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NEWS AND VIEWS - OCTOBER 2019
WRITING NEWS It's done. I finished the first draft of my latest novel, The Demon in the Metal, just a few days ago; the final word count was a little over 108,000. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with these updates, this book is an epic fantasy -- a sort of flintlock fantasy, specifically -- featuring three protagonists: Drom Overholt, a police inspector investigating a suspicious murder in the city of Dais Eleutrené; Luc d'Fensi, a treasure-hunter hired to escort a group of travelers to an ancient ruin; and Aemilia Owen, a young woman who has just moved to Dais Eleutrené to live with her wealthy and eccentric grandfather...who also happens to be the world's most brilliant chemist. I don't want to give too much away, but suffice it to say, these storylines all eventually converge. So what's next? Well, there's still a lot of work to be done: I have to polish it up, proofread it, run the spellcheckers, change some names, fix some clunky scenes, etc. I should probably also put together a better map of the world in which the story takes place. And then I've got to figure out what to do with it. I don't know if this is the sort of thing the major fantasy publishers are looking for, but like I wrote last month, I've put a lot of effort into this one and I feel like I should at least try to get it professionally published. And if that doesn't work out...well, there's always self-publishing. We'll see. * * * * * * * * HALLOWEEN! How about a little Halloween fun? Here's the trailer for The Spirit of the Whittier Mansion, a never-released FMV game developed for the RDI Halcyon home console (the development probably didn't get very far). Only two games were ever released for the Halcyon (NFL Football: Raiders vs Chargers and Thayer's Quest) but several tantalizing previews for several other games exist; this is one of them. I'm kind of obsessed with the Halcyon; I've been trying to get my hands on one for years. Unfortunately these systems are really, really rare -- according to Wikipedia fewer than a dozen units are known to exist. I have seen a handful of broken systems come up for sale on eBay over the years, but even these broken systems usually go for something like $5,000-$10,000. A working one would probably go for even more. Anyway, here's the trailer: * * * * * * * * THE CASE FOR (AND AGAINST) JAMES J. JEFFRIES James J. Jeffries was heavyweight champion of the world from 1899 to 1904 (the fourth gloved champion, after John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, and Bob Fitzsimmons). Born in Ohio in 1875, he moved to California as a young man and turned pro at the age of twenty. A remarkably strong and durable fighter, and an excellent all-around athlete, he won the championship from Fitzsimmons in 1899 and retired undefeated in 1904; six years later, he reluctantly came out of retirement to unsuccessfully challenge Jack Johnson for the championship (the first "Fight of the Century"). It was the only fight he lost. Jeffries' contemporaries -- even Johnson -- rated him very, very highly; for years he was regarded as the GOAT, not only by his fellow boxers but by sportswriters and ring experts like Nat Fleischer. Until around the 1960's, heavyweight rankings usually placed him in the top five or at least the top ten. No one ranks him that highly anymore; boxing historian Bert Sugar, for example, in his book Boxing's Greatest Fighters, placed Jeffries at #84 all-time, behind eighteen other heavyweights...three of whom Jeffries defeated! So what's going on here? What happened to dent the guy's reputation? Well, a few things. First of all, modern boxing fans are not as impressed with Jeffries' size as his contemporaries were. In the late 19th century, when the average height for a man was something like five-foot-seven, Jeffries was regarded as a giant: he was between six-foot-one and six-foot-two, and usually weighed around 220-225 (and the guy had a really solid, muscular build). That's only average for a modern heavyweight, though -- maybe even a little below average. Scott LeDoux, who fought in the '70's, and Tommy Morrison, who fought in the '80's and into the '90's, were approximately the same size as Jeffries and neither of them were considered big for their eras. Muhammad Ali was six-foot-three, Lennox Lewis was six-foot-five, and Tyson Fury, the current lineal champion, is a ridiculous six-foot-nine. Nor are modern fight fans impressed with Jeffries' record or competition. He went 21-1-2, only fighting twenty-four times professionally. In comparison, Rocky Marciano fought forty-nine times, Muhammad Ali fought sixty-one times, Larry Holmes fought seventy-five times, and Mike Tyson fought fifty-eight times. Most of his contemporaries had longer careers as well: Fitzsimmons, from whom he won the title, fought eighty times officially, and Peter Jackson fought fifty-two times (on the other hand, Corbett only fought twenty professional bouts). More fights means more exposure to different styles, techniques, and types of fighters, and is one of the criteria historians use to rank fighters. (Jeffries, for example, never had to fight anyone bigger than he was. How might he have fared against a Tyson Fury-sized fighter? We'll never know.) Jeffries' detractors tend to scoff at his competition as well. He drew or defeated all the best men of his era -- Corbett (twice), Fitzsimmons (twice), Tom Sharkey (twice), Peter Jackson, Gus Ruhlin, and Joe Choynski -- but this record doesn't look quite as good if you get into the nitty-gritty of the fight details. 
