Dempsey's greatness.

Now Nat Fleischer is the next target and villain by some on ESB. What he saw in his little pinkie finger would exceed the total experiences of his naysayers on ESB. I have several of his books written in the 1940s as Ketchel, Leonard, Terry McGovern, and some Black Dynamite books we managed to save from Sandy, and the man saw thousands of bouts from the beginning of the 1900s...He traveled out of NY too as a boxing journalist along with all the great writers of his day . He describes the fight out of town with the young Dempsey against the peak Gunboat Smith. sitting with famous boxing writers who wondered if this new Western sensation Dempsey could take a punch and was more than a puncher. He describes his question was answered when the great right hand of
the rawboned Smith crashed on Dempsey's jaw, full force. Dempsey blinked, recovered and went back on the attack...Their question was answered. My point is to say that Fleischer did travel all over to see all the great fighters in America. He along with Bob Edgren, Tad Dorgan, and other great hard nosed boxing writers all called Dempsey
GREAT, and I take their words over some nitpickers on ESB, who get their kicks, kicking
a long dead gentleman Jack Dempsey ...
P.S. And I, if I was so inclined could do the same with their favorite fighters for sure.

 

Burt

I personally am not disputing that Dempsey was "great"

I do dispute that he should be considered greater than Louis and/or Marciano on the basis of a couple of polls.

 

Keep in mind that in 1922/23 when Rickard was supposedly trying to get a Dempsey-Wills fight together it was for Jersey which was also a ND state.

The fact that guys like Houdini and Burt put so much stock into the words of Nat Fleischer is enough for me to discount anything they say. Fleischer was a great ambassador of the sport but he was not a great historian, he was not overly reliable, he was not infallible, and he was not even truthful on many occasions. One thing Fleischer most certainly was not is someone who was going to upset the apple cart. Look how hard the guy tried to avoid controversy with Ring magazine. People act like he was this crusader for boxing and he wasnt. He stuck his head in the sand over and over again. As for his supposed travels from 1908 and beyond, whatever. The guy wasnt just a boxing writer, he covered all sports. Go back and match up his old articles with his later tales of where he was supposedly at for big fights and you can see he was full ****. Just like Damon Runyon who used to tell people all about the Dempsey-Miske training camps but wasnt even there. He was covering baseball out east in the runup to the World Series. Another thing to keep in mind is that Fleischer was a big supporter of Rickard to begin with so right there hes suspect witness in regards to these events where Rickard and his promotional subjects are involved. Finally, I'll say again, it is entirely likely that we have seen more of Jack Dempsey than Nat Fleischer and those guys ever did. Period.

 

I have all of Black Dynamite as well as Fletcher's bios on Corbett, Dempsey, Tunney, Ketchel, Leonard and Max Baer .. in each one he confuses the heck out of me by contradicting himself in his own books ...

AS far as Burt with the Gunboat shot Dempsey absorbed I'm sure it was a heck of a punch but again, putting aside how far down his career path Smith was he was also about 180 pounds ... Not exactly like taking a blast from a prime Lennox Lewis ... and why was this version of Smith able to unload on such a great Dempsey ?

 

I'm sorry. I forgot to add quotation marks. That's from James Dawson one of those writers of his time that you were talking about. My bad, as the colloquialism goes.

 

Such crap. It's not just Fleischer....it's Arcel, Langford, Tunney, Bimstein, Stillman, and a laundry list of others. We are talking the greatest boxing minds, the greatest fighters who ever lived. You show yourself to be a self serving amateur by making such an obnoxious claim that anyone watching silent film quality movies of Dempseys bouts has more knowledge than being there live from ringside, watching Dempsey fight, living in those times, watching him train. Fleischer was sitting at ringside when Dempsey fought Willard...were you? Enough said....your some level of writer who knows diddly about boxing. Go back to looking for single sentences in newspapers (newspapers you say can't be trusted by the way) in the hope of finding an angle to write another bad book.

 

Houdini

Langford--who was he comparing Dempsey to? Did he see Louis or Marciano? Or even Jeff in his prime?

Tunney--do you think he might be a tad biased as building up Dempsey is also building up Tunney.

