Even if you love Dempsey, it is time for a generation to accept -

The three main people that have presented counter-arguments are yourself, My2Sense and McVey.

McVey is clear that his pick is based primarily upon head to head and altough he is interested in exploring some of the other issues, this is his primary reason for disagreeing. That's fine with me.

There is nothing 'objective' about My2Sense's reasoning, nothing at all.

That leaves your good self.

Also, if you're trying to declare a winner based upon numbers of serious contributers who agree or disagree, it's a pretty even split, with Wills maybe coming of slightly better. Not bad considering the strangleholed Dempsey has upon Wills in terms of rankings, world over.

 

I'd say that Wills has a better resume than most of the guys on my top 15 list.

I'd say that Dempsey has one of the worst.

Firstly, Langford is a proven heavyweight.

Second, Wills was a busy black fighter in a racist era dealing with the same issue that Langford did.

Third, i've been through all of this with McVey. Check out post 108. These constant attempts to smear Wills dominance of Langford are unfortunate. Langford was a genuine threat doing great work in the HW division when Wills was beating, and i feel that's shown in the post. McVey, Dempsey's staunchest defender on the forum agreed with me, he said it was objetive analysis and he respected it.

Maybe it is not the case with you, but far to many guys who want to defend Dempsey do so by first attacking Wills. It's a red light on this forum, and what it means is, "i know you are right and i am running interferance".

If you have intelligence that indicates that Langford was in terrible shape every time Wills beat him in spite of the work Langford was doing elsewhere around the time Wills was beating him, post it.

I'm not going to go through all these guys, but i'll take Wills' wins over Langford over these guys, stand alone frankly. Add McVey and Jeanette and things look wide to me. NONE of the guys you've mentioned come anywhere hear qualifying for my top 30 at HW. Carpantier? It was important to fight Caprantier? Is that a joke? That Dempsey matched Carpantier, a smaller white fighter, but found reasons NOT to match Greb is a joke.

And this constant harping about Sharkey. My2Sense has tried to boil the argument down to their respective performances against him for goodness sake.

Yes, Sharkey is a good scalp. I'd rate Langford and McVey as more impressive scalps when Wills beat them and I think that's self evident personally, I would also tend to add Jeanette when Wills beat him, although that is not as obvious.

 

I have his serious troubles beginning after that fight too. He still has stoppage wins over great fighter though. Unreal.

 

Where you been FOF?