Corbett basically boxed circles around Jeffries in their first fight, and almost certainly would have won if it had gone the distance. Jeffries knocked him out, however, in the twenty-third round. Jeffries did go on to dominate Corbett in their second bout, but Corbett was an aging fighter by then, clearly not the man he had been just a few years previous. Fitzsimmons was an extremely dangerous puncher, but he was also a middleweight for most of his career. If Jeffries was so great, his detractors scoff, how did Fitzsimmons, a mere middleweight, manage to beat the everliving crap out of him in their second fight? Jeffries did win that fight, with another late knockout, but why was it so close? Peter Jackson? Another aging fighter, fighting at the end of his career. Jeffries' two fights with Sailor Tom Sharkey were brutal, and brought out the best in both fighters -- Sharkey, according to author Jim Carney, Jr., was a kind of proto-Marciano, a slugger without a lot of boxing skill but who possessed a great deal of toughness and durability. Jeffries won both of these fights, but they were hard-fought and probably could have gone either way. Gus Ruhlin? Most boxing fans have probably never even heard of him. And Jeffries only drew with Joe Choynski, an all-time great (one of Choynski's punches drove a part of Jeffries' lip into a gap in his teeth; it was pinched so tightly it had to be cut out between rounds). Jeffries' overall boxing skills are considered to have been rather limited as well. He fought out of a crouch, with his right hand over his face and his long left arm extended out. It was an effective stance, and it served him well, but it wasn't terribly sophisticated (Gene Tunney called his style "uninteresting"). He rarely jabbed, and was usually outboxed throughout his career by men like Corbett and Choynski. And finally, there's that one blemish on his record: his loss to Jack Johnson in 1910. Johnson was a controversial figure, whom white America detested; after he won the championship in 1908, newspaper editors around the country, and writers like Jack London, began pressuring Jeffries to come out of retirement and "remove that golden smile from Johnson's face." Jeffries had no real interest in this fight, but the press hounded him relentlessly, building him up as the only man capable of beating Johnson, and after promoter Tex Rickard offered him well over $100,000 for the fight he finally decided to come out of retirement for it. It proved an unwise decision; the fight was not competitive, and Johnson knocked him out in the fifteenth. But it wasn't just the ding on his record; the Johnson fight hurt Jeffries' reputation in other ways. As Johnson's mystique began to grow, writers began dismissing and deriding Jeffries, referring to him a "Great White Hope", as though he were some kind of overhyped 19th century Gerry Cooney. Jeffries' participation in the racially-charged fight also led to allegations that Jeffries was himself a racist, and these charges, whether there's any truth to them or not, have also harmed his legacy (despite the fact that his beliefs, whatever they may have been, have nothing to do with how good a heavyweight he was). So, keeping all of this in mind, it's really no surprise that Jeffries' rep and ranking have taken a hit -- a whole series of hits, in fact. Is it all deserved? Was Jeffries really as bad -- or as mediocre -- as his detractors claim? I don't think so. Personally, I think James J. Jeffries was one of the all-time greats; I've got him in my top ten. Here's my response to each of the above points: Let's start with his size. Sure, six-foot-one isn't huge for a heavyweight nowadays, but it's not small, either. Jeffries was taller than Joe Frazier, taller than Mike Tyson, and taller than Rocky Marciano, and he weighed as much as a prime George Foreman. His size wouldn't have handicapped him against any of these fighters. His record