"watching silent film quality movies of Dempsey's bouts has more knowledge than being there live from ringside"

Yes, I would say much. You can study film. Live from ringside means everything comes and goes pretty fast.

A thirty year old memory (and certainly anything older) is not all that accurate. A film is.

Frankly, the argument that a decades old memory of an event is somehow better than a film of the event is so weird I can't believe anyone would seriously make it.

 

Unless you have specific info that says Rickard purposefully chose states that would favor Dempsey then all you are doing is speculating. I don't think anyone thought the fight would go the distance.

You can find snippets that say everything and anything in newspapers of the day. You can't allow and no historian would allow individual stories to change well known, well documented history.

Writers search for such snippets and then build books around them. Does not matter if it's true....just a different angle on an old story in the hopes they will sell books.

 

I'll take the authors Steve listed over Fleischer, Arcel, Tunney, Bimstein, Stillman.

Emerson W. Dickerson was sporting editor of different newspapers in Grand Rapids and Denver since late 1890s, as well as boxing manager, and who proved himself an excellent analyst, predicting the results of 50 big bouts out of 55 correctly in 1906-1909.

Purves Turner Knox wrote sports for several New York newspapers from late 1900s - Sun, Evening Mail, Evening Telegram (of which he was the sporting editor for a period of time).

William O'Connell McGeehan was writing sports since 1900 for several San Francisco and New York newspapers. As one write-up about him says:
"McGeehan is credited with originating the "Aw, Nuts" style of sports journalism. They didn't write to create heroes, blow athletes out of proportion into myths, legends, or cultural legends. They wrote to be critical but fair analysts. Fought to find the men under the hype."

Frank Grant Menke wrote sports for several Cleveland newspapers since 1907, before joining New York National News Association, and being sports editor for King Features.

John Edward Wray wrote sports for several St. Louis newspapers since 1900, sports editor of Post-Dispatch since 1906.

Harry B. Keck was sports editor of several Pittsburgh newspapers since 1914.

Sam P. Hall started writing boxing no later than 1906, Chicago Examiner/Herald, Los Angeles Examiner, New York American.

Almost all of them started writing boxing much earlier than Fleischer.

 

Langford was comparing Dempsey to all other hwts he had seen and fought. Some of the greatest fighters in hwt history.

Tunney was not about building himself up. He cared little about boxing. His tombstone mentions nothing about being champion. Boxing to him was a means to an end.

Just blows me away how upside down you think. These people lived and breathed in those times, stood side by side with Dempsey, watched him train, watched him fight from ringside. These were not uneducated fans but experts and you say a non expert watching silent movie quality films where all movements are hard to follow and skills difficult to see has a better perspective? What are you smoking? I know more about these films than ANYONE.....I bought 8 mm films of all these fighters back in the early 70s. They were available for sale in the back of every boxing magazine (castle films). So I have 40 years of experience watching Dempsey but this pales vs watching a fighter...any fighter in live form. Not from 40 feet away in 2 dimentional silent film but live from ringside..flesh and blood. It's not in any way comparable.

 

It was Floyd Fitzsimmons who talked of staging the fight in Indiana.
Presumably in his own arena. The Dempsey-Miske fight had done alright there, so it makes sense.

But this discussion has become a little silly, predictably. The old conspiracy theories have emerged again.

 

Most every sports writer you list praised Dempsey as a great fighter.

Add to this Arcel, Stillman, Bimstein, Tunney, Fleischer, Odd, Jones. Endless list of not fans but boxing experts. All time great experts.

 

McGeehan picked Willard to beat Dempsey.
After the fight he wrote of Willard "There may be those who argue he was not properly conditioned. That is utter rot. No man not in the best of condition could have taken that punishment and survived. Only because he went into the ring in perfect shape is Jess Willard still alive".

In 1920, McGeehan wrote "Jack Dempsey is so much in a class by himself that his bouts can no longer be regarded as contests .. They are stirring exhibitions of the greatest punching machine of all time. No human can withstand a Dempsey onrush."

McGeehan also attacked Dempsey for being a draft dodger, and later, I think, around 1925, for failing to fight Harry Wills.

 

I repeated the names of writers who wrote on Dempsey-Miske bout, whose opinion about that particular bout should have more or as much weight as Fleischer's or untitled wire report author's.