McAuliffe's take on Tunney
woz
today.txt.html
What do you think?
woz
woz
Could John L. Be a Champ Today?
Yes, Says an Undefeated Veteran . . . Only One Man of Recent Times Would
Have Had a Chance Against Him
by Jack McAuliffe
Liberty Magazine
May 4, 1935
********************
Jack McAuliffe not only retired as undefeated lightweight champion of
the world, but he is the one fighter the ring has known who never met
defeat. He is now--though you wouldn't think it--sixty-nine, and is
executive head of a business in New York City.
********************
The fight that Primo Carnera put up against Max Baer last year was the
dumbest defense of a championship title that I had ever witnessed.
Jim Jeffries had it right. When he was asked before the scrap who he
thought would win, Jeff replied, "Well--I wish both of them had been around
twenty years ago."
That was a champion of the past expressing his opinion of the champions
of today. To that opinion I am now adding my own as another champion of
other days.
Ever since Dempsey dethroned the gigantic Willard at Toledo the
question of how modern ring champions would have fared against the old-time
fighters has been a popular subject for debate. Even old-timers can't
agree on it--and there is no way to decide who is right.
I will say this: I can pick a dozen former champions and others who
never won a title, even down to welterweights, who would have stepped
inside the wild swings of Max Baer and knocked his head off. Imagine what
would have happened if it had been Bob Fitzsimmons instead of Carnera in
that ring with Baer in the Long Island City bowl! Or Joe Walcott--and
Walcott was only a welterweight! Or even Tommy Ryan--a middleweight! Or
Stanley Ketchel--another middleweight!
On the other hand, it is my personal opinion that Gene Tunney, who can
be classed as a modern champion, was the best heavyweight champion the ring
has known since John L. Sullivan lost his title to Jim Corbett in 1892 in a
mammoth fight carnival at New Orleans in which I defended my lightweight
title by knocking out Billy Myers, the "Streator Cyclone," in fifteen
rounds.
The comparative merits of Gene Tunney and Jim Corbett have frequently
been debated. Most of the old-timers will string along with Corbett. In
my opinion Tunney would have beaten Corbett at his best, because Tunney was
a more damaging hitter and as good a boxer, if not a better one. Besides,
Tunney had the better ring temperament.
Jim Corbett never would have weathered that seventh round against
Dempsey in Chicago in the way that Tunney did to come out with his title
intact. And had it been Tunney instead of Corbett in the ring with Bob
Fitzsimmons in Carson City in 1897, Fitz would never have survived that
sixth round when he was on the floor. I was in the training camps of both
Tunney and Dempsey before their first fight in Philadelphia, and I picked
Tunney to take Dempsey's title then. I think he would have beaten Dempsey
at his best.
I will go even further. I was in John L. Sullivan's corner and his
chief adviser in the fight in which he lost the title to Corbett in the
twenty-first round in 1892--and I firmly believe that the Tunney who beat
Dempsey twice would have finished Sullivan that night inside of twelve
rounds.
Yet it is my opinion that the Sullivan who beat Paddy Ryan, and for
five years after that, was the greatest champion the ring has ever known.
It was only when the life of dissipation that he led caused the fat to
accumulate around his vital organs that he began to come down to the level
of those who were coming up.
The Sullivan who beat Paddy Ryan for the title is my pick as "all-time"
heavyweight champion. My second choice is a modern fighter--Gene Tunney.
Benny Leonard was another great modern champion, because he was a
marvel at countering and always knew what to do in the ring. When he met
men nearly his equal he outsmarted them. In my opinion, he was as great a
lightweight champion as Joe Gans. I am glad Benny wasn't around when I was
defending the title.
But, aside from Tunney and Leonard, none of the ring champions of the
past decade would have had even a remote chance against some old-time
fighters who never even attained a title. And the difference isn't so much
a matter of physical inferiority as of proper instruction, training and
handling, and of mental attitude.
Bill Brown was right--Max Baer was in no fit condition to fight for a
title. He won it because opposed to him was Carnera, a huge fighter with
plenty of physical equipment but who didn't know the first rudiments of
attack and defense and who had nobody in his corner to coach him properly.
