The Great Trainers & Fighters on Jack Dempsey

Jack Dempsey is very much enjoying this thread

 

M, you as always make good points .
BUT- when you say Robinson should SOMEHOW be exonerated from the same criticism, you hold Dempsey to, I find puzzling.
The fact still holds that Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter I ever saw, still avoided Charley Burley, Holman Williams, Cocoa kid, Eddie Booker, fighters
that I heard about at that time, still holds true. Regardless of who Robinson whipped...The "murderers row' I mention, posed a far greater threat than Kid Gavilan, Basilio etc,than Robinsons opponents. You can't have it BOTH ways. Ray felt that these members of 'murderers row",
posed a greater threat, with less money compensation, than the opponents Robinson did face. He "ducked" those great fighters. That is
a fact...Can't blame him. Boxing is a BUSINESS...
I find without bias that Charley Burley, Holman Williams, Eddie Booker
posed a greater threat to Robinson, than Harry Wills did to the prime Dempsey.Far greater...
Events proved my point later on when an older Wills lost to Jack Sharkey and paolino Uzcudun. Dempsey feasted on tall slower men as Wills was...
I firmly believe that a Tommy Gibbons was a better fighter historically
speaking than any opponent of Ray Robinson, except for the past prime
Henry Armstrong, I saw Ray whip in 1943 when Armstrong was at the same point in his career as Dempsey/tunney, though Armstrong was active, unlike Dempsey's 3 year layoff.
You ask me what is my reasons for idolizing a prime Dempsey. I am swayed by his prime from what all his contemporaries, boxers, writers,
historians who saw him said about him...Such as Sam Langford, Gene Tunney, Mickey Walker ,Hype Igoe,Max Schmeling, Damon Runyon,etc.
They called him the greatest heavyweight they have ever seen when
Jack was at his best, and their words are more on target , then what
todays naysayers, 90 years later espouse. i do not say his opponents were a better crop than other champions..No.But we must deal with the fighters of oUR TIME.
I believe that Dempsey had a unique combination of tremendous speed
in his movements, combined with great two handed hitting power,a very
good beard, a bobbing and weaving style protecting his chin, and a lust
for battle seldom equalled by a heavyweight. In short ,a great fighter
in my eyes...Keep punching...

 

i respect mike as a historian and a good boxing man and he's got some great stuff on dempsey but when he says things like "duran is overrated, rocky graziano was better than him" or words to that effect in his book, then it makes it harder to takes his opinions without question.

 

the sparring thing means very little, if anything. The legend of Harry Greb has been blown way out of propotion. He never faced a puncher with anywhere near the amount of power that dempsey had and imo dempsey would have knocked the living daylights out of greb in a real match. Wills was the top contender, not greb. He was a great p4p fighter, one of the best, but this is just getting ridicolous.

 

We are talking about Greb's confidence though. The man was known to be fearless when it came to fighting, and getting the better of Dempsey in sparring surely made him more open to fighting him along with all the potential reward. Even a brutal loss would see him make more money than he'd probably make in a year (and Greb fought a ton of times a year) in one fight. Basically Greb had nothing to lose.

No, he did not face a Dempsey, but that's not his fault. He did fight most everyone else, including many men that challenged Dempsey for the title.

Wills did not get a shot either. Greb at best may have been the number 2 behind Wills, basically implying that Dempsey didn't face his two best challengers.

No one here is saying that Greb would win, it's a top all-time heavyweight against a top all-time middleweight after all, but he had a chance and he deserved the chance.

It's not ridiculous at all to argue that Greb deserved a shot at Dempsey's title. He proved he was a top heavyweight in his time, that's a big part of his legacy.

 

