Does Harry Wills have a case to be ranked higher than Jack Dempsey?

You heard wrong lol

 

No. Mongoose became Kentucky Cobra.

 

We will be a bit analytical here. I confess to not being a massive fan of either, Wills I feel is overrated and Dempsey didn't prove how good he may have been. Bit these are kinda gut reactions.
So I list Dempsey's ten best performances and also Harry's.
Jack;
Brennan -pre-title
Fulton
Miske-Pre-title
willard
brennan
Carpentier
Firpo
gibbons
Sharkey
Tunney 2

Harry;
Jeannette
Langford- L 1914
McVea-w 1915
Langford-W 1916
Clarke 1916
Norfolk
Fulton
Madden
Firpo
weinert

I still think both overrated but great fighters despite that. I don't feel Harry proved himself any better than Jeannette, Langford or McVea but his overall body of good wins is probably deeper than Jacks. Dempsey was pretty impressive once he hit his stride and nobody came close until he met Tunney and Sharkey but inactivity and the non-fighting of Wills and Greb hurts him. My two sense...

 

I thought he was ,but that was Kentucky Cobra,I found an old " love letter ,"from him lol.

 

Yes he's right.Kentucky Cobra it was!

 

You gave Lewis as an example of Carpentier's top wins at HEAVYWEIGHT.Lewis weighed 150pounds for the Carpentier fight.I told you Lewis was talking to the referee when Carpentier knocked him out but you refused to believe it, so I produced the ringside report which totally endorses everything I said.

 

I agreed with Klompton that I was prepared to accept his opinion because he had seen the fight and I hadn't .
Nor have you by the way.Nobody else proved anything ,I was going by an Army Service Paper called the Stars and Stripes which said Folley was robbed ,Klompton has seen the film and said no he wasn't ,and I was happy to accept that and posted that I was, so why do you bring it up whenever you reply to me ?It has no bearing on anything!

Now why have you mentioned it here on a thread about Wills v Dempsey? What relevance has it to the thread?
Please explain?
I have a reasonably extensive fight collection that I began in the mid 1960's.I expect I've watched significantly more fights than you have!

 

Germany was notorious in the 60s/70's for being favourable to home fighters.The saying was you had to ko the local fighter to get a draw.The report which Box Rec carries was from a ringside reporter.Folley's manager filed a protest.

Here is the report that I went by and I drew an understandable conclusion from it.Now can we get back on topic?
1964-04-17 : Zora Folley 204 lbs drew with Karl Mildenberger 191 lbs by PTS in round 10 of 10

• Location: Festhalle, Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany
• Referee: Otto Nispel

"Veteran Zora Folley gave young Karl Mildenberger a boxing lesson Friday night but the judges evened it up and called it a draw - a verdict that stunned most of the 12,000 fans that jammed the Messehalle here to watch the two highly ranked heavyweights in what was billed as an elimination match. Folley carved out cuts under Mildenberger's eyes and repeatedly scored with solid left jabs and straight right hands over the southpaw efforts of the German challenger. By the end of the 7th round Mildenberger had cuts under both eyes while Folley bled from the nose as a result of Mildenberger's left. Referee Otto Nispel took it upon himself to stop the fight time and again to warn Folley on butting and in the 8th round Nispel stopped the fight while he took Mildenberger to his corner and wiped the blood off his face so a doctor could come to the ringside and examine the cuts. Mildenberger, although clearly outclassed, never stopped trying and absorbed a tremendous amount of punishment from the American. He was still trying gamely in the 9th and 10th while Folley was content to coast and that was all the judges seemingly needed." -European Stars & Stripes

• Unofficial Stars & Stripes scorecard - 7-2-1 Folley
• The UPI reported that Folley, "appeared to have the upper hand against his 26 year old opponent." While the AP reported that Folley, "appeared to have piled up a good margin. He gave the German a battering in the 7th and 8th rounds."

