Dempsey vDon Co^kell?

It's hard to find many heavyweights who look good on film to you. They have to be at least 6'3 weigh at least 215lb, be muscular, and have a 14" schlong.

 

I don't see how individual versus team sports has much to do with my point. Do you rate golfers on their worst ever rounds?

 

It may only be symptomatic of good heavies that they are so endowed... or it may be causal.

 

6' 3"

215 lbs.

Pretty small heavyweights for today. I don't think they could cut it against the likes of Lewis or the Klitschkos, or probably Wilder.

On the other hand, the guys who fit that criteria prior to 1960 were fellows who invariably lost to much smaller men.

*just an aside, it appears the center of gravity of athleticism of the human race is moving up. It was below 200 lbs. prior to 1960. It was in the 200 to 220 range from 1960 to 1990. It seems to have moved up to the 230 to 250 range today.

 

I think you are correct, I think the natural weight has gone up. If you look at a picture of the muscle men when I was a kid Charles Atlas was the guy, now they make the hulk look like a chump and they have more veins and popping muscles and that's just the girls

 

I think the quality of Big men has improved largely because of Olympic boxing and the amateur Super-Heavyweight division along with weight training being used in boxing. The very best have been Louis and the Klitschko's throw in Bowe if you want but I am not sure how well they would do against average sized guys like Louis and Dempsey 6'1.5 who were great but they do come into the pro's with vast amateur experience these days....before these guys it was always"the bigger you are the harder you fall"

I dont think anyone would rate the super H any different, There may be a top 4 that would be competitive the older big men fared less than average at the top

we now have Wilder (tall but small weight) Joshua 6'6, Joseph Parker 6"4, Price is 6"8 but appears to have a light weight chin

 

The Walker-Dundee fight seems to be a little more than just a cut eye. There was a lot of talk in the press in its wake about Walker being washed up. As it was an over-the-weight match, Walker shouldn't have been weakened by coming in at 148.

Here are a few ringside comments I came across

George Barry (INS correspondent)

"It was the decisive and bloody defeat of the once great Mickey Walker. He was hammered from pillar to post by Joe Dundee who hit the ex-champion so hard and so often and cut him up so unmercifully that Referee Eddie Forbes stopped the battle after 2:53 of the 8th round."

Joseph Gordon

"Forbes stopped the fight. It was a relief to Walker and all the 13,000 who came to the Garden to see the fight. Walker was a badly beaten man."

Mark Hellinger

"Joe Dundee gave Mickey Walker the worst beating of the latter's career. The fight was stopped in the eighth round with Walker hanging on the ropes, a battered, bruised, bloody, beaten man."


The consensus appears to be that after winning the first round, Walker took a terrible beating which sent him to the emergency room after the fight.

Without film, I don't know what there is to second guess here.

An argument could be made that he was more competitive even against Schmeling, but certainly Walker did much better against Sharkey and Uzcudun.

*In the August, 1952 issue of The Ring, in an article written before the Turpin-Don C fight, Nat Fleischer noted that after watching both Turpin and Robinson fight in 1952, he thought Turpin was now the better man and would win a rubber match if Robinson would agree to one.

It is noteworthy that despite a potential million dollar gate, Robinson did not give Turpin that bout.

 

To be fair to Turpin, Robinson had probably been chasing skirt for years before and always managed to win.

"Lifestyle" excuses always seem to come out when a favourite loses, but realistically, the winners are often having s*ex, drinking, doing drugs a bit anyway.
It's what people do.

Turpin gave Robinson a hell of a fight in the rematch also. :good

 

I think it telling that Robinson passed up a rubber match with Turpin when it was considered the biggest box office fight out there,

"if Walker was washed up"

We both know he wasn't. The point is he took such a bad beating from Dundee that observers speculated that he was washed up. This was not a fluky loss due to a cut.

 

"it was a cut eye stoppage"

Walker had a cut eye, but

"The fight was stopped in the eighth round with Walker hanging on the ropes, a battered, bruised, bloody, beaten man."

Strange that the ref stops a fight with seven seconds left in the round for a cut. It was stopped during the round with Walker apparently taking a beating. I am certain that over the following years Kearns, who was great at that, did a world of spinning on this fight, but the ringside reports point to the ref just stepping in to save Walker.

"maybe he was on the sauce?"

We can speculate on anything. He certainly did very well over the next few years for a dipso. What is clear is that he suffered a severe beating in this one from a welterweight and later went on to handle a lot bigger men like Berlenbach, Sharkey, and Uzcudun.