It was different in the old days. There was no "show business" mixed
in with our training. Trainers who knew how to condition fighters bossed
the job, and experienced fighters who knew how to win fights themselves
were in our corners when a fight was staged.
I am certain that no modern fighter, trained and handled as they are
today, could have fought through the seventy-four-round draw that I fought
with Jem Carney in a deserted summer hotel at Revere Beach, just outside of
Boston, on the night of November 16, 1887.
That fight lasted four hours and fifty-five minutes--and I remember
that it was fought with skintight gloves. There were only forty spectators
present--though this was an international fight for the lightweight
championship of the world. There were no gate receipts, the fight being
for a side bet of $2,500 and the title. In my corner I had the original
Jack Dempsey, the Nonpareil, one of the greatest fighters of that day, and
his brother, "Con."
Carney was a durable fighter and a shifty one. He well merited his
title of lightweight champion of England, which in those days had some
great fighters. By the end of the twenty-fifth round we were both badly
battered, but fought on as viciously as ever. In the sixty-ninth round
Carney butted me under the chin with his head and knocked me flat on my
back. Dempsey loudly yelled a claim of foul. The referee disallowed it,
and the fight continued. In the seventieth Carney brought up his knee in a
clinch and kicked me in the abdomen. It was a deliberate foul, and my
seconds and friends again claimed victory. Again the referee refused to
allow the claim. In the middle of the seventy-fourth we went into a
clinch, tripped and fell to the board floor with Carney on top of me. He
either refused to or couldn't get up. In the midst of the resulting
excitement the referee stopped the fight and called it a draw. We were
both badly beaten up, but I was in condition to continue and actually felt
strong after those seventy-four grueling rounds with skintight gloves. I
had been trained for endurance. That was the closest I ever came to being
defeated in the ring.
There was another difference that sent the fighters of those days into
the ring with a different mental attitude. You or your friends risked
their own money on the outcome; there was no purse and no loser's end--you
had to win to get any money out of the fight.
If one of the modern contenders for the heavyweight title, for
instance, were to clash with the tough men of a quarter century or more
ago--Fitzsimmons, Jeffries, Peter Jackson, Sam Langford, Jack Johnson, Joe
Choynski, or even Joe Walcott the welterweight--you'd find he didn't have a
chance, because the methods of training today are all wrong. The fighters
need more aggressiveness, endurance, hardiness--and these cannot be
developed merely through an hour or two of gymnasium work.
Given the same conditions and the same urge to fight, with the
exclusion of all other interests, there is no reason why the present crop
of fighters wouldn't be the equal if not the superior of the old-time
fighters.
- The End -
BoxFanatic
compare to yesteryear's.
I wonder if they said the same things initiatlly about Louis, Robinson, etc.
woz
are always shifting, it is pretty tough to compare fighters of different
eras. The old-timer is bound to use his own standard to compare the new
fighters and often they cannot measure up. In the "golden age", it took an
extremely determined fighter to have a pro career; bouts could be anywhere
from 6 round no-decisions to 40-plus rounds; bouts were often staged
illegally; boxers of vastly different weights would fight one another.
Despite the potential for bias, I thought McAuliffe was right about a few
things; for one, Tunney and Leonard were outstanding boxers. For another,
the conditioning and seriousness of Baer was questionable. I think what he
seemed to be looking for was a sense of professionalism. A good
illustration of this in the modern age was Naseem vs. Barrera. Through
discipline and good boxing technique, Barrera defeated Naseem. Likewise,
Tyson was defeated by Douglas and Holyfield, who were able to exercise
disciplined plans to exploit a weakness in Tyson at that time.
I note that McAuliffe wrote before the Louis and Robinson era. I suspect
that he would have found flaws in the style of the young Louis, as Schmeling
did. I think he would have acknowledged the greatness of Robinson, though,
which is virtually undeniable.
I think it comes down to this; if boxing were just about natural ability
alone, it would not be a sport, just a spectacle; no better than the
brutality of animal vs. animal fights.
woz
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