In the Ring With Jack Dempsey - Part I: The Making of a Champion

F

 

Great post as usual

 

Just read yr history.it is all right there.

 

Dempsey would have destroyed him anyway... He had zero footwork like willard and wills wasn't much better than him... If at all..
....some posters here get bent out off shape by a dempsey cause he would have clobbered most of their heroes !
Funny how dempsey sparred with godrey but wills never did... Wills ducked godfrey, gibbonss, tunney
"Dempsey is the greatest fighter ive ever seen" someone who should know... Langford

 

Battling jim johnson, big bill tate, jamica kid all said it was dempsey who hit them hardest.... They vfought wills, langford, johnson, mcvey, jeanette, and kid norfork

 

Hope we'll see Klompton respond to this!

 

Do you think Dempsey was physically afraid of fighting Wills? Yes or no. Straight forward question.

 

I rate Dempsey more highly than most on this forum, but I won't hand him a win over Wills outside the ring!

Let us say that Harry Greb had drawn the color line against Tiger Flowers.

The idea that Greb was a level above him, would have sounded very plausible.

Probably more plausible than Dempsey being a level above Wills.

Wills was a great fighter, and he should have had his day in court.

I think that it is fair to say that Dempsey was messed about on the issue, but that is another matter!

 

I understand that this question was not addressed to me, but I would like to have a stab at it.

I think that Dempsey saw Wills as being a high risk fight, but probably doable.

He probably figured that he would use delaying tactics, and get in a few safer defenses, before he fought Wills.

He probably wanted to secure his retirement fund, then cash out in a career high pay day against Wills.

In the end he was blocked from fighting Wills, by third parties, so he went with the Tunney option instead.

In the end he got his career high payday, by another route.

 

Never happened ...sometimes its hard to type here

 

For those who are interested in history here is a list of some of the opponents of dempsey who said he was the hardest hitter they ever faced...
Terry kellar, battling levinsky, bil miske, willie meehan, carl morris, fred Fulton , battling jim johnson, bill tate, jamaica kid, jack dillon, jess willard, george carpentier, luis firpo, jack sharkey, and gene tunney

 

Reasonable....let's see what Mr Compton has to say about this issue. As he said , promoters make fights, and Kearnes was dead set against Dempsey fighting an African American and there was little Dempsey could do about it. After all Dempsey fought black fighters in the ring (3 according to Pollack) and routinely trained with blacks, unlike many other white boxers. You can't use the racist charge against him like you can with Tunney, Young Stribling and the like.

 

I think he was afraid of losing to Wills. Its as simple as that. Lots of fighters have ducked opponents not out of physical fear but out of the fear of losing their meal ticket: the championship. Dempsey would have been happy to not fight for a decade in order to keep calling himself a champion and cashing in on it outside of the ring. Thats way easier than having to train and then getting punched in the face.