BoxRec

Was he the strongest heavyweight champion of all time? As the lore goes, Tom Jones discovered Willard on his farm in Kansas throwing 500 pound bales of cotton onto a wagon and thought to himself that a man that strong and big could beat Jack Johnson. Is this just hoopla, or do you think that Willard does warrant being the strongest boxing champion of all time?

I think it's impossible to gauge strength fighter by fighter. Generally one could label Willard as one of the strongest HW champions of all time in terms of total physical strength. Foreman and Carnera would be up there as well.

HomicideHenry wrote:Was he the strongest heavyweight champion of all time? As the lore goes, Tom Jones discovered Willard on his farm in Kansas throwing 500 pound bales of cotton onto a wagon and thought to himself that a man that strong and big could beat Jack Johnson. Is this just hoopla, or do you think that Willard does warrant being the strongest boxing champion of all time?

500 pound bales of hay? Who in their right mind, back then would've packed up bales weighing 500 pounds? Sounds like malarkey to me. Willard was no Louis Cyr. Heck, I would've put my money on Jim Jeffries in a wrasslin match.

Cap

Cap wrote:

HomicideHenry wrote:Was he the strongest heavyweight champion of all time? As the lore goes, Tom Jones discovered Willard on his farm in Kansas throwing 500 pound bales of cotton onto a wagon and thought to himself that a man that strong and big could beat Jack Johnson. Is this just hoopla, or do you think that Willard does warrant being the strongest boxing champion of all time?

500 pound bales of hay? Who in their right mind, back then would've packed up bales weighing 500 pounds? Sounds like malarkey to me. Willard was no Louis Cyr. Heck, I would've put my money on Jim Jeffries in a wrasslin match.

Cap

That was my initial reaction as well, but when I re-read the post it states 500 lb bales of cotton. A quick check of the net and the standard weight of a bale of cotton is 500 lbs, and that's probably been consistent for a long time since that's how the commodity is priced.

Of course, I would suspect that the story is probably inflated, however, it doesn't seem to be a stretch for a 6-6 250 lb guy who works on a ranch to be able to lift a bale of cotton onto a wagon. Well, at least a wagon that was riding slightly low.

Funny. Never thought of Kansas as cotton country. That's why I immediately assumed they were talking hay. I remember riding with the horse drawn hay-mow as a boy, and no way did they bale hay 500-lbs at a time.

Cap

Cap wrote:Funny. Never thought of Kansas as cotton country. That's why I immediately assumed they were talking hay. I remember riding with the horse drawn hay-mow as a boy, and no way did they bale hay 500-lbs at a time.

Cap

Maybe he was lifting the cotton onto a wagon at the train station in order to deliver it to the mill that the ranch owner operated.

Okay, I'm trying to make this work.

I wouldn't know what a regular bale of hay would weigh when Jess Willard was a young man, but such a bale usually weighed forty-to-fifty pounds about forty years ago. A five-hundred bale would have been very bulky and heavy, especially at a time when there was less mechanization. Heck! It must've been much, much more difficult to bale hay one hundred years ago.

- Chuck Johnston

Chuck1052 wrote:I wouldn't know what a regular bale of hay would weigh when Jess Willard was a young man, but such a bale usually weighed forty-to-fifty pounds about forty years ago. A five-hundred bale would have been very bulky and heavy, especially at a time when there was less mechanization. Heck! It must've been much, much more difficult to bale hay one hundred years ago.

- Chuck Johnston

The OP said a 500 lb bale of cotton not hay.

The Great John L wrote:

Chuck1052 wrote:I wouldn't know what a regular bale of hay would weigh when Jess Willard was a young man, but such a bale usually weighed forty-to-fifty pounds about forty years ago. A five-hundred bale would have been very bulky and heavy, especially at a time when there was less mechanization. Heck! It must've been much, much more difficult to bale hay one hundred years ago.

- Chuck Johnston

The OP said a 500 lb bale of cotton not hay.

Cotton in Kansas?