Jersey Joe Walcoott vs Jack Dempsey

Walcott lost to
Simon
Lazer
Brothers
Ketchel
Layne
Allen
Taylor
Mays
By no stretch of the imagination could they be called "greats".
Walcott had
10 1/2lbs on Brothers
8lbs on Ketchel
2lbs on Taylor
5lbs on Mays
7lbs on Palmer
He was the bigger man against Maxim who conceded 12lbs to him, and bigger than Fox and Bivins.
Walcott was the bigger man in 40 of his 71 fights.
Who says Walcott's circumstances were any worse than the fighters he was facing?

 

Fair enough points, but Dempsey, known as a "giant killer" because he fought a few really big guys, also was often the bigger man against many of his top opponents. And, like Walcott, who is to say his circumstances were always worse than the guys he was fighting. We just don't know who was well fed and housed and who wasn't.

Also, less than 10 lbs. is not all that much for a heavyweight.

 

Dempsey was lighter than.
Brennan
Firpo
Fulton
Morris
Flynn
Miske
Willard
Sharkey
Dempsey slept on park benches and ate at free lunch counters when he wasn't riding the rods from town to town and dossing down in hobo jungles.
I don't see much similarity between his early career and Walcott's,nor are biographers bleating about him being half starved and suffering from a lack of training facilities.
Dempsey began fighting in saloons at 16 years old for," pass the hat money" Walcott never did that.
Nor was Walcott overmatched whilst still a teenager as Dempsey sometimes was,look up Walcott's early opponents.

 

Seriously, there isn't much similarity between the early careers of Dempsey and Walcott.

Dempsey's first listed fight on boxrec is on August 8, 1914, when he was 19. He fought one Young Herman, who had no listed record either and so is listed as making his debut. Of Dempsey's early opponents, 13 are listed as making their debuts against him. 23 had failed to win half their fights. Another 4 had won just one half of their fights. Most of these losing fighters were early, but Dempsey was still padding his record as late as 1918 with what on paper appears to be easy marks. In total, of his 74 listed fights, 40 were against men who had failed to win half their fights or were making their debuts.

The first fighter with a winning record Dempsey fought was Joe Bonds on April 8, 1916. In fairness to Dempsey, he was still young, but not surprisingly he was not meeting much in the way of opposition. He was fighting in a sparsely populated west back in the 1910's when it was still more or less a wilderness.

Walcott? He was fighting in the east between New York City and Philadelphia when this was the hot bed of boxing in the US. His first fight was on September 9, 1930 against Eddie Wallace who had a record of 16-10-3. The guy starting his recorded career at 16 was actually Walcott, not Dempsey. We have only Dempsey's word for any fight before August 18, 1914. Walcott had listed fights at 16.

Besides the fact that fighters in the greater New York and Philadelphia areas were certainly a lot tougher than those in backwater Nevada, Walcott met on paper better competition. Of his 71 fights, only 1 was making his debut, and only 10 had failed to win half their fights.

As for the size of opponents, I don't know the point in crediting Dempsey more than Walcott. Walcott met plenty of big men, and beat a lot of them like Ten Hoff, Tandberg, Shklor, Baksi, Murray, etc. So did Dempsey. But like Walcott, Dempsey also fought smaller men. In his championship contests, Willard, Brennan, and Firpo were heavier, but Miske, Carpentier, Gibbons, and Tunney twice were lighter. Before he was champion, major opponents like Levinsky, Smith, and Flynn among others were probably lighter, although weights are hard to come by.

"nor are biographers bleating about him being half-starved and suffering from a lack of training facilities"

They don't? What is the point about riding the rails and sleeping in hobo jungles and eating at free lunch counters? This always seems central to discussions of Dempsey's rise.

 

The point I am making is Walcott was not some half starved guy when he lost those early fights and what reason is there to suppose his opponents had any better training or diet than he did then? Miske was heavier in one of the fights.
Whether you take Dempsey's word for his early life on the road is of course entirely up to you.

 

On Dempsey, though, why assume that the guys who were willing to fight him in a saloon for eating money were in any better condition than he was?

 

I don't assume they were, I'm just comparing his beginnings to Walcott's.
Did Mr Cream ever experience fighting in hobo camps and saloons for a few bucks?

 

I guess where we differ is why would fighting in saloons and hobo camps for a few bucks be superior to fighting in first rate arenas against trained opponents.

This reminds me of a debate I heard as a kid many decades ago when an old-timer argued that baseball players were better in the old days because they played the game in cow pastures. A younger fellow responded with the question of why would that make them better players than the modern generation which played the game in up to date ballparks.

 

I'm English so Ty Cobb and co are outside of my brief.

 

A large part of the Dempsey myth was that it dovetailed with the western myth so popular in American popular culture and especially movies in the first half of the 20th century.

A staple of low budget B westerns was the saloon brawl between the hero and a bad guy. It showed how manly the westerners were, in contrast to the effete urban types back east.

It really was a strong myth in America, but I can understand English folks not understanding it.

 

I think I understand, and am up to speed about William Harrison Dempsey .Not baseball though.

 

Dempsey.

 

I reckon the Walcott who fought Louis the first time would box Dempsey’s ears off.

The Mauler never showed the kind of stamina and late round power that Louis and Marciano did.

I would give Dempsey a small chance of getting on Walcott early but if the fight went more than four rounds then
Jack would be toast in my opinion.

Cheers All.

 

Seamus that really you?