Lets cut to the chase bokky. Surely you can judge visually if one fighter is physically better than another,even form era to era. Do we need to debate that frazier has more stamina and workrate than david haye? Do we need to debate that calzaghe is quicker than sven ottke? Is it not clear dick tiger is stronger than jermain taylor? Is it not clear hurricane carter is more ripped than kelly pavlik? If your going to claim its inconclusive or totally subjective then why post on anything? And im not saying that all the old timers are better than the newer generation. Pac,mayweather,hopkins and others would be great in any era,and some like duran,ali,robinson are better than the 'golden age' old timers.
Okay its taken me a while to respond to this thread, due to the fac that I have been busy over the past few days.. Sorry guys. Now I'm here to give my educated and unbiased opinion.. Jack Dempsey rates just below the great Sugar Nikolay Valuev both from a legacy sense adn from a head to head perspective.
Nickname? Me like. You can always have your opinion on this, but to prove anything becomes just about impossible since there are so extremely many fighters to compare and since opinions can differ a lot about just who was the fastest, strongest, most durable etc, etc. Such a discussion will drag on forever without really proving anything. If anyone "wins", it will probably only be the one who's most dogged and who can drop the most names. A discussion like that is very dreary and probably pointless at best, and definitelly totally unwarranted in a thread about other things.
Yeah, comparisons between him and Mike and Liston seems most on the money. They all had a very impressive rise, destroyed a champion, but failed to beat the best fighter out there.
Bokky,i hear what you are saying but lets not get splinters in our ass. You can see in particular cases who is faster,stronger,has more stamina. Its not just about old vs new,but about using your eyes to determine who is better without bias.
In many cases people can easily agree, but in far from all and there are just so many fighters to use as examples. It makes for an endless discussion.
How many here rate Dempsey above Johnson? I'va always had Johnson above, but I think it's a bit more complicated than I thought earlier.
So in sumary it doesn't matter how skilled, dominant or successful a fighter is unless they score KOs they don't deserve title shots and aren't considered successful. I'm beggining to understand the rationale of Dempsey fans :rofl The idea that a 37yo Wills is near prime is absurb, as is the idea of a 35yo Wills being prime, as for it being an NC, I've read postings here that say Wills clearly outboxed Firpo to a wide UD Wills was still 3-2 in the first 5 over a near prime Langford and won every fight after, but that doesn't matter because they weren't KOs right
To understand the politics of the time you have to understand that a high premium was placed on scoring knockouts. A decision win was somehow seen as a lesser win. I am not saying that it should have been that way, I am just saying that is the way it was.