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

I disagree. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I even looked up the words "sewer" and "sewage" just to see if there were any definitions I was unaware of. There were not. Is he saying that Dempsey was the artificial conduit that carried the waste matter rather than the waste matter itself? Maybe it's just too elegant for me.

 

You have a great case for Wills ,but,I don't think Jeanette was a threat to Dempsey in his prime he was past it and old, by then.

 

I want to know how much (or if at all) his quality at the time of the first Fulton fight differed from his quality in his previous fights with Wills.

To put it another way, I want to know what Langford still had in 1914 that makes you so certain he would've been better than a guy he was clearly inferior to just a couple years later.

Why? How do injuries inflicted on him in the course of the fight have any bearing on what his quality was coming into the fight?

I don't see what's so bizarre about looking at the outcomes of actual fights, comparing results against common opponents, pointing out Ring rankings, or researching eyewitness accounts of fights/circumstances.

I'd say it would be far more bizarre to try to ignore or diminish those things.

Was BEATING HIM one of them? - that's my question.

 

Why surely? He still had two eyes in 1917, and failed utterly to "break that jaw."


Here's the account that was featured in the NY Times:

"BOSTON, June 19. -Fred Fulton's height and reach were too great a handicap for Sam Langford at the Armory A.A. tonight, and, after seven rounds of one-sided fighting, the Minnesota plasterer stopped the Boston negro. Langford was being punished so badly by Fulton in the seventh that his seconds threw up the sponge and ended the bout, the referee declaring Fulton the winner.

"Langford tried in vain for the first few rounds to get at Fulton, but the big fellow's reach was so great that he had little trouble in holding him off. Langford was game, and repeatedly kept coming in, but there was such a difference in the sizes of the boxers that Langford had little success in reaching his opponent. In the second round, after breaking away from a clinch, Fulton caught Langford on the point of the jaw and sent him down for the count of seven.

"Only once, in the third round, was Langford successful in reaching Fulton, and then he drove him back up the ropes with hard blows to the body. He was not able to reach Fulton's jaw."

 

Harry Wills broke 3 of Fultons ribs in there 1920 Bout. WOW

 

What he reduced Langford to over the course of the fight is not what he had to beat. What Langford was when he climbed into the ring is what Fulton had to deal with and provide the answers to - and he did that. That he could outclass and batter him so thoroughly that he inflicted career-changing injuries, just reinforces how superior he was to him at this time.

Using your logic, every time a fighter is battered over the course of a fight, the winning fighter can't get credit for beating the fighter who climbed into the ring with him, because he was a different fighter by the end of the night.

That would as silly as saying Wills beat a lesser version of Fulton than Dempsey did, simply because Fulton had three broken ribs at the time he was actually counted out.

 

He didnt get those 3 broken ribs from playing teaparty with his girlfriends, he got it from a Harry Wills devastating punch. Wills had bonecrushing power.


I do think Langford was better in 1914 than 1917. Younger, faster reflexes, sharper punches.

 

What caused the injuries? Fulton's fists?

 

Even when the injuries are clearly caused by the other fighters punches? I never thoughts so. I even give Lewis full credit for his win over Vitali simply because the cut warranted a stoppage and the cut was caused directly by Lewis' punches. Langford's injuries warranted a stoppage and they were caused by legitimate punches from everything I've ever read.