Why was Dempsey so vulnerable to being hit with a right hand?

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If u mean my thread S, the answer is a resounding NO...Gigante had men killing for him...NOT MY GUY...

 

Yeah and skinny Tommy Hearns gave Muhammad Ali a real drubbing in filmed sparring match - really schooled him - so I think Tommy Hearns would destroy Muhammad Ali in a real fight and Hurricaine carter lasted longer with Liston in sparring than Patterson did so I rank carter as a better heavyweight than Patterson haha? Get my meaning? All sorts of things happen in sparring - especially with the greatest P4P fighter in history? And I'm willing to bet that Greb didn't give Demps the drubbing in sparring that Hearns gave to Ali - I think if left to it and if he'd have really been trying, Hearns would've really hurt Ali

 

I don't know if you have actually been in a real boxing Gym. I watch trial horse middleweight Tom" the Bomb" Bethea bust up and severely beat undefeated 6"5 280lb Leroy Jones and it was just before Jones got his title shot against Holmes and Tom was 5"7, I have also witnessed Rodrigo Valdez a middleweight out-speed and make fools out of many heavyweight with the training gloves.

When Heavyweights want to spar with someone for speed they are reluctant to fight middleweight with training gloves because they get a faster guy that has power.

In the ring with 8 ounce gloves and more than 3 rounds the Heavyweights especially the punching heavyweight starts to inflict damage....it is not uncommon in training for a middleweight to make heavyweights look bad but other than Jimmy Ellis and the 5"9 James Toney Fitz, Langford and a few freaks there have not been too many who have had success moving up and maintaining there greatness ...Gene Tunney gave Greb a trashing and it was a dominant win and Tunney was a light heavyweight so I think Greb would be a hard sell. Wills should have gotten the shot but that was politics not Dempsey...how many so many are harsh on Dempsey while giving Holmes amnesty for avoiding Pinklon Thomas,Gerrie Coetzee,Big John Tate, Michael Dokes,Greg Page and a rematch with the improved Mike Weaver and also not rematching Williams and Witherspoon....double standard for Dempsey and not fair if we compare him with Holmes and the accolades Holmes gets on ESB....for me Wills was easy to hit, better it seemed than Willard but looks like he was made to order for Dempsey but again the film I have seen on the styles were when both men were older, as far as the great Greb, the way Tunney dominated him in his last fight hard to see how he would do better than Ketchel did vs Johnson.

 

Nope, never been in a boxing gym, you're right. Maybe some day I'll give that a try. Oh ****, I was in one yesterday. Almost forgot about that.

As far as Greb matching Dempsey... a) it should have been earlier in his reign before Greb's eye went out completely and before he got in the car wreck that precipitated his decline, sometime from 1920 to 1923. The Norfolk fight where he got the detached retina was 1924 if memory serves. b) Writers were calling for the match as late as 1925, publishing articles saying as much and even Dempsey was giving lip service to it, so it doesn't seem that hard a sell. How could it be a harder sell than giving matches to Greb victims like Miske, Brennan, Darcy or Gibbons?

Dempsey's title reign was largely a con job, but then again, you had con men like Rickard running the whole affair so it shouldn't be a surprise. And I do give Holmes demerits for missing some of the guys he missed. However, I am not sure the argument can be made that he ducked anyone as emphatically as Dempsey ducked Wills and Greb.

On the flips side, I do agree that Dempsey would have a good chance against Wills, that stylistically it would favor Jack. However, Wills was no ancient inactive Willard. It would be a much taller order.

 

there is NO EVIDENCE that dempsey ducked greb. None. Its a bunch of nonsense that the anti dempsey posters have created. Greb was defending his middleweight title and was obviously interested in that. I have never seen any evidence that he was desperate or very eager to actually fight dempsey.

 

dmt, right on ! During Dempsey's reign 1919-23 there was no groundswell
for a Dempsey/ Greb bout...Some talk about it perhaps, demand NO...
Reading numerous old ring mags from the late 1920s,and thirties I never encountered any writers saying that Dempsey DUCKED Harry Greb. Never !
Yes Greb in two sparring sessions got the best of Dempsey in 2or 3 sparring rounds, so what ? In many years I attended stillman's gym I
saw prelim boys get the best of top stars of that period, and this proved nothing...Did Greb want to fight Jack Dempsey ? Perhaps, as this bout would give Greb more dough than a year of traveling town to town weekly
in small money bouts. In fact one year the irrepressible Greb fought 45
times ,traveling by hot trains to some hick town for a bout, leaving next day for another hick town...A helluva hard way to make a living...
So Greb probably wanted a great money shot at Dempsey, cause Harry FEARED no fighter,or life itself...But as I posted before, i once read an article of a famous boxing writer, where Greb admitted that " after 4 or 5 rounds Jack would kill me ". Unquote...Yes greb beat many men that fought Dempsey...But those bigger guys were no Dempsey in his prime,as Dempsey was as agile and fast as a MW, and strong as any big HW...
What did Dempsey's braintrust have to gain in putting there meal ticket in
with a MW ? Nothing..Harry Greb was and is my very favourite fighter of alltime, but tackling the bigger tiger Dempsey would have been a bridge too far, and I believe the quote of Harry Greb concurring with this
scenario ...

 

"Dempsy would have been a big favourite"

"Paolino Uzcudun koing Wills, and Jack Sharkey beating Wills"

Wills was 37 and 38 when he lost to Sharkey and Uzcudun. Dempsey was out of competitive boxing at that age. Great champions such as Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Larry Holmes, were all losing fights at that age.

There is a good point here if Dempsey and Wills had fought in 1925 or later. The much younger Dempsey would have had a big advantage then.

