If Jack Dempsey Had Fought His Whole Career At LHW?

[McGrain]

Would we be arguing about whether or not he should be in the p4p ATG top ten rather than the heavyweight top 10?

You have to imagine he would be lethal at 175.

Sorry about all the Dempsey threads i've started recently, been thinking about him

And if you can't ask the ESB Classic boys about Dempsey, who can you ask?

[janitor]

I have doubts about whether he could have made 175. Even before he won the title he was often coming in at over 190.

[Duodenum]

Dempsey's true weight for Jess Willard at fight time (what he would have been found to weigh had he stepped on a scale in the ring, as Willard and Jack Johnson did in Havana) was 180 pounds. Before Tommy Gibbons, Jack's weight got as high as 236 pounds (exactly the same as Joe Louis's highest weight during his military service).

He was simply too big to compete as a light heavyweight, just as Louis, Frazier, and Marciano were. He would have been terribly weakened in trying to get his weight below the LH division limit, and this would have sorely compromised his effectiveness.

Leon Spinks did try to compete as a cruiserweight, without much success. The history of contending boxers who attempt to compete in a lower weight class is not a glittering one. Ossie Ocasio did win a cruiserweight belt, and Murray Sutherland also won a couple of super middleweight championships after getting decisioned by Hearns at MW, but I don't know that the could really be considered to have set the world on fire at those lower weights. There have been a few other noted boxers who tried to achieve greater success in a lower weight class, and a study of these examples might prove an interesting examination.

[McGrain]

Originally Posted by janitor

I have doubts about whether he could have made 175. Even before he won the title he was often coming in at over 190.

I understood he boxed early doors at around 160 - was this during his "i am a fighter who actually doesn't have enough to eat" phase? Otherwise, i'd be happy to see his 180-190 weigh inns being the result of a conscious effort to gain weight, in which case i'd see him as a lock for a 175 fighter.

[McGrain]

Originally Posted by Duodenum

Dempsey's true weight for Jess Willard at fight time was 180 pounds.

He was simply too big to compete as a light heavyweight.

Not sure if these two statements add up friend...although i'd agree Dempsey was in pretty exquisite shape for Willard.

[Dempsey1238]

But he was around 16 and 17 years old at the time he was doing that. Clearing He gain pounds as he age.

[McGrain]

Originally Posted by Dempsey1238

But he was around 16 and 17 years old at the time he was doing that. Clearing He gain pounds as he age.

Sure. 15-20 I would think.

[Duodenum]

Originally Posted by McGrain

Not sure if these two statements add up friend...although i'd agree Dempsey was in pretty exquisite shape for Willard.

Jack's lowest recorded competitive weight (if boxwreck.com is to be believed), was 181 for John Lester Johnson, in the summer of 1916. His highest weight was 200 for Tom Riley in March 1918. (Dempsey was a substitute for Fred Fulton, and may not have even trained for the winless Riley, possibly accounting for this higher poundage.)

For Willard, Dempsey was jogging ten miles in average temperatures of 104 F through the month of June. In addition to that, and other hard training, "I would lay off food one day a month to give my body a rest. It seemed strange doing such a thing out of choice, when a few years ago I didn't eat out of necessity."

To affect the odds favorably, Kearns had Dempsey ingest a huge amount of bananas and milk before the weigh-in, to artificially inflate his weight on the scale. No doubt Jack felt a little "waterlogged," but the fleeting weight bump up to 187-1/2 had the desired effect on the odds. (Just as Hagler's true competitive weight by fight time would have been around 168, Dempsey's would have been about 180.)

Having turned 24 just before dethroning Willard, Jack would have still likely been in a slight growing phase physiologically, and was probably the lightest weight for Willard that he would ever be for the remainder of his long life. It would have been impossible for him to get under 175 as a mature adult, without seriously weakening himself.

[McGrain]

I have his lowest weight at around 160. He was a young man then, true, but i'd be very surprised to hear about a teenager boxing at the olympics at 160 failing to make 175 later in life without living excessivley.

It's possible Dempsey could be an exception of course.

[McGrain]

Christ, imagine Dempsey at the Olympics.

[Dempsey1238]

well back than Dempsey had to support a family at about 16 lol(With the help of his brothers of couse)

Dempsey turn pro at 16 under the name Kid Blackie. It was pretty easy in that era for under 17 year olds to box asumming they did not look that young.