There is no Willie Meehan footage and those fights were only 4 rdrs. The last was an exhibition. Dempsey wasn't the only one that Meehan got the better of over 4 rds. Jack Dillon and Sam Langford also lost decisions against Meehan. Again the Tunney bouts aren't a good representation, there are a million different reasons why. A 28 year old prime atg vs a 31/32 year old atg that is clearly past prime and hasn't fought in a few years. What do you expect to see? Willard was big but not slow, in fact he was noted because of his speed and it clearly reflects this on the Dempsey-Willard film. I haven't seen any Fulton footage so idk what kind of speed he had.
After doing a quick search on google, the author was in fact a former amateur boxer with one professional fight that ended in a draw. This is all the more embarrassing for him because of his statement about the sparring session between Dempsey and Tate. He says that Dempsey wasn't making Tate pay nor was he closing the distance effectively. If Dempsey was trying to make Tate "pay" for missing then he clearly would have. Nobody knows what Dempsey and Tate were working on in that session, we can only guess. Sparring isn't mean't to be all out and different sparring partners serve different purposes in camp. Dempsey frequently sparred with middleweights and welterweights for rounds on end. Is it not obvious that Dempsey could have stopped them in the first round had that been his intent? Of course it is.
That is false. The author had several professional fights, you can only find one on the web. On sparring, you work on things, and Dempsey didn't make him pay for missing. If there is a fight film for Dempsey countering on a miss, show me the fight and the round so I can see it. Dempsey and his fans can be contradicting. For example, the promoter asked Dempsey to take it easy on Carpentier who was landed and fought round one on even terms, then hurt his hand and it was all Dempsey to the finish in round four. Maybe he carried Carpentier for a round, that's it. The film shows Carpenter was elusive and Dempsey needed body shots, some of which were kidney shots to slow him down. However the promoter said the same thing vs Fripo and it was over in 2 rounds, with Dempsey himself going down 1-2x, because he wasn't thinking defense, and obviously did not carry Fripo. So did Dempsey listen to the promoter? Not in this case. Furthermore, the Dempsey v. Friso film is highly edited. There is no sure when to tell how long Dempsey was out of the ring, or if he was aided by a 2nd. Aren't some of the knockdowns missing too? Why? This casts a shadow of doubt that Dempsey's team edited things out when he did not look good on film.
Dempsey was poisoned by his own bodyguard for the first Tunney Fight? This is the first I've ever heard of this. Source?
It's mentioned in several biographies about him.Mike Trent was the guy ,he was supposed to have supplied doctored olive oil to Dempsey
Taking it easy on an overmatched light heavyweight is one thing,as Dempsey pointed out to Rickard, Firpo could hit like a train,Jack went in there to drop him.
Ahhh, you're correct bud, I was wondering though, if there was any substantiated proof about this. Foreman also claimed he was drugged but then retracted that. I was just wondering if there was any proof to the claims.
Whether he had one or many it matters not. As for Dempsey not making Tate pay, like I said, we don't know what they were working on in that session. Dempsey clearly seems to be doing a great deal more bobbing and weaving than in a normal fight. When you say "If there is a fight film for Dempsey countering on a miss, show me the fight and the round so I can see it." do you mean to say that Dempsey never counter punched? I am confused there. Dempsey wrote in his autobiography that either Kearns or Rickard (I can't remember which sorry) told him to lay off Carpentier until the time was right and whomever told him eventually gave the word in between rds 3 and 4 then Dempsey went in for the kill. I can't remember anything like that going down during the Firpo bout. Not mentioned in Dempsey's autobiography. The Firpo fight isn't edited that much. There are only a few seconds missing from the first round (14 seconds) and that's it. None of when Dempsey was knocked down is missing. I think they attempted to edit out the first knockdown by Firpo. It wasn't that big of a knockdown, Dempsey's knees touched the canvas but he was on his way up faster than he went down. According to newspaper accounts it took Dempsey 19 seconds to get into fighting pose so that probably means Dempsey was in the ring at least a few seconds earlier.