Willard takes the title from the once great but now aging Jack Johnson:

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Is this virtually the full fight?

I wonder why they made this a 40 round fight? Lol

Could it be they wanted the younger WHITE man to have a better chance on winning?

The aging past his prime Johnson could still have won a 15 round UD.

I wonder why they made this a 40 round fight? Lol

Could it be they wanted the younger WHITE man to have a better chance on winning?

The aging past his prime Johnson could still have won a 15 round UD.
Of course.. Willard was crap!.. Just a big fit farmers boy, much in the mould of Tyson Fury (as he is now) or a very poor mans Gerry Cooney..
No way was Johnson gonna be allowed to win that fight & with fair play, wouldn't have lasted 3 rounds against a prime Johnson..

I wonder why they made this a 40 round fight? Lol

Could it be they wanted the younger WHITE man to have a better chance on winning?

The aging past his prime Johnson could still have won a 15 round UD.
It was 45 rounds.

This was a common championship distance back then although championshipdistances also was 20 rounds or perhaps even less. It depended on the negotiations. Still 45 rounds was agreed upon quite often.

I think Willard is better than he is made out to be. On this particular film he doesn't seem half-bad at all.

Johnson was used to 45 round bouts while Willard had never gone past 20 rounds (a fight in which he lost) but he had clearly trained very hard for the championship fight unlike Johnson who was banking on an early round knockout.

Willard was just too big and strong at that point for the out of shape Jack Johnson. Even then Jack could still make the likes of Luis Firpo look foolish years later in sparring sessions. Willard himself would later suffer the same fate against a younger, hungrier Jack Dempsey.

I just watched it. Great find. :fing02:

Has anybody noticed the lenght of the rounds? None of the rounds was 3 minutes. It's either that the film is too slow or too fast or the editing is not entirely correct.