How SKILLED was Jack Dempsey?

Of course he utilized a vast array of skill and technique when he fought.
Professional boxing world champions are not crude brawlers in any real sense.
Even some of the crudest-looking guys you might see winning 10- or 15-round championship fights are absolutely utilizing a book's worth of skill and know-how, even if you can't see it and they don't even think about it.
Ducking, parrying, blocking, side-stepping, stance and balance, an arsenal of punches ... you need to learn a fair bit of all this to get to professional main event level, never mind championship.

 

As a puncher he was skillfull, he mastered most punches. As a technician he left his chin in the air as he charged in sometimes, he didn't fight behind a jab or high guard, his head movement could be timed too and he wasn't the best at cutting off the ring

 

Tommy Gibbons: "Don't let anybody tell you Jack can't box. He knows all the tricks!" There's no film of his four round 1922 performance against sparring partner Jimmy Darcy, but he was reported to have boxed in a masterly fashion for a situation where he was forbidden by the authorities to produce a stoppage. (A neat trick against a MW in a competitive situation, even one as tough and experienced as Darcy. Dempsey might have been expected to take him out by accident.) In "The Straight Left and How to Cultivate It," Jack (as the reigning HW Champion) is the first name cited by Jim Driscoll as a contemporary "straight-lefter" (immediately before the names of Tom and Mike Gibbons follow). At his peak, he could slip and counter very well. (In fact, the right which commenced the Long Count KD sequence was a slip and counter of Tunney's jab.)

We don't have footage of his knockout of Battling Levinski unfortunately, as that was probably most skilled opponent he knocked out in a peak for peak situation, the closest approximation of how Jack might have looked against Tunney at the Mauler's best.

 

The flip side is that Tunney said he only got in four or five clear hard shots at Jack's chin in 20 rounds of action.

Abe Attell, to my mind, was clearly taking shots at Dempsey when he decried the Jack's revolutionary use of headgear in sparring, saying it induced fighters to get into the habit of merely absorbing jabs, instead of actively parrying them with the right hand. (We see Louis doing this very actively in deflecting Max Baer's left jab, swiping it down and out of the way repeatedly with his right glove, as Blackburn taught him.) Dempsey's eyes did pay a price for his low guard with Tunney's jab (through his dependence on head movement for defensive purposes), and Jack's fear for his eyesight in a third encounter with Gene was his immediate reason for choosing to retire when he did.

Concerning the use of a high guard, Carlos Ortiz expressed his opposition to the peek-a-boo defense during Jose Torres-Eddie Cotton, but never got around to articulating further during that bout. But he was an articulate commentator with interesting things to say, and I'd have liked to hear him expand on his criticism of the peek-a-boo.

When it comes to cutting off the ring, I think first of prime Foreman, then prime Qawi. Dempsey, Louis (who followed around JJW like a dog on a leash during their bouts), Marciano (who completely failed to corner or catch Charles on the ropes during their match over the championship distance), Liston (who simply used his jab to dominate from long range), and Frazier (who just closed fast, bobbing and weaving his way in on his prey) are among ATG HWs who I would not describe as ring cutting specialists. I consider Big George to have a near monopoly on the perfection of this skill.

 

I'm not sure what the deal is with the "high guard" either.
It doesn't take much skill to hold the hands up all the way to your head. Neither is it going to suffice as any sort of cunning defensive device against anyone other than novice amateurs !
Professional fighters how their hands in a variety of positions, and they tend to have to adjust and vary that in real fights.

I remember seeing an old Muhammad Ali holding his hands up around his head as his only semblance of defence (after his legs and reflexes had left him), and he was getting his brains punched to soup just about every second.

 

Yep.
Arthur Abraham is an example of a current fighter who seemed to take a basic and extreme high guard as the be all and end all of defensive skill.
Firstly, he had a relatively exceptional amount of success with it (he won a world title) but clearly it only worked at all due to being coupled with his strength and power against outmatched opposition.
Secondly, when he took on better and stronger opposition he was made ti look like an amateur.

Yeah, from what I can tell, there's nothing wrong with holding the hands this way, but the assumption that a man who holds his hands as low as chest height is automatically less defensively sound that a man who holds his hands high is just wrong.

 

Very underrated, he was rusty in his fight with Tunney and Sharkey but you can still see effective aggression, speed and power and killer instinct...had Dempsey been more active his performances would have been better but no one before him not even Sullivan had seen the fame of Dempsey and a lot of things were firsts for him with no history to reflect on.

 

****

 

Not nearly as skilled as he is given credit for... unless all those skillful demonstrations occurred off-film.

 

And great defensive skills too, even past prime......

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Another interesting point is Dempsey´s footwork......he was not only a coming forward fighter like Tyson or Frazier.....his footwork was actually pretty versatile...

 

I've read championship fighting and studied Dempsey's fight films he seems to have a wealth of knowledge about boxing but fights like an animal. For his time he was very skillful and laid groundwork for future generations. He knows how to get every inch of his body in to a punch thats clear from both his book and the films. Like duran I think he could box or punch but he chose to brawl. Head movement was good but i think once his killer instinct came in he became wild. For example in championship fighting he talks about hitting the heavy bag with your elbow to get the proper distance for a left hook but we've all seen him throw those looping bombs as well.