Funny looking over this thread again. This is the type of fight Dempsey's style and attributes create doubt. I think it was John Thomas who said it originally, when there's such a disparity in height and weight, and doubt, go with the big guy.
without reading through this... Janitor, Shitnose, burt, choklab and Unforgiven predict early KO by Dempsey. Rational posters have put forward rational, factual arguments for a Lewis victory. burt has labelled them naysayers, shitnose has labelled them reverse-racists.
You do come out with some nonsense somtimes. Jess Willard might not have been as good as Lewis, but I think its fair to say that he could take a punch a lot better. Lewis makes one mistake here and he is gone.
I certainly wouldn't agree with this assessment. Lewis stood up to flush shoots by Vitali Klitschko, Tyson, Holyfield, Briggs and a dozen other fights you can watch on a youtube video of the guy. He 100% for sure fought bigger, powerful, harder hitting and more skilled guys throughout his career than Willard ever did. Hell about 1/2 the fighters Willard fought, including Dempsey were under 200lbs, some quite a bit under. One would have to be pretty biased to come to any other conclussion.
Lewis did take some shots from some big punchers, but he was also stopped twice by a single punch. While I agree that his chin is under rated, I do think that these losses have to be taken into account when comparing his durability to some of the more durable champions. I think that we have to credit Willard with being more durable if nothing else. Certainly, to claim that Lewis would just let Dempsey throw punches at him and laugh them off ios ridiculous.
So if Holyfield could competitively get outboxed and lose to Lewis, then Dempsey brings too many tools to the table. Now tell me does Lewis bring anything to the table that an obese ex-flyweight in Meehan or a journeyman with a losing record in Flynn, didnt?
Both are in the extreme end of things. Yes, Lewis got KO'd with two punches, by guys in the 230lb range. But he was on his feet prior to the stoppage against McCall and since he was in the process of throwing his own punch, never saw McCall's punch coming. And as they say, it's the punches you don't see that cause the most damage. But if you consider the literally 100's of punches that have connected against him flush over the course of his career, many by big, big punchers, that's less than a 1% outcome. As for durability, Willard when down about 6-7 more times in that one fight than Lewis did in his entire career. Although one does have to recognize they fought under a different set of rules. Fact is Willard was far, far less skilled than Lewis was and I don't see any evidence whatsoever to suggest he was more durable. None whatsoever.