Post fight comments

• "When the referee stopped the fight to examine the cuts, that gave Mildenberger time to recuperate." -Bill Swift, Folley's manager, claiming that Folley had hurt Mildenberger with a flurry of hard shots to the head just before the referee intervened.

• "I thought I won, but this isn't as bad as the decision I lost to Brian London in England. When you fight away from home you have to contend with this." -Zora Folley

Klompton said a draw was correct, I'm good with that.End of.

 

I used to be a Dempsey fanatic a long time ago. I still think he was a great fighter. But over the years, the Wills fight not happening has bothered me more and more. I have no idea if Dempsey avoided Wills or whether he tried to make the fight and it never happened.

Here is what i do know:

Initially, Dempsey said he would not fight black fighters

Dempsey reportedly was quoted in a newspaper that he wanted to fight Wills

Tex rickard said he would never promote the fight after the Johnson-Jefferies riots.

Dempsey signed a contract to fight Wills, but the promoter couldn't come up with the money and the fight fell through

We will never ever know whether Dempsey ducked him or not. Regardless, it has definitely hurt Dempsey's legacy in my eyes.

I am still not sure if i can rate Wills above Dempsey. How do you judge Wills when there is zero film of him in his prime? I am sure he was very good, maybe even great, but its so hard to assess his actual strengths and weaknesses.

 

Here's some info for anyone still interested. After Dempsey won the title, Wills' non-pushover (the unknowns with like 5 fights) opponents were:
Jeff Clark - 33 years old and a losing fighter
Sam Langford - 36 years old and losing to the likes of Meehan and Fulton (Langford would have clobbered them in his prime imo)
Joe Jeannette - Not too shabby for a 40 year old but none the less he's 40.
KO Kruvosky - contender for the light heavyweight title but never even a remotely serious candidate at heavyweight. More known for what he did outside of the ring rather than in it.
Jack Thompson - Dempsey sparring partner. Never close to a contender. (performance booed, purses withheld)
Fred Fulton - Good fighter, good win for Wills. Not as good as Dempsey's won but still a better win on his resume.
Sam Mcvea - 36 years old, no wins over anyone significant as of recent. Wills and Mcvea were banned from Philly for stalling.
Bill Tate - Dempsey sparring partner with more losses than wins at the time.
Gunboat Smith - 34 years old, he was past it in 1917 when he fought Dempsey. Smith's last fight and at the time he was a losing fighter.
Denver Ed Martin - 40 years old. Started fighting in the previous century.
Kid Norfolk - Good win for Wills. One of his best if not THE best on his resume.
Tut Jackson - Jackson was so bad that they did an investigation into his actual record.
Homer Smith - Losing fighter.
Bartley Madden - Easy money. Madden stood no chance.
Luis Firpo - Dempsey leftovers that made Wills look oddly one dimensional. Took Wills the distance.
Charley Weinert - Good win over a contender
Floyd Johnson - Losing fighter.

Then he loses to Sharkey and its all downhill. Overall it can be summarized that his opponents between 1919 and 1926 were crap. Note that he fought a lot of these guys multiple times during that stretch and they got worse over time. Interesting enough, during this 7 year stretch 3 of Wills fights were called out for stalling, booed, or being very disappointing and damaging his reputation.

 

http://www.606v2.com/t11575p50-1963-article-by-jack-dempsey

for what its worth, an article by Dempsey. Not sure if i believe him 100% but i will post it anyway

“From the inception of boxing in this country it has been dominated by men who developed out of struggle with life. Our first real heavyweight champion, Tom Molyneaux, was born a slave in Virginia and won his freedom with his fistic talent. Fighting as a freedman in New York he beat all challengers and earned the right to be called the first American heavyweight champion.

All of the great old-time Negro boxers were born under poor and depressing circumstances but rose above their environments to win acclaim wherever they fought. Peter Jackson, Sam Langford, George Dixon, Joe Gans, the immortal “Old Master,” and Jack Johnson all knew what it felt like to be up against the wall and cornered. Their bitter experiences were reflected in their superb endurance and their toughness of spirit. Their early poverty showed itself in the way they handled themselves as men and boxers.

