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Re: Jack Johnson vs Gene Tunney
Originally Posted by Chris N.
Indeed it is, but in our case it's a keyboard.hehe the pen is mightier than the sword indeed!returned.
I just don't understant your original statememt at all thought. You discredit Johnson saying he needed to be taught the fundamentals of boxing as if that means he's nothing special but every fighter in history had to learn their craft from somewhere. Nobody ever got good at anything without learning from others and putting in years of practise and hard work.
As for some people saying Johnson was too small he was no such such thing. People have continued to increase in size over the past generations in response to improvements in diet and health.
If Johnson would have been born in 1950 he would likey have been a couple inches taller than he was, just as if Lennox Lewis was born in 1870 he would be quite bit a smaller than his current form.
I've never understood how when comparing great fighters people try and transplant them from their past era and stick them in a ring with a modern fighter without giving them any of the modern advantages.
If Johnson lived today he'd fight at around 230-235 lbs, certainly not too small. They called him the Galvestan Giant because he was big for his day. If he was born in the 1950's or 1970's he would have been bigger.
Anyways I guess it's no point trying to convince each other, part of the fun of mythological match ups is that we have no way of knowing who is right.
I guess I can see how it came out like that. I didn't mean that he needed to be be taught boxing from square 1, but I guess he just needed to schooled on some of the finer points at the time. Now did Choynski have all the answers? I don't think he did, but I think that he was able to pass some of his bag of tricks to Johnson, maybe even perhaps planting some of the ideas that inspired Johnson to emphasise so much on defense. Besides I can tell you that no fighter learns all there is to know about boxing from one person, and obviously they can't learn everything they need to know in one night. All I'm saying is that he had to start somewhere, the same goes for any great boxer.
Anyways Jack Johnson was a big guy, usually the bigger against his opponents maybe with the exception of Willard. Except in his bout against Willard this wasn't the same Jack Johnson that fought Jim Jefferies; however he did give Willard a such schooling that if it was fought 35 years later in a 15 rounder, Jack would have won the fight unanimously by a large margin.
Personally I like Gene Tunney more than I do Jack Johnson, but common sense tells me that the bigger man with his skill and big bag of tricks would have won hands down.
'Won hands down' maybe this phase came from Jack Johnson himself.
"They just knock themselves out."
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A great man in his own time would most likely be a great man if not a greater man in our own time.
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