How good was Jack Dempsey's win resume?

To me it is when your old, past your prime, in a tough fight against a young tiger, sure .. opposed to guys that flare out after a few rounds ..

 

But Dempsey didn't refuse to defend his title against black contenders.

Either he was prepared to fight them in principle, and was prevented by other parties, or he was playing a more subtle game.

 

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One of those fights was a newspaper loss against Harry Greb, which some had him winning.

This is the same Greb that you accuse him of ducking, and call one of the best two contenders of the era!

[/QUOTE]Willard had gone 10 lackluster rounds over the previous four years and was 38.[/QUOTE]
You conveniently omit to mention that he beat a highly regarded contender in those lacklustre ten rounds.

[/QUOTE]Firpo was a non-entity whose claim to fame was beating a dismal 42 year old Willard who had lucky punched his way into an elimination bout.[/QUOTE]
If he had just beaten a former world champion, who was coming off a win over a highly regarded contender, he was hardly a non entity.

At least be honest enough to acknowledge that there were reasons why these matches were made.

 

"Dempsey didn't refuse to defend his title against black contenders"

"he was prepared to fight them in principle"

Except for over half his reign, he did indeed say he would not fight a black man on principle.

New York Times, July 5, 1919

"In the first statement he has made since becoming the heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Dempsey announced today that he would draw the color line."

On July 19, 1920, the Times reported that Dempsey had dropped this position and was willing to fight Wills if Wills beat Fulton. Of course he did not,


and then

Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1921 page 8

Dempsey is quoted in remarks made at a stopover at Omaha on his way to Salt Lake City to visit his parents.

"I will never fight a colored man."

"There is nothing in this talk on me fighting Jack Johnson."

"Kearns picks for me. Gibbons, I understand, is a good man, although I have never seen him work. As I have drawn the color line, I am free to say that I think Harry Wills is a great fighter, one who will whip the best of them. You know as much about Johnson as I do. As for Willard, I will fight him anytime, and lick him too."

It was about 1923 when he was back to saying he had no problem with fighting Wills.

Figuring out Dempsey's real position is like trying to figure out the real position of a typical flip-flopping politician. Who knows? When he was signed to fight other men, he gave statements about being willing to fight Wills. When Wills is pretty much standing alone as a contender, up comes the color line. Or Dempsey is hiding behind Kearns and/or Rickard.

Randy Roberts concluded that Rickard's policy was to talk of making the fight without ever producing it. Was Dempsey so slow on the uptick that he couldn't see what was happening, or was he a willing participant in the charade?

*The bottom historical line is that Wills and Godfrey never got shots against Dempsey and Tunney.

 

And the same Greb who had kicked his ass over 10 rounds 2 months before and 5 months after, both affairs being one-sided.

A regarded heavyweight who had been beaten before by some very good and not so good fighters... and would go on to get beat in 5 of his next 7 fights.

The greater point being that Willard was highly inactive and very old...

And Willard's victory over Johnson was a Hail Mary after Willard, who had looked horrible in training and horrible in the first 10 rounds, landed a crushing right hand. All kudos for Willards innate talent in carrying his power so late, but one look at him in that fight and the lead up to that fight revealed a guy with nothing left, but a right hand that he could only land very occasionally. I don't give Firpo a ton credit for that victory, especially as Firpo doesn't have anything else of note on his resume up to that point.

 

I think Dempsey was slow of the uptake OR he was a willing participant for a while (really doesn't matter which), and honestly I think he just got lazy pretty soon in his reign. I mean, I can't blame him for cashing in on his celebrity and making money without fighting. So his reign became a lot of talk about fighting and not much of it.
Of course, Kearns dictated over Dempsey, and took 50% of everything, not just for fights.

I see little reason to doubt that when Kearns was gone, (this is late in the day, 1925 and '26), Dempsey really did feel p!ssed off with hearing that he was afraid of Wills, and I see little reason to doubt that he urged Rickard and argued with Rickard to make his next opponent Wills. I am inclined to take the telegrams produced that show such a dispute at face value.

I see little reason to doubt that Rickard really wasn't keen on the fight, for racial and political reasons, and ultimately proved to prevent it in that last possible year, but I can't see how people think Rickard was some genius "protector" of Dempsey by matching him with Tunney instead of Wills. Truth is, Rickard was a GREAT promoter, and he thought Tunney the ex-marine would be a perfect foil for Dempsey but also didn't mind running the risk of having Tunney the ex-marine as champion to promote. Rickard didn't have the stomach for another black champion, he wasn't enthusiastic at all, it was racism.

 

People dismissing some of Dempsey's opposition, fair enough.
But the manner in which he beat most of the guys is hard to argue with.

I mean, when he's knocking men out in a matter of seconds in round 1.

