Jack Dempsey and The Color Line...

Your two books on Jack Johnson are indispensable reference tomes for anyone seriously interested in this period of pugilistic history. They are absolutely crammed with primary sourced facts and quotes.Brilliant books that I would not be without.:good

 

That's like saying someone was most deserving during Frazier's reign because yout "most deserving" guy beat Zyglewicz, Ramos, Stander and Daniels.

If someone followed your approach today, all a boxer has to do is outpoint Eric Molina and Johann Duhaupas to become the "most deserving" WBC heavyweight title challenger.

Alexander Povetkin might have a problem with that. (Like I'm sure Harry Wills did.)

You can't base someone's qualifications on how well they did against other people who didn't deserve a shot. With Greb, that's what people are doing.

 

Yeah, imagine telling a 160-pound middleweight who'd lost a decision and been beaten up by a light heavyweight Tommy Gibbons that he - the middleweight - wasn't the MOST DESERVING HEAVYWEIGHT in the world.

:roll:atsch I'm sure that would've been "shocking" news to everyone. :huh

Who did the "ancient" long-time perpetual heavyweight contender Joe Jeanette lose to after Jack Dempsey won the title? Who were all these horrible boxers he was embarrassed against.

Let's see, Joe Jeanette lost a decision to the Colored Heavyweight Champion and number one contender Harry Wills in 1920 ... AND THAT'S IT.

He didn't lose to anyone else during Dempsey's reign.

Throw him in the trash heap. If you can't beat the number-one heavyweight contender, you must be absolutely awful.

Give the white, half-blind middleweight a shot ahead of all of them. He never beat the number-one contender, and he was losing to Tommy Gibbons (a light heavy) when Jeanette was losing a decision to Wills ... but I'm sure the middleweight deserves it more than anyone ... including the top contender Harry Wills. :-(

Give it a rest.

Think any of those old guys (and I use the term "old" loosely because they were all - except Jeanette - years younger than Willard) wouldn't have gotten a little "motivated" for a world title shot against Dempsey at the end of their careers, as opposed to fighting the same guys for the 27th time?

Fighting 42-year-old Foreman and 42-year-old Holmes never hurt Holyfield's rep. They're considered among his signature wins, because of what they'd accomplished YEARS before fighting Holyfield.

 

That's true but people do like to construct these detailed hierarchies, ie. "rankings".
We do it with "ALL TIME" and with "current contenders", "top 10s" etc. They are always subjective and provoke disputes.
People even have "pound for pound" rankings. A nonsense really.

So, it's natural that people will point out that Greb was "more deserving" than X, Y, Z, even if he wasn't particulary deserving.

 

The problem with your underlined statement is that Jeannette only had 3 fights during Dempsey's reign.
A loss to Wills which you mentioned , a dsq win over Bartley Madden who was a novice at the time and a draw with Harry Gibson, who was having his first fight.

Given these facts, do you seriously expect us to consider Jeannette as a viable ,credible opponent for Champion Dempsey???

As to Holyfield's defences against Holmes and Foreman.
Holmes earned his title shot by beating number 5 ranked Ray Mercer.
Foreman earned his by winning all 24 of his fights on his comeback, 23 inside the distance.

 

It's easy to go unbeaten when you're retired. Mike Tyson hasn't lost a fight since 2005. Maybe Wlad should give him a chance. Jeannette had three fights after Dempsey won the title. He failed to win two of them. He was old, finished, retired, an ex-fighter. I honestly don't know why you're persisting with such a flawed argument.

 

I'll answer both at once.

In 1919, the year Jack Dempsey fought ONE TIME - winning against Jess Willard - the apparently decrepit, retired, ancient Joe Jeanette fought SIX times.

Jeanette went 5-1. His lone loss was a decision to the number-one contender Harry Wills.

Aside from Wills, Jeanette beat Tom Cowler twice, Clay Turner, and Bartley Madden that year.

Madden wasn't a novice. If you're looking at his 9-1-1 mark on boxrec, which apparently you are, it's a glitch. Click on his name. Madden had been fighting for SEVEN YEARS. He'd faced all the usual suspects by then, including Greb, Miske, Gibbons, Levinsky, Brennan, etc.

Go look at who Cowler and Turner were fighting that year, too. (Same guys, Miske, Brennan, etc.)

The FACT is, Joe Jeanette was fighting AND BEATING all the same "suspects" the guys who some here claim were the "real" contenders were facing ... except, in addition to fighting them, Jeanette was also fighting Harry Wills ... who Greb and the other wouldn't have faced if their freaking lives depended on it.

For the 10 years leading up to that, Jeanette had been a top heavyweight contender the entire time. It was just another year in a long career at the TOP.

And the fact that Jeanette only lost to Wills that year (who he faced THREE TIMES and only lost that one time) ... F*CK YES I consider Jeanette a viable contender when Dempsey won the title.