was pretty thin, admittedly, at least in terms of the number of fights he had. But unlike most modern fighters, who tend to spend their early careers fighting bums in order to build up their undefeated records, Jeffries was fighting dangerous men almost from the start of his professional career: his sixth fight, for example, was with cagey veteran Gus Ruhlin. He drew with Ruhlin, but most ringside observers seem to agree that Jeffries did enough to win that fight. His next fight was with Joe Choynski (another draw), and his ninth fight was with Peter Jackson. His eleventh career fight was his first battle against Sharkey, his twelfth was a win over the tough Bob Armstrong, and he won the title from Fitzsimmons in only his thirteenth professional bout. That's impressive in any era. He also went on to defend the title nine times -- a very respectable number of defenses, especially for the time. (At this point in boxing history, fighters liked to hold on to their titles as long as possible, in order to cash in on the vaudeville circuit -- the heavyweight champion was a major draw in those days. James J. Corbett, for example, only fought three men during the five years he held the title. Jeffries' willingness to make frequent defenses of his title was thus unprecedented, and laudable.) His competition was excellent. He defeated all kinds of fighters: a brilliant scientific boxer (Corbett), a tremendous boxer-puncher (Fitzsimmons), and a terrific, mauling slugger (Sharkey). Fitzsimmons may have been a natural middleweight, but he had a heavyweight's upper body and is still regarded as one of the hardest punchers in history. Corbett was a ring genius, the equivalent of a Gene Tunney, and Sharkey is underrated to this day. And unlike his predecessor Sullivan, Jeffries was willing to fight black opponents (Bob Armstrong, Peter Jackson), in an era when this was generally frowned upon (and actually illegal in some places). Jeffries' boxing skills were certainly not the equal of Corbett's or Choynski's. But he was strong, athletic, and virtually impossible to hurt. He won many of his fights through sheer endurance; as Fleischer noted, "He managed to win many of his important battles by knockout following the tiring of his opponents." Bob Fitzsimmons broke both of his hands on Jeffries' head. And although he wasn't a scientific boxer, his boxing skills did eventually improve; he actually outboxed Corbett in their second fight and went on to beat Gus Ruhlin decisively later in his career, after only drawing with him in their first fight. And then there's the Johnson fight. Jeffries' decision to come out of retirement for this fight was unfortunate, but I don't feel that this loss diminishes his greatness in any way. He had been retired for six years when he took this fight, and had to lose over a hundred pounds to get into shape; he simply wasn't the same fighter he had been in his prime. And for heaven's sake, he was fighting Jack Johnson, himself a Hall of Fame fighter -- maybe the third or fourth greatest heavyweight in history. Holding this one against him seems entirely unfair to me. At the end of Ultimate Tough Guy, his biography of Jeffries, Jim Carney, Jr. imagines how a prime Jeffries might have fared against every single heavyweight champion, from John L. Sullivan to Hashim Rahman. He suggests that Jeffries would have beaten all of them except for Gene Tunney and Muhammad Ali; he even has Jeffries beating Joe Louis and George Foreman! This strikes me as ridiculous, but he makes a very good case for Jeffries overall. I think Johnson, Louis, Liston, Ali, Foreman, possibly Holmes, and maybe Lennox Lewis could probably handle a prime Jeffries, but I wouldn't bet on Max Baer, Floyd Patterson, Rocky Marciano, or even Joe Frazier over fifteen rounds, let alone twenty-five rounds. And that's why I've got Jeffries in my top ten.
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