Review: In The Ring With James J. Jeffries by Adam Pollack

[cmoyle]

In the Ring With James J. Jeffries by Adam Pollack
K.O. Publications, Iowa City, IA 2009

This is the fourth title in the series of books that Adam has written about the heavyweight champions beginning with John L. Sullivan, and I think it's his best one yet.

I just finished the book, and if you read like I often do, a little bit at a time before going to sleep at night, it will take you a while as this is also the longest of Adam's efforts, coming in at 666 pages, excluding the appendix. I have read all of the other books that have been written about Jeffries that I know of, and will say without hesitation that if you want to gain an appreciation of Jeffries as a fighter there is no book available that will enable you to accomplish that aim better than this one, nor can I imagine there ever will be. As usual, Adam provides us with numerous primary sources for each of his subjects fights, as well as for the events that took place before those bouts, and afterward. For many of Jeffries fights we are also given explicit details concerning the training regiment of both men.

The amount of detail that Adam includes concerning and surrounding Jeffries fights with Fitzsimmons, Corbett, Tom Sharkey, Gus Ruhlin, and Jack Munroe is simply phenomenal and one is left with a real appreciation of Jeffries attributes as a fighter. It's a shame that Jeffries took the stance that he did in 1904/1905 and he and Jack Johnson didn't meet when they were closer to one another's primes. As Adam points out at the end of the book, Jeffries was a mere shell of himself in 1910 when he returned to face Johnson after six years of inactivity. The damage suffered to his legacy as a result of that one-sided loss is obvious. At the time he retired in early 1905 he was undefeated and viewed as unbeatable. He very well was at that point in time. We'll never know because he chose not to face Johnson at that point in time, vowing never to risk the heavyweight title to a black man.

As I finished the book I stumbled across an article from a July 19, 1913 issue of The Mirror of Life and Boxing World in which Bob Fitzsimmons named Jeffries the world's greatest heavyweight. Fitzsimmons had fought and lost to both Jeffries and Johnson by then. I thought it was interesting that he said that "Jeffries at his best would have beaten Johnson in a couple of rounds, good as Johnson was." But the fact remains he didn't face him at his best, and we're left to wonder what would have happened if he had.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn more about Jeffries as a fighter. I can't help but think anyone who reads it will gain a much greater appreciation for him as a fighter. The sections concerning his fights with Fitzsimmons, Corbett, and Sharkey were of particular interest to me and I learned a lot about those fights that I didn't already know. There are many photographs sprinkled liberally throughout the book, and many of them were ones that I had never seen before.