Should Gene Tunney be ranked above Jack Dempsey at heavyweight ?

No doubt. But Tunney isn't that bad. He's got Greb, Gibbons, Dempsey x2 and Heeney as his top line wins. Not to shabby. That compares reasonably well with some of the guys I have ranked around Dempsey (Schmeling, Foreman, Marciano, Holyfield). Whatever the prime for prime arguments might be, he's established head-to-head superiority over Jack to a far greater degree than could ever be argued in reverse and for his second line wins hes got guys like Risko, Spalla, Delaney, Burke, Folley etc etc., and he's unbeaten at the weight. It's closer than might be first though, IMO.

 

Shell is to strong a word. Dempsey's best win arguably comes in between his duels with Tunney. Your opinion - Dempsey would beat Gene prime for prime - is a valid one, but as far as that end of the argument goes, Tunney has the much stronger case.

 

Well said. He seems to get the **** end of the Greb stick AND the Tunney stick inspite of the fact that he came out ahead of both.

 

The second one is a very close fight and he did get the nod - regardless of what you think personally about that fight (i think it was very, very close personally and it distresses me that some others are so keen to throw the judges decision out) he landed Greb in his absolute prime, twice. Was there ever a more horrible monster in all of boxing? Tunney was hardly green when he met Greb the first time, but he wasn't ready for that. Greb finished his education, I guess. Let's remember that Greb was still hunting for Dempsey the last time he met Tunney.

Tunney doesn't have a lot of prime names on his ledger, fair enough, but a faded Dempsey is still better than 99% of HW's - i'd submit that as far as flagship wins go they are probably better than anything Tyson has and arguably they are better than anything Holmes or Marciano has. Whatever our disagreements about Dempsey's ATG standing, we agree he is a head to head killer.

We could agree that he was on the slide, but then Tunney became the first man ever to stop him - there's a pretty trade off there given Gibbons's pedigree.

Top contender, not a great HW by any means. A good win.

Solid, second tier wins.

I guess what I'd say is Tunney doens't have depth at HW, but what he missed out on was coming up in that division. He arrives, retires a top man, beats up a p4p top 4 lock, beats up a legend twice, adds a sprinkling of decent men in between. It's a cracking top-drawer run, it really is. He just lacks the numbers. Now how that is weighed is open to interpretation, but the run at the title is of a very good class.