Harry Wills Articles

Good stuff Boilermaker, I've read some but not all of these before. What the Wills detractors like to brush under the carpet is how well he did against Langford in all those fights, even the ones he lost.

The claims Wills turned down a fight with Tunney are knocked back by Wills himself here, saying Tunney 'wasn't a coward and had common sense staying away from him'.

The story of Wills not blaming Dempsey is clearly not the case. I read Wills sued Dempsey in the early 30s for reneging on the fight contract. Does anyone know anything on this?

The Johnson-Wills sparring is a particularly good story, fairly even handed from Wills although maybe he was a little bit touchy about been given a boxing lesson.

There is a sense of injustice. You're hardly one to make claims of bias on the debate when your position from the offset is as an out and out Dempsey apologist rather than to assess Wills fairly as a seperate entity. Dempsey fans seem to have an agenda to marginalise Wills in order to make Dempsey look better.

These articles for the most part don't even have anything to do with Dempsey, bar one of them. But instead of reading them you just jump into attacking Wills losing any credibility you may have had

 

This content is protected

This content is protected

This content is protected

 

What the wide-eyed Dempsey fetishist sees... "Dempsey bashing"

What the objective scholar of the sport sees... "the proper adjustment of a legacy, something done in every other field of intellectual endeavor."

 

McVey and Johnson were close friends , it follows that Wills would not like McVey since Johnson fired him , for as he put it "not being able to handle the going or stand the pace"
Don Buchan .who ran training camps for Johnson, said Johnson was very easy going on his sparring partners. Johnson had George kid Cotton as a sparring partner for quite a while and continually talked him up to the press. I think Wills had an agenda, but its undeniably fascinating stuff especially his evauluation of McVey as the premier left hooker .
Many thanks for posting B.:good

 

Does anyone else find it ridiculous to say that Wills "ducked" Tunney when you realise that in 1925/26 Wills had been the top contender for 6/7 years and had fought several elimination bouts?

At what point do the "elimination bouts" stop serving the purpose of trying to find an opponent for Dempsey and begin to appear as though they were bouts set up only to eliminate Wills.

Lets get real here, Wills was after a title shot, not a permanent position as Dempsey's gate-keeper.

By the time Tunney emerged as a contender at heavyweight if Wills didnt get a shot then nobody else in line should have either.

If Dempsey is rightly criticized for that then its entirely on him, not some revisionist history.

 

I give a lot of credit to Tunney for pursuing this fight. I don't overly criticize Wills for not taking the fight. He did not need to prove any further that he was Dempsey's best challenger and that Dempsey was yellow coward fraud.

 

I agree with the first two points.

Given that Dempsey was fighting grown men in saloons when he was sixteen, for a" pass the hat round "couple of bucks. I think the underlined statement is not only unjust but absurd.

I have this fleeting mental image of you repeating it face to face to Mr Dempsey when he was prime. It is a very satisfying image.