the inaugural TDF or Indy 500. Finished in 48min in front of maybe 70% of the runners. Me and my buddy were partners in building where we provided most of our labour and all of our designs that kept us in great all around shape.

Recovering from a Motorcycle generated fractured tibia, I never sought a Doctor. I used a cane to hobble from my car to my collegiate Olympic Swim Center where laps provided the gentle use of the leg to repair without atrophy. By then I'd worked up to 2500 meters that I could've easily gone past, so naturally I tend to think, yeah, most oldtimers were as tough and in shape as suggested in the literature. See the exquisite training Muldoon put John L in for the Kilrain fight. If applied today, guaranteed better than much of the excessive strains of today's fighters that results in injuries and cancellations.

Never a blister suffered by running a 10 K, but definitely blisters hiking mountain passes in my Everest boots given to me by a good friend who used them for his Everest moment. Good set of soft hunting boots works better for mountains, but shhhh, nobody should know

[Caractacus]

yeah, I think it would have been a better and more interesting fight, if Jim J. Corbett had come out of retirement
to fight Johnson ( which is whom the American public initially wanted to challenge Johnson)
Let's face it, Jeffries was more of a physical specimen then he was a pure boxer.
If Johnson had defeated Corbett, it would have been
"So what, you beat an old man, you gonna actually list that on your ring record ?"
BTW did you know that Jeffries had weighed 14 lbs when he was born ?