Best defence Dempsey or Marciano

Fliescher. "You cannot compare Marciano to Dempsey except in terms of punching power"

Dempsey was far quicker, better boxer and the better technical slugger. Both ATG but with Dempsey at a higher level.

 

Dempsey had better defense.

 

Both men often threw defense to the wind when going on the attack,

but I would say Marciano had the better defensive skills to call on when he needed them--witness the 11th round against Walcott when he seemed hurt and made Walcott miss punch and punch by getting really low and rolling side to side, or the 2nd round against Moore when Moore couldn't follow up his knockdown.

I remember a SF newspaper criticizing Dempsey's defense after his 1918 fight with Meehan. The writer mentioned he had a good defense when on the attack, but when Meehan came at him throwing punches Dempsey seemed at a loss. This flaw shows in the films of the Firpo, Tunney, and Sharkey fights in all of which his opponent goes on the attack and Dempsey just stands straight up with his hands low and takes punches.

 

I'd agree with that.

Interesting titbit of information in the last paragraph too.

 

No one in boxing history ever claimed Marciano had a better defense than Jack Dempsey. You cannot compare the two in this category.

 

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Dempsey doesn't look this refined in terms of the way he defends in highlights I've seen of him.

 

Marciano had a unique defense but you cannot claim anything he did was refined. Dempsey FAR greater defensive fighter. Far greater fighter overall. Fleischer who watched both live from ringside "you cannot compare Marciano to Dempsey except as a puncher". This says it all.

 

Fleisher worshipped Dempsey. I'd be inclined to take anything he said with several spoon-fulls of salt.

A.J. Liebling said that Marciano had a tendency to confound everyone by occasionally doing something that was highly skilled...like slip a punch perfectly.

Or, to put it another way...Firpo doesn't come close to knocking him out of the ring.

 

Actually Fleischer was often critical of Dempsey.But he did say Marciano was a poor facsimile of him. Fleischer ranked Dempsey at no 4 and Marciano at no 10 all time.

Can you name one respected writer who actually saw both fight who ranked Marciano over Dempsey? Because I can't

 

Yes. Nat rated Johnson no 1. Dempsey no 4. Rocky No 10.

 

"I reflected with satisfaction that old Ahab Moore could have whipped all four principals on that card within fifteen rounds, and that while Dempsey may have been a great champion, he had less to beat than Marciano. I felt the satisfaction because it proved that the world isn’t going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young."

The closing paragraph of Ahab and Nemesis, by AJ Liebling

 

Libeling was not writing anything concerning a hypothetical Dempsey-Marciano fight. His reference to Archie Moore was that he felt he could have beaten all four headliners in a card he saw in 1923 where Willard fought Floyd Johnson and Firpo took on another contender.

His second reference is that he felt based on what he saw that night of Willard and Firpo that Rocky had tougher opposition than Dempsey.

That's it.

 

nice words and Joe Louis did have one of the finest but I guess he did avoid it though and did manage to get inside

 

I spoke to Nat Fleischer many times up at Ring Magazine in NYC, I was amazed that he saw Greb, Ketchel, Johnson, Walker, Dempsey (who I was a tremendous fan) and he was very big on fighters of his era, He felt Joe Louis was the greatest and rated Max Schmeling pretty high and Jack Dempsey higher but he put Marciano in his top 10 and that is saying a lot....Nat was not big on Ali, he felt there was talent but thought Johnson and Dempsey were better....by the way was not overly impressed with fighters of the time. I once asked him what he thought of Ken Buchanan who I thought much of after watching him beat Ismael Laguna and others and he said he was good, not great.

 

Chris Pontius did this and it shows much of what Marciano was able to do despite his shortness of reach, Charlie Goldman was a master teacher and Marciano an intelligent student some very subtle moves that the slow-mo- reveals ....both men were aggressive fighters and avoided many punches while on the attack. I think Dempsey used the "good offense is the best defense style with his quick sporadic attacks and Marciano used his unorthodox rhythm breaking offense but defended and rolled pretty good. Both were underrated and surprisingly Marciano may be more so than Dempsey on ESB (who is usually rough on Jack D)