The Great Trainers & Fighters on Jack Dempsey

We might just have seen an epic bout!

 

Well my personal opinion is that I think your contriibutions, are particularly these last several posts, since that's all I've read, are very valuable and like to I do think we shouldn't just blindly discard the views of those who actually saw fighters fight and are respected by the boxing community.

That said, there are often conflicting views of history. Take Dempsey's win over Willard for example. Some say Willard received broken bones, ribs and lost a few teeth, and others quote those that claim they spoke with him only a week or two later and he was fine and showed hardly any ill side affects. So there's a lot of grey areas when you start going back around a 100 years ago.

 

V, greetings.The damage pro and con that was inflicted on Willard has no bearings on Dempsey as a fighter. Willard a very powerful giant who was never floored previously was dropped SEVEN times. Today the fight surely would have been stopped by the ref in the first round...Dempsey surely at only 183-5 lbs must be given credit for his powerful punching...
After all Joe Louis in 1941, took !3 rounds to stop the ponderous Abe Simon...If the great punching Louis couldn't ko a punching bag Abe Simon
until the 13th rd, what does Dempseys early ko of jess willard say ?...

 

He didn't have to go to a neutral corner.

 

Burt , Dempsey is a very tough one to really crack and I say this loving the guy ..

Keep in mind regarding Willard he was able to wail on the guy the second he got up .. that had a huge impact on that fight .. if Willard received eight counts instead of as ambush it might have been a very different fight ..

I'd like to know what Dempsey fight all the experts use when making the claims of his greatness ? Willard was an inactive 37. Miske was sick. Brennan gave him hell. Carpentier was a light heavy. Gibbons was a small heavyweight and Firpo a wild , inexperienced slugger who almost took his head off ... where in these fights can we see an all time top two or three or five heavyweight when judged against the entire run of the division ... what specific fight are they referring to ?

I do believe Dempsey was a terrific fighter with exceptional skills. I almost view him as a Manny Paq type at heavyweight skill wise .. the difference is that Paq maximized his talent by fighting the best while Dempsey for all intents and purposes had one great run in 1918 , won the title in 1919 and regressed as a fighter from that point based on inactivity. In addition, no matter how it is spun he did not fight far and away the best and most dangerous contender of his age ... I cannot say that about any other heavyweight great.

As far as all the writers go, they must be taken with a grain of salt as most were on the payrolls of Kearns and Rickard to build huge hype and have been glamorized with age ...

To me Dempsey gets an incomplete ..

 

HE, thanks for your input-
But, let me remind you that Billy Miske, who Dempsey kod in 1920 in 3 rounds, [Miske's only ko loss], went on a tear,where Miske went twenty four bouts without a defeat..His Bright Disease was in remission, it returned later on and brave Miske died in 1924...This is a FACT...
HE, what you and other posters are saying about Dempsey's wins and fights,and his difficulties with his opponents, can be said about everyone
else, be it Louis, Robinson, Ali, etc.
Firpo, slow, Carpentier, small-Brennan ,gave him hell-Gibbons,small-
Miske,sick, [very sick after which Miske went next 24 bouts without defeat],etc.----Reporters who raved about him,were on the PAYROLL.
ad nauseum...
The fact of the matter is according to experts of the past,who knew there
stuff, prime Dempsey was a force of nature when at his best.
He did sign for a Wills fight,eventually cancelled, when the promoter Floyd
Fitzimmons couldnt come up with the dough.
He won all his bouts, except the Tunney bouts after a THREE year layoff,
almost koing Tunney in 1927.[long count...
Rough, and tough, he along with the best heavyweight of my time
Joe Louis, were my heavyweight idols, and the two greatest heavyweights
in my opinion, nitpicking or not.
Dempsey MIGHT have been outboxed, but NEVER OUTFOUGHT. IMO...

 

Dempsey already beat Miske in 1918 although it was a "newspaper" decision but from all the accounts i have read of the fight, it seems that dempsey clearly beat him. I once read a newspaper report on it a few years ago but i cant find it. But Dempsey did beat Miske when he was not sick.

