Harry Wills footage

Thanks very much for posting such a quality print of the Firpo fight.

Firpo does not appear to be in the same shape he was for Dempsey,and it might be a case of being dragged down to his opponents level but I'm not impressed with Wills here , he looks slow and open.reinforcing my view that Dempsey would stop him.
Wills looks better against Madden showing good inside skills but he is really too big for Madden.
Against Paulino ,Wills was gone , he doesnt appear to want to get up from the final blows to me.:good

 

Stop the presses, we agree. Dempsey would have beaten Wills.

 

So you think Baldomir's as good as Mayweather then?

My issue is Dempsey fans tend to try and discredit Wills in order to make Dempsey look better.

All it is an opinion of Dempsey bias. Firpo who knocked Dempsey out of the ring was a good match, but the man who easily won every round against Dempsey wouldn't be? OK

 

P P .I think Dempsey beats Wills but its very possible I'm wrong.Jack seemed to do better against the bigger slower moving men than against the smaller clever guys.
True Firpo had him down and out of the ring but he himself was up and down like a yo yo in that fight.I think Dempsey's results against Firpo and Fulton are better than Will's, just my opinion.

 

Nice way to cherry pick a non heavyweight match. We all know Mayweather is not a puncher I guess you believe Harry Wills is the HW equalivant of Mayweather's power. I tend to believe he punched harder. I also wouldn't be so dismissive of Baldomir who was good enough to become a champion as saying he is three class levels below him. Was there a vast skill difference yes.
Listen there is no one set of rules all fights must abide by, sometimes a power puncher has an off night, now and then a sturdy chin might fail we all know this. So I'm not going to nit pick everyone's opinion. I will say I value ray arcel's opinion more than anyone else's on the subject matter. And I will also say that just because the link I provided sides with Dempsey after the author viewed the footage doesn't make it biased. I happen to agree with that assessment nothing more or nothing less. Just diffrent opinions. I do believe Dempsey's second round KO of a more fit Firpo is more impressive than Wills decisive decision victory. However we can grab other fighters from their resume and argue til forever about Willie meehans and Fred fultons to ad naseum.
Dempsey would have been a favorite going into any fight with wills that much we know.

 

Jack Johnson picked Dempsey to beat Wills, but lose to Tunney.

Styles, folks.

He also picked Wills to beat Tunney.

 

No cherry picking, if you follow boxing you'll countless examples of decisions where the winner is several levels above the loser. Lewis-Tua or Wlad-anyone are 2 HW examples. Winning a decision and not scoring a KO doesn't mean you don't have power, Wald and Lennox are 2 of the biggest punchers in boxing history. I'd put Wills in the Lennox/Wlad bracket in he clearly has power but doesn't go all out for the stoppage. We know he won nearly every minute of his Langford bouts but didn't go for the stoppage.

He was inexperienced 20yo and a fan when Dempsey was in his pomp, which would affect his opinion. We may question how much Wills did he even see?

It could be an unbiased opinion, but it's an illogical position to say:

'Fighter A who won every second of a fight against Fighter B isn't a match for Fighter C who was knocked out of the ring by Fighter B but knocked out Fighter C'

Dempsey showed he could finish Firpo but showed but worse defence and risked being knocked out due to his risk taking. Wills took less risks, never got hit with anything serious and won at a canter looking less exciting in doing so. Both dominated Firpo ultimately in different ways.

Bookies work by taking odds off the public and as a popular champion Dempsey would have more money going on him. So yes Dempsey would be the better favourite but it does mean he's the most likely to win.

No I've objectively stated what Wills does well. He shows good defence rarely getting hit, which is mainly reliant on a use of distance and reflexes. He has fast hands, a fast rangy jab, compact punches, good reflexes, good infighting with his holding and uppercuting/hooking inside. He shifts his bodyweight well to sit on his punches. Those are objective techniques he uses that we didn't really know about him before.

No one will ever know who would of won, it's like the Lewis-Bowe question mark. The level of both boxers being close. What we can say Wills was much better than Fulton, Firpo and Willard.

I think it's now simplistic to say Wills was 'big and slow'. He's actually quite quick and he is hard to hit. He can fight inside very well too compared to the other men. A very different proposition.

My opinion is that we have is a similar fight to Wills-Langford. Dempsey has a punchers chance as Langford did but I see Wills outboxing Dempsey and having the advantage inside.

HE did, although he may have had an agenda against Wills, Dempsey as he seemed to with Louis. His reasoning is Wills doesn't have a jab, which he clearly has in the footage, although he uses it less than Dempsey.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it Johnson who wrote an article deriding Dempsey's ability comparing him unfavourably to Langford?

I'd rate Wills above Johnson now, he looks more skilled from the footage.

 

the most shafted boxer in history?

methinks so.

 

Papers say it was a sloppy fight. Fripo is over rated, but he was big man with a punch. A larger and more in shape version of Tony Galento if you will

Key take away and testimonial. Dempsey easily hurt Fripo. Wills could not.

 

According to Wills he was winning every minute of all those bouts even in the losses up until the KOs, which he claimed came out of nowhere.

 

I think what surprised me most was the fact that Harry Wills was black.