Should Harry Wills be rated above Jack Dempsey?

****ing hell.

"Harry Wills, the huge fighting nig*ger, appears to be a different kind of man to Jack Johnson : but all the same it is very unlikely that he or any other coo*n will ever get the chance to strut and crow as champion of the world"

:blood

 

What is with all these dempsey slandering threads?!? god he must have been great because you guys put so much time and energy over and over trying to prove otherwise.

 

That thought has crossed my mind also.

It's actually become a bit of a mystery to me, these efforts to portray Dempsey as some sort of second-rater, and I've been following this for a long while. Maybe there are just a few guys on this board who have weird personal issues and they've drifted together to focus their negativity on one particular fighter. Dempsey is the sacrificial scapegoat for the whole phenomenon of 'overratedness'.
There's the odd one or two who will do so with Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Jack Johnson etc. but that's never caught on and become mainstream. Those are like 'illicit vices' and you'll get shunned if you openly **** on those guys 24-7.
But shitting on Dempsey 24-7 has become a very significant sub-culture and is tolerated and even encouraged even by people who probably know he was great.


To be fair though, this particular thread poses a legitimate question.
Although SuzieQ is certainly a postor who only ever mentions Dempsey in the context of some other fighter being better than him. SuzieQ likes to boosts fighters of certain eras (obscure HWs of the 40s and 50s for example), and **** on others (everyone Dempsey ever beat, for example), with nothing much to back up his assessments.

 

Yeah, they don't even try to prove it.
They just say "Dempsey was ****" or whatever. "He was scared of blacks", "he was a barroom brawler", "he had horrible skills", "a fraud of a champion", etc. etc.

 

Systematicaly trying to inflict as much damage on a fighters legacy as practical, is not realy any better than trying to present a first rate fighter as a second rater.

It is also ulimately futile because:

A. It will be prety obvious what you are trying to do.

and

B. Even if you convince the whole world, the truth is still the truth.

 

Pachilles and ChrisPontius, to name but two, are 'respected' veterans of the board.

 

I have to agree with McGrain here. Look at Muhammad Ali. In the past few days we have had threads in which the biggest wins of his career were attributed to Mafia involvement ,Dick Saddler poisoning Foreman, and another thread in which Ali lost a theoretical match up with Doink the clown.

Read the last part of that sentence again.

 

Maybe every idiot in the general forum goofs off too.
All I know is that Pachilles is incessant in denigrating Dempsey. Maybe he just does it in an effort to wind 80-something-year-old burt bienstock up, which isn't good either.

He's argued tirelessly that Dempsey was 'scared of blacks' (by way of some prejudiced racist belief that they are all the same?) in the past.
I'd be pleasantly surprised and amused to see ChrisP refer to Dempsey as "highly skilled".

These guys are entitled to their opinions. I'm sure they would say I'm full of **** too. But when I see them in every one of the countless Dempsey threads offering a dismissive, negative opinion like 99% of the time, I'd call that 'making an effort' to portray him as something less than a first-rate fighter.

 

I also find it strange how some people seem to wan't to believe in a world where every great fighter is either virtuous and talented or wicked and incompetent. For some people, a historic fighters worth is virtualy measure by which side of a key political question they stood.

The real world dosn't work like that.

 

It depends really. Me personally I put them in the same tier and place jack higher because I think he'd have beaten harry.

Whilst willard was inactive i'd definitely say the coloured championship held more value than the white championship. Wills was very active and was fighting the best around.

However when jack destroyed fulton, brennan and willard, i'm of the belief he did enough to be considered the best hw in the world, a claim he kept hold of until he left for hollywood.

Wills then beat firpo to again underline his status as the best active hw a claim he held onto until losing to sharky (a man that jack would go onto knockout).

I think whoever you give the edge to is arguable: jack achieved more and wills had a better resume. I certainly believe these two should always be closely ranked together.

Both are just outside my top ten.

 

It's not helped by a simplistic and ignorant view of the past either.

I've seen some people on here even offer the opinion that the great Joe Louis was an 'Uncle Tom' or a subservient black man. With never anything much to back it up.
I find appalling that someone from the comfort of the 21st century would put such a label on such a tough, proud and badass black man as Joe Louis.