Full Timeline of Dempsey-Wills - Evidence of Dempsey-Wills Contract Photo Staged?

There was deffinitely very organised opposition to the bout at the highest levels of the sport.

 

It's really too bad that Klompton doesn't post here anymore.

 

Klompton's post doesn't say much.
What offer did Dempsey turn down ?

I don't quite understand the bit about Floyd Fitzsimmons, a boxing promoter, wording an unfullfillable contract for other promoters to try to fullfill at his own expense - as a complete sham - out of friendship for Dempsey ? (or was it in return for a car allegedly gifted to his wife ??)
Wills makes a profit ... Fitz and Dempsey lose out ?
Or did Fitz get paid ? How did he make his return ?
Was this car worth $50k ?
Was Jack ****ing Floyd's wife ?
Was Floyd Fitz an idiot ?
Wouldn't it have been better to tell Wills to **** himself ?


Is this just another loosely-constructed theory from klompton ?
Throwing in his biased estimate of the players' motives with his well-researched factual findings ?

If you take out the loaded statements, biased speculation and assumptions and just look at the hard facts, there's really not much being said.

.... Yes, Dempsey signed those contracts.
No, they weren't rock-solid detailed final contracts for a fight.
Yes, the fight did not materialise.
That's it.


There was a Wills fight contract that Dempsey allegedly signed in 1925 or '26 that he broke with Chicago Coliseum, and fought Tunney instead (for Rickard). That one went to court. They sued for breach of contract. I think Dempsey was found to be in the wrong.

 

It was the times, after Jack Johnson everyone was afraid of a black man fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world. Dempsey wasn't afraid of Wills

 

LX,so everyone in that photo was a conspirator in a devious plot hatched by the promotor Floyd Fitzimmons, who knowingly screwed many of his investors from their money just to APPEASE Harry Wills braintrust ???
What a load of baloney...Are these people denying the darn fact that the NY Boxing Commission would not sanction this bout between Harry Wills a black [and worthy man] and Jack Dempsey the titleholder for VALID FEAR of a repercussion of the race riots and deaths following the Jeffries/ Johnson bout in Reno years before ? This fear was in the minds of all the top boxing promoters in the land, knowing that the risk of deaths was not worth the reward...Floyd Fitzimmons, took that risk, accumulated some investors, but could not get additional investors to come on board and he and others lost their deposit money...So the photo showing the signing between Wills and Dempsey was REAL, and was not a ploy to appease the Harry Wills camp...

 

The racial situation had deteriorated since then and preventing race riots had become more of a political emergency since 1919.

 

That's not my assessment.

This is probably a large part of what happened.
Anyway, Dempsey always said he'd fight Wills if a promoter came good with a reasonable offer.For all the talk of him ducking Wills "for seven straight years", I don't see much talk of all the offers he turned down.

I do believe Dempsey chose to fight #2 contender Tunney over #1 contender Wills in 1926, and Wills deserved the shot. Ironically, Wills would have been the easier fight.

 

Rickard seems to have pressured him to take the Tunney fight instead of fighting Wills.

 

The summer of 1919 was horrendous for race riots. Widespread race riots.

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer_of_1919[/ame]


The Tulsa incident of 1921 was horrific too.

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot[/ame]


This is what was happening smack bang in the time when 'Jack Dempsey should have been fighting Harry Wills' and a mere 10 years after Johnson and Jeffries proved that a publicized prize fight could trigger deadly riots.


Compared to the 'protest' riots and unrest of the black communities in the 1960s, the riots of 1919 were more like mobs of whites going around on lynching and killing sprees, and blacks sometimes responding likewise. All on a massive scale.


Still, it's no excuse to duck a worthy challenger.

 

This is true. Rickard certainly did send word to Dempsey not to fight Wills.
Rickard believed - or said he believed - that the promoters offering a Wills fight were full of B.S. anyway. He was convinced someone would pull the plug on it. Or so he told Dempsey.
Alternatively, maybe he just didn't want a black champion because he'd been stung financially when Jack Johnson was forced out of the country.