Jack Dempsey's Ranking

Waaaaay different time period socially. In one time blacks were referred to as negros by the government and in the other you so much as breath the word nig*er and you are crucified but crac*er can be thrown around like you're ordering coffee.

 

Finally someone understands me.

 

You are making the assumption that drawing the colour line in one era, has comparable implications to drawing it in another.

If you draw the colour line in an era where there are no top fighters who are black, it still makes you a bad person, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference to your all time ranking.

 

Was Harry Wills not the top fighter of the era?

 

Yes unequivocally in my opinion.

Once you get past Wills however, most of the top contenders were white, so the damage is at least ring-fenced.

 

What? :roll: Since "most" were white, it was okay to draw the color line?

The damage would be minimal now, too.

MOST of the top contenders today aren't black. Wlad Klitschko. Lucas Browne. Alexander Povetkin. Ruslan Chagaev. Kubrat Pulev. Alexander Ustinov. Artur Szpilka. Johan Duhaupas. Czar Gazkov. Eric Molina. Guys coming up like Oleksander Usyk, Hughie Fury, Michael Wallish.

You could fight for years and make five or six defenses (like Dempsey) and never face a black heavyweight challenger if you chose to do so.

Fury could defend against Wlad, Browne, Povetkin, Pulev and Ustinov and basically face tougher comp than Dempsey did in his successful reigns. And never fight a black fighter.

See how easy that would be? And frankly, what's the difference between doing that and doing what Dempsey did?

Or, hell, Wilder could say he refuses to fight anyone from England. He's against the Brits. So forget it.

Would anyone say ... "Well, the damage is minimal. There aren't THAT MANY top Brits. Just the top two in the division. But otherwise, not many."atsch

Harry Wills was the top heavyweight contender throughout Dempsey's reign. He was arguably better than Dempsey. (Like Joshua is arguably better than Fury. Or Wilder is arguably better than Fury.)

There was no LAW against Dempsey defending his title against a black man. Nobody was going to strip Jack Dempsey if he defended against Harry Wills. Nobody would've stripped him if he chose to fight Sam McVea or Sam Langford. He just CHOSE not to do so.

In the decades that followed, there were instances when other fighters "couldn't" get title shots. Like fighters from the USSR couldn't turn pro because THEIR COUNTRY wouldn't allow it. Or fighters from Cuba couldn't turn pro because their country forbade it. And they had to try to find a way to sneak out of the country, or "defect" and give up everything to turn pro.

But the champs "tried" to fight them. Ali tried to get a fight with Cuba's Stevenson, offering him or his country millions, and Stevenson declined. A Tyson-Savon fight was proposed. Savon was against it.

When Larry Holmes was the WBC heavyweight champion, the WBC REFUSED TO RANK fighters from South Africa and they FORBADE any of their champs to defend against a South African or they'd be stripped. Holmes ended up vacating the WBC title -- when the WBC made Greg Page his mandatory - because he wanted to unify against Gerrie Coetzee. So Holmes vacated the title and spent a year trying to make a fight with Coetzee (but it eventually fell apart due to finances).

Holmes had to GIVE UP his title to even try to make a fight with Coetzee.

Dempsey-Wills was NOTHING like that.

There weren't international laws or ratings bodies blocking the fight.

Dempsey just said no to fighting the top contender and the guy who was arguably BETTER than him throughout his reign because Wills was black.

The damage wasn't "minimal." The damage was HUGE. Boxing missed out on the best heavyweight title fight for the better part of a decade because Dempsey wouldn't fight a black guy.

For me, that was enough to disqualify him from the top of my all-time heavyweight lists. Especially considering the top heavyweights after him didn't do that. And THE BEST heavyweight champs tried to actually "make" those fights ... not avoid them.

 

Dempsey was the "world" heavyweight champion.

He wasn't confined to fighting in the U.S. He could've fought Wills in the U.S. or in most any country around the globe.

And Dempsey and his team didn't draw the color line because the world and boxing fans in the U.S. would've been outraged by the sight of a white man beating the hell out of a black man and knocking him out in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans.

They didn't draw the color line because they feared how bad it would look if Dempsey destroyed Harry Wills. :-(

Barriers are always put in place because those putting them up "fear" what's coming and they need help to fend off what is coming.

 

This is a frustrating thread to read.

"Dempsey drew the color line!"

"No, evidence shows he went out of his way to do the opposite."

"See, Dempsey was solid, but drew the color line."

"Um...no"

"Dempsey was good for his time, but didn't fight Wills."

"smfh..."

 

Yes Seamus is blacker than coal, and racist to his pinkie foot soles.:hey