I am personally indebted to a number of Negro boxers who worked as my sparring partners in the years when I was learning how to handle myself in a ring. When I was fighting I had many Negro sparring partners at my training camp. One of these, Bill Tate, became one of my best friends. Now living in Chicago, Illinois, he is one of the finest men I have ever known. Then there was Panama Joe Gans, a great and clever fighter, who taught me a lot. The Jamaica Kid, a very fine heavyweight, worked with me before the famous 1919 fight with Jess Willard. The Kid did a lot to get me into the superb condition that enabled me to beat Willard and win the world’s championship.

Sam Langford, one of the greatest of all heavyweights, is another Negro fighter who showed me some tricks and gave me the benefits of his vast experience. I worked with Old Sam in Chicago when I was a youngster. I never forgot what Langford taught me. He was cool, clever, scientific and a terrific hitter besides a fine man.
Battling Gee and Battling Jim Johnson, both Negroes were also on my payroll as sparring mates. I was a pretty rough customer in those days and my sparring partners had to be good and tough to stay with me. All of these men more than made the grade.

Many times I’ve had the charge hurled at me that I was prejudiced against Negroes. It is time this utter fiction was laid to rest once and for all. All my life I have believed that all men are basically brothers and that differences of color and religion are superficial. I hate prejudice. I hate discrimination. I hate intolerance. Boxing has been guilty of its share of color bias but I categorically deny that I ever practiced it either as a fighter, manager or promoter. The several Negro fighters who have been under my management will testify to my long-held belief in equality of treatment for all men, regardless of color.

Since I am on the subject of the color line in boxing, let me clear the air of the many rumors and suspicions and charges that have been moving around me as a result of my failure to fight Harry Wills. I have never run away from a fight in my life. Ever since I left public school to work in the Colorado mines, my credo has been to fight all comers and may the best man win. Harry Wills was a great fighter in his prime and I would have liked to have been matched with him. But it was not to be. The reasons had nothing to do with color prejudice on my part (which I have never held), nor fear of Wills fighting skill. I wanted to fight Wills badly, but Tex Rickard, who had the final say, never matched us.

Rickard was a Texan. He had a rough time of it out in San Francisco, California, after the Johnson-Jeffries fight which he promoted in Reno. The repercussions of that fight swirled about Rick’s head for a long time after the fight and he was a victim of ugly charges and a wicked smear campaign. This experience soured him on mixed fights for the heavyweight crown. As a result he was never anxious to promote a match between Wills and myself.

The facts clearly show that in 1926 I tried desperately to arrange a fight with Harry Wills but the deal collapsed when my guarantee was not forthcoming. Wills and I had signed to fight with a promoter named Floyd Fitzsimmons of Benton Harbor, Michigan. Wills, I understand, received fifty thousand dollars as his guarantee for signing the contract. I was to have received one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in advance of the fight. As the date of the fight grew nearer and my money did not appear, I became anxious and asked Fitzsimmons what was the matter. He wired me to meet him in Dayton, Ohio, assuring me that he would have the money for me there. I met Fitzsimmons in Dayton who handed me a certified checkfor twenty-five thousand dollars and a promise to let me have the balance almost immediately. I balked at that, demanding the full amount right away. Fitzsimmons tried to placate me by calling the bank where he said he had deposited the money. The bank, unfortunately for Fitzsimmons, informed him that it did not have that much money on hand, that there wasn’t enough to cover the twenty-five thousand dollar check he had given me. Furious, I returned the check to Fitzsimmons and told him the fight was off. Later, the Fitzsimmons syndicate financing the fight sued me for failure to honor a contract. I won the case.

When the Wills fight failed to materialize, Tex Rickard jumped back into the picture and matched me with Gene Tunney. The rest is history. And that is the real story behind the negotiations for the Harry Wills fight which never came off. I am sorry Wills and I never got a chance to square off in the ring. I am sure it would have been one beautiful scrap.”