If they had fought in 1920 or 1921, though, the fights with Sharkey and Uzcudun tell us nothing about how difficult an opponent a five or six years younger Wills would have been.

 

"I have found that the truer evaluaton of a boxer versus a contemporary is much more on target than decades later"

Ok. But how was Dempsey evaluated versus his contemporaries in contrast to Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano?

From the 1976 Ring Record Book--odds in heavyweight championship fights

Dempsey vs Willard--Willard 6 to 5
Dempsey vs Miske--Dempsey 7 to 1
Dempsey vs Brennan--Dempsey 4 to 1
Dempsey vs Carpentier--Dempsey 3 to 1
Dempsey vs Gibbons--Dempsey 11 to 5
Dempsey vs Firpo--Dempsey 3 to 1
Dempsey vs Tunney (1926)--Dempsey 11 to 5
Dempsey vs Tunney (1927)--even money

Selected Louis fights

Louis vs Braddock--Louis 5 to 2
Louis vs Schmeling--Lous 9 to 5
Louis vs Bob Pastor--Louis 6 to 1
Louis vs Buddy Baer (1942)--Louis 10 to 1
Louis vs Walcott (1947)--Louis 10 to 1

Marciano vs Walcott (1952)--Marciano 9 to 5
Marciano vs Walcott (1953)--Marciano 7 to 2
Marciano vs LaStarza--Marciano 4 to 1
Marciano vs Charles--Marciano 7 to 2
Marciano vs Charles--Marciano 4 to 1
Marciano vs Cockell--Marciano 7 to 1
Marciano vs Moore--Marciano 4 to 1

Bottom line--Dempsey does not seem to have been particularly highly regarded in the betting on his championship fights. Louis was held in higher esteem and was never a betting underdog. Marciano did slightly better in the betting odds.

Comment to follow.

 

Dempsey told Greb he would fight him. He went on to defend against 4 fighters Greb had defeated (3 of them multiple times), almost all fights resoundedly won by Greb. Greb was actively fighting heavyweights, Gunboat Smith, Brennan, Gibbons, Miske, Roper, Renault, Levinsky... He apparently had some interest in fighting heavyweight.s

Draw your own conclusions.

 

E, you are correct that a 37 year old Harry Wills losing to Paolino Uzcudun or Jack Sharkey shows nothing conclusive that a prime Wills would have
lost to a prime Dempsey...Of course not, except as it relates to Will's
straight stand-up style made to order for a crouching murderous punching Dempsey...I base my opinion on a Dempsey /Wills bout in their primes on STYLES and what the general feeling at the time..The boxing fraternity and
the great Sam Langford favored Dempsey by a large margin...Style, style, style...I have believed very strongly that no heavyweight outfights a prime Jack Dempsey, and if he were to be defeated it would only be by a great
mobile boxer...Never outfought...There was a REASON that in a poll taken in the 1950s amongst senior boxing writers, Dempsey was chosen by a vast margin as the greatest heavyweight ever...Of course it was in the 1950s, but Ray Arcel who saw Dempsey fight in his prime ,before Arcel died in 1994 had Dempsey and Louis as his choice of the greatest HWs ever, as I do also....

 

Let's focus in on the lightheavies who challenged for the title.

Dempsey vs Carpentier--Dempsey 3 to 1
Dempsey vs Gibbons--Dempsey 11 to 5

Louis vs Lewis--Louis 15 to 1
Louis vs Conn (1941)--Louis 18 to 5
Louis vs Conn (1946)--Louis 14 to 5

Marciano vs Moore--Marciano 4 to 1
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dempsey was a lesser favorite against Carpentier or Gibbons than Louis was in his first fight against Conn. Marciano, interestingly, is a stronger favorite against Moore than Dempsey was against either Carpentier or Gibbons.

I know someone will say Gibbons was more highly thought of than Moore or Conn in 1941, but I don't see it as he had lost badly to the middleweight Greb in 1922 over 15.

I would say the problem with this Dempsey is more highly regarded argument is that folks who did not give him that big of an edge over opponents in the here and now in the 1920's, some ordinary, became certain he would defeat Louis or Marciano decades later.

I might listen to 1920's sportswriters making a case that Red Grange was better than Ernie Nevers. I am not so certain I would accept their opinion that Red Grange was better than Jim Brown.

*Sorry for the last reference, non-Americans, but Burt knows where I am coming from.

Nice to see you are still active and posting Burt. Keep up the good work. I don't agree with you all the way, but am happy you are making your arguments. They are food for thought.

 

I'm pretty sure Greb was chasing a HW title shot, why else would he take on and dominate leading HW contenders like Brennan, Miske and Gibbons at HW? Why was the bout often talked about?

We need Klompton to weigh in on this though

 

Dempsey-Greb discussions in the papers

Negotiations

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30B1EF639551A738DDDA00A94DE405B828EF1D3

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AAAIBAJ&pg=5402,5301260&dq=dempsey+greb&hl=en

Greb talks about potential Dempsey bout

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AAAIBAJ&pg=1611,5171877&dq=dempsey+greb&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AAAIBAJ&pg=1020,1997868&dq=dempsey+greb&hl=en

Greb's 'ambition to face Dempsey'

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AAAIBAJ&pg=6118,6053311&dq=dempsey+greb&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AAAIBAJ&pg=6716,4627234&dq=dempsey+greb&hl=en

 

Greb himself said that Dempsey would kill him after 6 rds. Greb WAS NOT in line for a shot. NOONE thought of him as a Dempsey challenger. That is a fact. this is all revisionist bull****.