Imagine if Joe Louis had come onto the scene 20 years earlier. Willard, Dempsey and Tunney would have refused to fight him, and he could beat all 3 of the bums on the same night!
And, as Champion, we can add Jack Johnson to the list of those who would not have fought Joe Louis. There was no Money available, and no Promoters who wanted anything to do with such fights, in those days.
Agreed. But consider the fact Louis has no experience with the inside tactics of the era and you have some live bodies who could really take it to Louis.
Wilder showed incredible heart and resilience in the last fury fight. However, his defense was very leaky. It was likely Fury's exhaustion that led to him lacking snap and sting in his punches (along with all the ugly mauling, wrestling, and inside fighting) that contributed to Wilder lasting so long. Truth be told, Wilder had blown through his gas tank after 5 or 6 rounds. The question is, could Dempsey hurt Wilder early? Yes. Would he be able to finish him early? I doubt it. Again, wilder took monstrous bombs from 270 pound fury, 240 pound Ortiz in 5 fights and he kept getting off the floor no matter how hard he got hit. Wilder is also good at clinching and holding on, so despite Dempsey's killer instinct and very fast combinations, I think he would find it very difficult to actually take Wilder out early. Another factor is, unlike Willard, wilder won't be approaching 40 and inactive for 3+ years with little to no sparring before the fight. I could see this starting off similar to the Firpo fight. Just absolute mayhem with both men landing nuclear bombs and Dempsey scoring some.savage knockdowns early, but then wilder ties up, clinches, mauls to survive. He eventually lands that big right hand and Dempsey goes down too. I think if both men are still conscious by the 5th, it would become a very very ugly long drawn out phone booth battle. Wilder lacks the skills to consistently jab and use his height to his advantage and this could lead to his downfall. It's very likely he just covers up or clinches while waiting for an opportunity to throw his big right hand. Dempsey on the other hand, would start to run out of steam and his relentless pressure and fancy head movement would go down several notches. The thing is, even an exhausted wilder is still dangerous as we saw with his dramatic 12th round knockdown of fury or the sudden explosive 1 punch late round finish of Ortiz. He could only need one punch even after getting thrashed for several rounds. Dempsey was a good counter puncher and stuck to you like white on rice if he saw you were hurt. I can't make up my mind. There are so many variables.
Have you seen the second time Wilder knocked fury down in the 3rd fight? Wilder couldn't have generated much power from that position and the blow looked extremely weak. Wilder didn't connect anything right before the knockdown either. It looked really comical and it shows the chin of Fury when hit cleanly. The punch looked almost like a light pat on the head in the clinch. I don't think Fury's chin is as good as Dempsey's, but it's debatable. Dempsey has much faster recovery time though and Fury most certainly doesn't have "titanium chin". I really think I should make a gif out of the knockdown to laugh at it. You can talk about the Flynn ko all you want, but I don't buy it. Fury and Wilder are both so inaccurate and sloppy with their punches, especially fury except maybe his jab. Heavyweights are so inaccurate and chinny nowadays that everytime someone even lands cleanly they instantly wobble, look shaken or go down. Previous heavyweights like Ali could take at least 7 hard power punches in a short period of time like it was nothing. I hate it when big heavyweights wobble after only one clean shot and take 3 rounds to recover. I like to call big heavies like Lewis, Joshua and Fury "Glass giants" because of this. Their punching accuracy is terrible especially when compared to someone like Joe Louis and makes the fights disgusting to watch. Sorry for the rant, but the glass giants really make my blood boil and I'm not in the mood for this today. They have all the traits I dislike: Weak chin and slow recovery time, sloppy and inaccurate punches and lastly a general lack of heart when compared to someone like Joe Frazier. Seriously, go watch someone like Fury in slow motion and count the punches landed. If you think he is accurate with his punches, you must be one of those people who scored Hagler-Leonard for SRL and can't distinct clean punches from inaccurate ones. These are the kind of people that are easily fooled by Canelo, Mayweather, SRL and others.
I think it's clear that Fury went down a second time because he hadn't recovered and was already hurt.
Was agreeing with you until you said fury had a glass jaw...that's pretty funny. I mean, he only fought Wilder 3x, Wladmir Klitschko, Chisora 2x, I think a glass jawed fighter would have gotten KOd at least once with that resume. As for the last part about clean accurate punches, Mayweather is the king of that category. If I recall correctly he has the best connect percentage% of any recorded boxer. Canelo is pretty accurate too.
They didnt refuse to fight Johnson soley because he had the title.Jeffries is on public record many times stating he would never defend his title against a black man and ,that when there were no more white challengers to fight he would retire and not risk being beaten by a black challenger .Immediately he won the title Willard drew the colour line.
Dempsey was no racist he had many black sparring partners and they all ate with him in camp.He paid for George Godfrey's funeral and appeared and contributed to Sam Langford's benefit show.there are several photos of him shaking hands with Louis,Wills ,Godfrey, Tate, and Frazier.
When I said that fury is a "glass giant", I really meant that he often looks troubled or shaken by hard punches for a considerable amount of time just like the others I mentioned. The term does not necessarily mean that a fighter is KO'ed easily, but rather that he looks way more shaken or troubled by the blow than he should for a overly long period of time. I overexaggerated a bit to emphasize their chins when compared to other heavyweight greats. Of course not all had great chins, but at least it took many clean shots for them to look like their legs were lead compared to big modern heavies. Fury does actually have pretty decent chin (at least when compared to others in the modern era), but that second knockdown was unacceptable in my eyes. Fury's recovery time isn't as bad as Wilder's or Joshua's, but it's still far from excellent in my opinion. Fury has a moderately decent chin, but it's overrated. I wasn't really thinking clearly earlier, sorry for any inconveniences. Fury is hard to keep in the canvas, but generally almost every modern heavy struggles with shots they shouldn't. I agree that Canelo is pretty accurate, but many people don't seem to recognize missed/grazing shots from actual clean hits. Canelo actually misses a lot of his body shots that are usually counted. Most people here in the classic forum know this, but there are still some people that don't. Many people think that Fury-Klitschko was one of Fury's best performances, but both men (Fury too) missed an absurd amount of punches. Dave Moretti has almost always been fooled by SRL or Mayweather and always favours the flashy fighters. I've seen many people agreeing that Ali was dominating Liston when in reality Ali missed a very large amount of punches because of Liston's good head movement. You are right about Floyd though, it was unreasonable to drag him into this. Connect percentages can also be deceiving, because sometimes they include feints or distraction-shots in the calculations.
