Jack Dempsey as champion. Did he face top ten ranked opponents? How many did he beat?

Maybe, but willard was garbage by that point. Anyone could have beaten the 1919 version of willard. A big punching bag

 

You are basing this assessment on what?

 

The Willard of the Dempsey fight would have been a betting favourite over any potential opponent!

 

Yes.

It would have been impossible for some of the lower weight classes, due to the lack of records!

 

1. Age 37

2. Inactivity - 3 years

3. Shape- came in dreadfully out of shape at a soft 245


Need I say anymore?

 

Yes, a lot more.

This is the reigning lineal champion.

He would have been a betting favourite over any potential opponent, including Dempsey(obviously).

A 37 year old champion can be dangerous.

A recently inactive champion can be dangerous.

I am surprised that you dare to call him "out of shape", given your love for the "modern super heavyweights with skills!"

 

IS this a joke? 37 years old + 3 years of inactivity does not equal dangerous. It equals old, rusty, and out of shape. Willard barely trained for the fight and showed up at a very soft 245 and looked all of his 37 1/2 years old.

Lineal Champion means nothing if you won your title 4 years ago and haven't fought anyone since!!! Dempsey did not beat the 1915 Willard.

Willard did not have anywhere near the skills of any of the top modern superheavyweights

 

Dempsey's title reign certainly looks poor doesn't it?

 

So would you say that the version of Vitally Klitschko who fought Sam Peter was not dangerous?

On the contrary, any reigning lineal champion must be taken as a serious assignment.

If Willard was such a soft touch, then why didn't everybody predict that Dempsey would slaughter him before the fight?

Like you they with today's fighters, they saw that sort of physical difference as being insurmountable.

Keep telling yourself that!

 

Vitali was, because he

1. He is a much much higher level than Willard ever was
2. During his inactivity, Vitali kept himself in fantastic shape. Willard did not, at all


So if Willard sat on his reign until 1923, at Age 42...would you still have considered him dangerous? How much inactivity becomes a burden to you?

Louis was the favorite going into the Marciano fight. Does that mean anything?


Oh I know it. The films prove this. Clear as day. 1919 Willard in 12 round fights, modern rules, would not beat any of the skilled powerful modern superheavyweights.

 

Your first point is pure supposition, and your second one is debatable.

He was 42 at the time of the Johnson fight, so we would have to consider him to be dangerous at this stage.

It means that it was a win of significance.

What the film shows us, is that Vitally Klitscho was strikingly similar to Willard

They used exactly the same style, and it worked for exactly the same reasons!

 

That is complete supposition. How do you know he would have been a betting favorite over Wills?

 

"everybody expected Dempsey to get slaughtered"

That is not true. The odds were 6-5, which is close. Tunney was a much bigger underdog to Dempsey. Schmeling a mile bigger underdog to Louis in 1936. Jack Johnson was a bigger underdog to Jeffries (10-7) and Willard a bigger underdog to Johnson (8-5). The short odds indicate this was considered pretty close to a pick 'em fight by most.

That Dempsey was expected to get killed by Willard strikes me as another of the pillars of the rather heavy-handed Dempsey myth. Willard has to be seen as fearsome to build up beating him.

Another point. Are the short odds possibly an indication that Dempsey wasn't viewed as that formidable back in the day? Did later puffery create this image of a ring monster?

"No one else had overcome this sort of size disparity, in a lineal title fight."

A circular argument, as no one had been this big. It is a variant of big trumps good.