Yes m, i do consider the 'murderers row" fighters a bigger threat to ray Robinson,Than Kid Gavilan...Sure do.
If they weren';t a greater threat for Ray than Gavilan, why didn't Robbie fight Charley Burley, Holman Williams,Eddie Booker, instead of the Keed ?
I'll answer...Because those days they were feared by mainstream fighters while Gavilan,and his bolo punch, was a lesser threat to beat Robinson..
Only two fighters I know in modern history fought anyone, anytime, anyplace, and those to guys were the ABSOLUTE fearless Harry Greb,
and the amazing Henry Armstrong...Robinson picked his shots, avoiding
"murderers row",and later on as a middleweight, fighting only one LIGHT
punching light heavyweight in tepid punching Joey Maxim. Robinson
could have fought Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Lloyd Marshall etc.
Ray new his limitations...Harry Greb and Henry Armstrong, would fight
Godzilla...
I differ in your placing Kid Gavilan as a top 3 alltime Welterweight...He
was not rated so highly in my day, losing to welters as Doug Ratford 2,
Lighweight Ike Williams, Lester felton, Billy Graham, Sugar Costner,
Bobby Dykes,Tony DeMarco etc. Gavilan was a colourful fighter with a bolo punch and a great chin, but was not better than Burley, Holman Williams, Ted Kid Lewis, Mickey Walker, JackBritton, Barney Ross, etc.
He did lose 30 times...i saw him a few times, and he put on a great show..
but was inconsistent...I am not saying ray Robinson wouldn't have beat Burley, Williams etc. But Robinson DIDN"T meet the best welterweights
of his time regardless of no.1 status. So too with Dempsey and Louis.
All 3 picked their shots, unlike my favorite fighter the Pittsburgh Windmill...
Boxing then as now is a business primarily...

 

this is not an essential piece to the main argument going on here but our own Surf-Bat claims he has an article in which someone asked why Greb didnt fight Langford, Greb laughed and said " you want me to commit suicide?" make of that what you will. if anything ive heard also that Armstrong avoided Burley as well, he was more guilty of it than Robinson, burley was in his prime when there was a potential match between the two and Hank bolted. Ive seen a cartton from the forties, where zivic, ray and ARMSTRONG jumping out of the ring and charley is crying saying no one would paly with him. the writers of the time acknowledged Armstrong's reluctance of Burley.

In all honesty, has there ever been a fighter whose fought one and all with no shred of a doubt he avoided no one? the only two i can think of are langford and maybe duran.

 

How you can leave out the name Harry Greb,amongst the elite 'fearless'
ones is beyond me, due to what Greb puportedly said,about Sam Langford.
Sam Langford was 11 years older than Greb, and were not in their primes at the same time...Besides,I am sure that Greb would have fought Sam under the right conditions..
Nat Fleischer in his Ring question box, answered a reader who asked him," how long would it take Sam Langford to catch up to greb for the ko ?"
Fleischer, who saw them many times remarked, " Langford in my opinion
would never catch up to Harry Greb "... For what it's worth...

 

Thanks, Burt. Your perspective is colored by the source hues and thus especially valuable to me.

I agree with you and you seem to back up some of my solid convictions about Jack Dempsey's pound-for-pound élite greatness. To wit:

a) The decisive weight of the majority expert opinion in 1950, naming Dempsey --a heavyweight-- the greatest fighter of them all, pound for pound. Particularly, I am very impressed with the praise gushed by the likes of Sam Langford and Ray Arcel. Frankly, I'll take their word any day over that of individuals who do not include Dempsey among even their top 10 heavies. There have certainly not been 10 greater heavyweights since 1950.

b) The film, viewed carefully, clearly reveals a truly unique fighter, the likes of which --in a word-- I personally have never seen.

c) The climb from nobody to professional boxing champion --particularly in the 1910s-- was extremely tough, doggone it! If the erstwhile hobo wished to milk his champion's stardom outside the ring and go with promotor decisions regarding opponents rather than zealously, idealistically --unreasonably really-- demand to face a noble colored opponent in those racially prejudiced times, it doesn't diminish his demonstrated greatness one iota. Dempsey/Wills would have been great, but the bottom line is that --by and large-- the majority expert opinion has historically favored the Mauler against the Panther.

d) We must not develop Larry-Holmes syndrome and overly glorify a sparring session to now elevate the small Harry Greb into a blatant duck by the heavyweight champion of the world.

e) "The Great Trainers and Fighters" were not wrong on Jack Dempsey.

 

Thank you Prime, for your sentiments...
It get's lonely at times, reading the opinions of the past, which today's
many posters , disregard as archaic poppeycock. These great boxing men
of the past, who saw and raved about the Dempsey of Toledo, and
whose opinions I value tremendously, are today regarded as relics of the past...They, somehow ,ninety years later , somehow know more of Dempsey's ability, than the peers who watched Dempsey, and succeeding
champions, did.
I today,sixty five years after i first saw Ray Robinson fight as a welterweight, still declare him as by far the greatest fighter I have ever seen...If I am correct about Sugar Ray, why aren't experts as Sam Langford, Gene Tunney, Mickey Walker, Max Schmeling, Hype Igoe, Ray
Arcel, etc, not possibly right in their opinions...? After all, they were there...Thanks again prime...b.b.