He had 165 fights, all at heavyweight, and when he wasn't fighting Sam McVea, Harry Wills and Sam Langford, he was fighting all the usual suspects all the white guys were fighting.

Yes, Foreman and Holmes had mounted comebacks after long retirements. But Jeanette didn't need to mount a comeback. He'd been a top contender the whole time -- including when Dempsey won the title.

For the love of God how many fights in 1920 did he need to fight to "still" be considered a contender that year? Did they have to start from scratch each January 1?

He was a 15-year pro. He had 165 fights all at heavyweight. He'd remained a top contender for 10 godd*mn years. He was still a top contender when Dempsey won the title. He wasn't a young man. But hell, yes, he deserved a shot.

Dempsey should've made his first defenses against those vets. They were his actual top contenders, with Wills at the very top.

And you guys are harping on the OLDEST guy I brought up. :roll:

Langford was 36 in 1919. McVea was 35. Wills was 30. They were the top heavyweights at that time. Just because they weren't considered for title shots because of their color doesn't change that.

There seems to be this weird roadblock in some people's minds that these guys who were Jack Johnson's top contenders weren't still THE top contenders when Dempsey became champ.

Only four years had passed between Johnson's fall and Dempsey's rise. And Willard didn't knock any of them off. He wouldn't face McVea, Jeanette, Langford and Wills, either.

Greb certainly didn't knock them off. Greb was losing to welterweights and middleweights when Willard was champ.

Those guys hadn't gone anywhere. So to assume that they weren't the top contenders when Dempsey became champ would be WRONG.

Gotta go.

 

Pleasure debating you as well.

However it's not my definition of a low blow that counts it's the prevailing definition of a low blow during those times that does.

 

No, the fact is that during the time period of Dempsey's title reign ie 4-7-19 to 23rd -9-26.
Jeannette had 3 fights winning one, drawing one, against a debutee and losing one. In the year prior to Dempsey winning the title in1919, ie 1918 Jeannette lost twice to Kid Norfolk and had not beaten anyone of note. In1917 Jeannette drew with one Gabe Gulart whose record was 1-3-0 .

HE WAS DONE.

None of the great black fighters [,Jeannette, McVey, or Langford ,] you named ,were contenders during Dempsey's title tenure.

 

This is very true. The era of the great black hwts Johnson, McVey, Jeanette and Langford was over by the Dempsey era. Wills came after this very lofty group although there was some overlap.

 

Really?

Please tell me the years they stopped being "contenders" and who replaced each in their top contender spot.

I'd love to know your answer. :good

 

How many fights did the aged 40+ Jeannette have in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925 and 1926 combined? Oh that's right, one. He had one more fight after three years out of the ring (which he didn't win) and then retired again. He was finished. And he was old. And he was finished. And he was old. Which, I suspect, is why he retired.

So Jeannette beat Bartley Madden. You forgot to mention that Madden was coming off a loss to... Harry Greb, who had given him a serious beating and knocked him down. Beating journeymen like Cowler and Turner didn't make Jeannette a top contender. I'm not sure why you think losing to Wills made him a top contender. He also lost to Kid Norfolk twice in 1918. Losing to two better fighters and winning on a DQ against a perennial also ran who had just been beaten up by a middleweight, who you claim was never a heavyweight contender anyway, doesn't scream top contender.

McVea didn't fight at all in 1919. In 1919, Langford lost to Wills three times, drew with Jack Thompson twice, and also lost to Willie Meehan. In 1920 McVea lost to Pinky Lewis and Langford. In the same year, Langford lost to Thompson and Lee Anderson, Wills again, and Bill Tate.

If you want to pretend that three fighters pushing 40 and posting results like that were still the top dogs in the division, that's up to you. But it has no basis in reality. They couldn't live off their past reputations forever. They were not viable contenders any more which is why no one regarded them as such. Wills was, and that's why his right to a shot at Dempsey received so much support and interest. Not Langford, Jeannette and McVea.

 

You've saved me half a post:good

 

You're right. It didn't. And if Jeanette had fallen out of the sky and only beaten Cowler and Turner, I'd agree.

He was a top contender for what he'd done for the 10 years leading up thru to the end of 1919 without a break.

Jeanette fights 165 times, and doesn't fight in 1920 and FORGET HIM, HE'S DONE. It's over. Seriously?

It's totally bizarre how you just brush these guys off. There were the top heavyweight contenders. They had been for a decade. Dempsey and Willard would take off three years like it was nothing.

If Dempsey had signed to fight Jeanette in 1920, the outcry wouldn't have been that Jeanette was "too old" or he "wasn't a contender" (because he was) ... it would've been "You can't defend the heavyweight title against a n*gger."

And that's the ONLY reason. He was still beating all the same guys everyone else was beating, in addition to having notched countless wins over every big name for the past decade.