Who rates higher all time Jeffries or Dempsey?

I don't know. Maybe.

 

Yes because "Johnson later repudiated the confession, saying he was in need of money and had said that no one would have wanted to purchase a statement that declared he had lost honestly. Fleischer said he bought the confession in order to suppress it since Johnson had already confirmed his story wasn’t true. Willard was never implicated in the alleged fix."

 

Probably because the fix never went through. The fight itself was on the level so there was nothing to repudiate. I'm sure there are tons of stuff that happened behind the scenes of fights that we'll never know about. It would be incredibly naive of us to think otherwise.

 

"How is it possible to make rankings with almost no footage of anyone back then."

Well, how is it possible to claim all of Dempsey's title defenses would have beaten all of Jeff's title defenses as you did without films? It seems sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Except in the case of who were the top contenders during Jeff's reign, one does have the fighters' records against each other, so there actually is a basis for making a judgment.

"You keep bringing up the opinion of someone 120 years after these fights took place as if it is even slightly objective or accurate."

You can look up Matt's rankings at:

"Pre Ring magazine year-end heavyweight ratings 1882-1922"

Rather than just declaring Matt not "even slightly objective or accurate" why not point out where he is actually wrong and biased. Otherwise, this is just a nothing criticism.

And let's have quotes from those who saw both that Bill Brennan was better than Bob Fitzsimmons.

"Dempsey was so devoted to getting the fight going that tickets were made up for the bout."

If we are judging Dempsey as an atg ticket printer, this counts. But to become a boxing atg, you have to get into the ring. Anyway, would Dempsey print tickets, or did the promoter?

"Whites wouldn't fight blacks"

But they did more often back in the 1890's. Jeff beat Griffin, Armstrong, and Jackson. Choynski defeated Childs and Johnson. It is Dempsey and Tunney who never met top black heavyweights.

Plus Armstrong KO'd Martin, and Griffin beat Johnson once and drew with him twice in three fights.

Off these results, it is difficult to credit the black heavyweights of the late 1890's as better than the best white heavyweights. It is quite a different picture during the Johnson to Langford to Wills eras.

 

"this idea of a fix would come out of nowhere without at least SOME truth to it."

Conspiracy theories pop up over the place. Some might, or even probably in some cases, do have something to them.

But there is no question that many are plain weird. Nothing just happens for some folks w/o evil behind the scenes conspiring, no matter how easy it is to give a straightforward explanation.

 

True but this isn't "jet fuel can't melt steel beams".

 

I never said Dempsey printed any tickets.

On the same coin how can you say that Jeffries' title defenses are better than Dempsey's without footage? Your argument has a huge double standard problem.

 

Well you know what they say about opinions...

 

Dempsey rates higher in ducking and not fighting for long periods; sorry as I know a lot on here love the man.

 

After 20 pages has this been sorted yet?