 

As for willard, even if the neutral corner rule existed, i don't believe it would have been a very tough fight. IMO Dempsey would have won without much trouble

 

Never did i say that Greb was not of the elite fearless fighters, i said that its not for certain that was as fearless as can be said as he supposedly did not want to mix it up with langford, can we blam him though, taking on the best fighter in the histroy of the ring, no one is pointing fingers, i just said your claim to greb fighting anyone and evryone is not really to be accepted as a total fact. Burt, was it not you who recently in a thread said that Sam Langford was not willing to fight evryone because of "innuendos" that sam was afraid of Jack Dillon? this you accept but an article of Greb not wanting to fight greb because of what he "puportedly" said is not true even though what was "puportedly" said of Langford is 100% accurate? doesnt seem quite fair to me.

As for what Nat Fleischer said, i respect him for having been a writer who saw the absoulte best fighters including greb, dempsey, langford, johnson, walker and a whole load more but he doesnt seem very reliable to me, the reaspn for this is his ovbious bias to fighters of his time (and yes i acknowledge greb came after langford) but his ratings of fighters do not show him to be knowledgable of the highest standard. at least in boxing terms anyway.

 

Of course. But it certainly helped that he was able to pounce repeatedly on a disorientated opponent, and strike him visciously while he was trying to get to his feet. No slight against Jack, those were the rules. But I think he'd have taken considerably longer had there been the mandatory 8 count + neutral corner.

 

Why do you hate Marciano? He faced considerably better opposition than Jack Dempsey.

 

Just to mention the neutral corner rule…

It’s easier to put a man down standing over him but it’s hard to actually leverage the punch properly to keep him there.

Dempsey, like all boxers, has to be put into context. He steam-rolled the division on his way to the title in a very impressive set of performances. He then had a decent championship reign but then fell into dormant mode. He was probably the last HW champ to do this. Up until this point winning the title was a great way to earn money outside of the ring. By today’s standards it’s a poor show but in the day it was commonplace.

Wills is the man he missed but that doesn’t mean Jack wasn’t a great. Ranking all heavyweights from Sullivan to Dempsey… I’d have Jack 2nd to Johnson, just ahead of Jeffries and Langford.

 

Leverage didn't come into it. He was swarming a man who was constantly buzzed. The fact he made it out the round speaks volumes for Willard considering he had to deal with clearing his head and preparing to defend himself at the same time.

 

Another way of looking at it which is similar to what you said, is that Dempsey went from fighting for peanuts to fighting for 100,000 dollars, which was huge, huge money back then, in a couple of years. Once you have all the money you need, motivation could easily become a problem.

 

bman, you make valid points, when you say,i posted that sam Langford
supposedly was said to have wanted no part of Jack Dillon. I wanted to emphasize, on my post of Jack Dillon,how highly regarded he was, by
his peers in his prime..Of course Langford who fought the greatest boxer
of his time, Jack johnson, didn't fear Dillon physically, but there were other
fish to fry, easier than the Hoosier Bearcat..
Harry Greb would have fought Langford when greb was in his heyday.
The remark Greb supposedly made was when Harry was young, and
Sam Langford was in his heyday...
About Nat Fleischer...Since about 1905-10 Fleischer was at ringside
more than any writer in History. I have many old books that he wrote, long out of print,and they are illuminating...His opinions of fighters who he saw, I don't always agree with, but Fleischer who died in 1972,certainly
saw more great fighters than anyone..
It is true, that he regarded such fighters of his youth as the best of alltime...Such as jack Johnson-Heavyweight/Phil Jack O'Brien LH/
Stanley Ketchel MW/Joe Walcott WELTER/ Joe Gans LW/ Terry McGovern
featherweight/ Jimmy Wilde Flyweight...
Except for Phil Jack O'Brien, they are not so outlandish to me, up to 1972.
:good