Who rates higher all time Jeffries or Dempsey?

"There were no ratings back then."

Which also would mean there would no way of saying they weren't top contenders. I was referring to retroactive ratings which have been done, most recently by our own mattdonnellon. Such efforts are not unique to boxing. There was no college football national champions in the old days, but folks have gone back and so Universities claim national championships for past years, such as Notre Dame for 1924 and Alabama for 1925. I think highly of Matt's knowledge of this era and so of his ratings. After all, we might also disagree with the "official" ratings which began in 1924.

"Sharkey was one of the most unskilled fighters ever to fight for the title"

Yes, not a master boxer like Firpo.

"Billy Miske, Tommy Gibbons, Luis Firpo, Bill Brennan, and maybe even Carpentier would all have beaten the guys Jeffries defended his title against."

In your opinion, which I will give all the weight it merits.

"Unlike Dempsey, Jeffries refused to entertain the idea of defending against a black man."

Entertaining is what Dempsey did best, generally Hollywood starlets. I don't think considering doing something you never do matters a whit, but this assumes he was sincerely "entertaining" doing what he never did, rather than posturing for appearances.

 

It's easier to believe his testimony to be true considering the other factors taken into account.

 

You are a fine poster E.M, one of our best,but your bias here against Dempsey is pretty palpable!

 

How is it possible to make rankings with almost no footage of anyone back then? You keep bringing up the opinion of someone from 120 years after these fights took place as if it's even slightly objective or accurate. Especially when whites wouldn't fight blacks as often as they fought other whites. It could be argued that the black heavyweight title was more legitimate than the regular one or at least call it the white heavyweight title.

Firpo would have clobbered Sharkey who at 5'8 and 70.5" reach would be at at least a 6.5" height disadvantage and an 8.5" reach disadvantage. Firpo's a brawler too.

Go ahead and make threads. See what other people say.

Dempsey was so devoted to getting the fight going that tickets were made up for the bout. Did Jeffries ever have tickets made up for a fight with a black man when he had the title?

 

Jeffries being urged to defend white pride and save the white man, not having fought for 6 years and being 300 lbs fat, refusing offers to fight Johnson for months after Johnson won the title, Choynski said “It was plainly evident that he was suffering a terrible mental struggle,”. Tex Rickard wanted to make money so he may have even been the one that worked out an agreement for Johnson to take the fall if Jeffries took the fight.

 

so we are supposed to take the word of an eighty some year old gent who wasn't there and in his ramblings claims to have KO'd Jack Johnson in a sparring session,

and is wrong about just about everything which can be checked.

"Bob Armstrong, he was a trainer for Jack Johnson"

Was he? I think he was in Jeff's corner in this fight.

"They wouldn't stand for a ***** to beat a white man in California."

Johnson was coming off victories over Al Kaufman in San Francisco and Stanley Ketchel in Colma. Last I saw, those cities were in California.

So what we are supposed to believe is that Jeff trained off gobs of weight for a fix, and then stood up to a beating for 15 rounds rather than take the easy way out by quitting, or better yet, fouling out.

Anyway, how would anyone ever know Johnson would go along with a fix once he got into the ring? Would Jeff or anyone else be that naive.

The films of Jeff in the morning of the fight show him calmly playing with his dog.

What is Gunboat's evidence for this story? "It is common gossip."

 

We'll agree to disagree then. I just don't think this idea of a fix would come out of nowhere without at least SOME truth to it.

 

I disagree and I think it's best we agree to disagree because we can't even agree that Fitz was over the hill against Jeffries.

 

Johnson would seem to be the best source for his relationship with Rickard, and he wrote this,

"I have often heard it said that Rickard was most anxious for Jeff to win hence it might surprise my readers when I say when I got into the ring for the fight with Jeff, Tex walked over to me and said:
'Jack, this is your greatest day. You're getting the opportunity of a life time. You're about to meet the man who most people say is the greatest heavyweight of all time. Folks are going to watch you. If anything goes wrong, they'll never forgive you.
'I want you to go right in when that bell sounds and go out to win. I want Jeff to do the same. Make this fight one that the public and you will be proud of. I want to promote some big heavyweight fights again and it all depends on what you do.'"

Ring magazine, July 1946.

 

When did this interview take place?

According to McGrain, Johnson spoke all types of rubbish later in life.