People criticise some of the dubious, foul and untidy aspects of his win over Firpo, and the fact that he was knocked down and knocked out of the ring. But he pretty much overwhelmed Firpo is a slugging match, putting him down 9 times in 4 minutes. I thought the fight was quite clear in showing Dempsey was a level or two above.

And Firpo was not all that bad, otherwise surely Wills would have put him away in 1 round, but in fact only managed to put him down once, with a blatant punch on the break.

 

What you are doing here is the worst kind of revolveresqe hatchet job on a fighters opposition, and it does not reflect on you with any credit.

You are ignoring anything positive in these fighters recent records, including the fact that they were highly touted as contenders, and looking for any flaw that you can highlight to detract from the fact that they were highly regarded.

If Harry Grebsuch a standout as you say, then you can hardly deny Dempsey any credit for obliterating Levinsky, after some people thought that he beat Greb. Can you?

It doesn't matter how Willard beat Johnson, the heavyweight contender situation of the day, would reflect the fact that he did.

It would not even matter if people were misguided to think that Firpo was a top contender based on beating Willard. The reality that the champion would have to deal with was that they did.

You simply don't get to overrule the rankings, and contemporary opinion, based on hindsight.

If Firpo was a carefully managed fighter it doesn't make any difference. It is not the champion's place to make value judgments on how a challenger got to contention. Otherwise I could simply find some pretext to dismiss Wills ranking.

 

I suspect that Dempsey's management were more adverse to him fighting a black contender than he was, and that they were able to steer him away from it up to a point, after which we might speculate that Dempsey became embarrassed by the media criticism.

Obviously it is hard to interpret his true intentions, when he started signing contracts.

 

For those who think his resume of wins is good, list Dempsey's best five wins. I say they are on the thin side, but he did have some fine performances.

 

No, not many good big fellows, though Miske was a quality 200 pounder. Dan 'Porky' Flynn and Bartley Madden were also heavyweights. Case in point, his talents could bridge a weight differential.

 

J, your posts are right on target...But to try to argue the valid merits of this thread with Dempsey "haters". [yes I said haters] is an exercise in futility. Some on this site are paranoid with
the desire to belittle a man who was so highly regarded by his peers in the 1920s and afterward as such stalwarts as Sam Langford, Mickey Walker, Jack Sharkey, Gene Tunney, and Max Schmeling in his autobiography I have read, called Dempsey in a category "above all others" he had seen in his long life. Schmeling boxed with Dempsey when a young fighter in Berlin.
And held him higher than all the heavyweights he had ever seen.
Schmeling and all the others who held Dempsey so highly H2H
have a helluva more gravitas than some ESB naysayers 90 years later, I should think.
One other thing J. During Dempsey's reign as champion only Harry Wills I believe was the only black challenger who merited a shot at the title. Sam Langford, Joe Jeannette, Sam McVey were almost retired or closing in on 40 years of age... Harry Wills deserved a shot for darn sure, but politics, fear of racial riots that ensued after the Johnson vs Jeffries bout in Reno 1910, prevented many promoters to try their luck, except for Floyd Fitzsimmons of Detroit who signed both Dempsey and Wills for a match. But when Fitzsimmons couldn't come up with the rest of the dough, it was cancelled. A fact...Most every boxing writer of note picked Dempsey to ko the straight up Harry wills were they to have met. Dempsey was no angel, but he was a great fighter
at his best and not some ogre his haters make him out to be,
They try, but no cigar...cheers J...

 

Resume is a simplified term. Boxing is a spectator sport so we factor in performances. If we don't fighter's become trump cards.

Still, Dempsey's four best (contextual) wins are very probably:

Fulton
Willard
Gibbons
Sharkey

The fifth could be:

Miske - it's a tricky one, despite his illness only Dempsey stopped him, plus Billy enjoyed a winning streak thereafter.

Or

Firpo - Jimmy Deforrest wanted him to mature first but Luis still earned contender status. Clearly limited he was also clearly dangerous.

 

I would say, in historical order,

Fulton, Willard, Gibbons, Firpo, Sharkey

but the six to ten places would include two light-heavyweight champions, although I don't think they were at the same level as Gibbons.

Dempsey beat six of the top ten heavyweights of his era (including Miske)

and a couple of the top ten light-heavyweights (not counting Gibbons again)

not bad, but not historically outstanding either,

for he did not beat Tunney, Wills, or Greb, who at least arguably were better at their best than the guys he beat.

 

And some people thought Jennings won this past weekend. No one thought that Levinsky won two months earlier when Greb swept him over 10 or a few months later when Greb repeated the trick over 10.

It matters that Rickard saw a very soft touch for get Firpo a single, meaningful win so that he could hoist that match-up on a naive public. Please, go watch film of Firpo. It's beyond embarrassing to the sport.

Whose rankings? From which city? Next do you want to tell me about the legitimacy of the Spanish American War? I guess that wasn't contrived either.