Why the polarised views on Dempsey?

Tate would presumably have won the coloured title from Wills via DQ and then retained it via their subsequent draw.

In practice, the matter only served to muddy the coloured heavyweight title picture even further than it already was.

 

Bokaj, i accept your apology. You hit a raw nerve in me,accusing me of not admitting that Harry Wills was having a more difficult time being a black man in the 1920s than his white counterpart. This hurt me. You have to understand
how i felt as I, as a youngster lived next door to a trainer,of John Henry Lewis, the great lightheavyweight champion of the world. Every night I would
go next door and spar with some stablemates of JH Lewis. One of the fighters was my favorite, named Tommy Jones, who was the best black welterweight of the era. He was having trouble getting fights with the contenders for the
welter crown,and reluctanly had to go to Australia to get bouts. When he left i was so sad,as he coddled me, fed me salads with oil, let me haul off on him
when we sparred. Tommy was avoided because of his race, and i became
aware of this,and so was my dad. Tommy Jones was a gentleman in a tough racket like boxing,and I never heard about him after, until a few months ago when i saw a photo of Tommy Jones and Jimmy Leto, when they were in Australia, boxing. So of COURSE Harry Wills ,should have had a crack at Dempsey's crown. No doubt about it...But Dempsey was controlled and guided by Jack Kearns,and Tex Rickard. And Rickard had valid reasons to fear
probable race riots and deaths, were they to have fought, ala Johnson/Jeffries
in Reno Nev. But Dempsey and Wills did sign for a bout by a Floyd Fitzimmons,as photos show. But Fitz could not come up with the dough,and
the fight was cancelled, but Wills pocketed a nice deposit money from the promoter. Boxing was then and now a business, and it irks me no end to besmirch the memory of a gallant warrior Dempsey, who signed,and never hooked up with a top contender Harry Wills, whilst Joe Louis, NEVER gave
a money shot ,to as I have posted, Lee Q Murray, Lem Franklin, Harry Bobo,
Curtis Shepperd, Jimmy Bivens, all dangerous black heavyweights of Louis's
era, who were far superior to many of Joe Louis's" bum of the month club ".
Luv Joe Louis, but Dempsey "avoided" far less capable opponents than
did his successor Joe Louis,and that is a fact...Cheers b.

 

This here ^^^hat

MR.BILL:yep

 

In honesty, I would throw a question mark over Wills' credentials from his January 1922 draw with Bill Tate through to 1924 with wins over Madden and Firpo (no great shakes themselves, but still.).
The win over Kid Norfolk in mid-'22 might justify a continuing top place for Wills through this time, but he also took a whole year off after a very poor showing against Clem Johnson in Sept '22.

Meanwhile, we have your other guy Harry Greb on a continuous campaign, and Tommy Gibbons bouncing back from the Greb defeat with a clear win over heavyweight Billy Miske (who remarkably had enjoyed his best streak after the Dempsey title defeat).
If we include light-heavyweight fights, Gene Tunney established himself in Feb. '23 by beating Greb too.
Tunney firmly establishes himself in mid-'25 with the Gibbons win.

I think Harry Wills' 10-round draw with Bill Tate is damaging to his status, esp. as the fight was supposed to settle an aborted fight/1st rnd DQ loss to Tate a few days earlier - and Wills never fought Tate again.
Admittedly, a win over Norfolk in the manner Wills did may have been enough to make him a legit number 1.

Also, if we go back through the record and some reports, a lot of those wins over the old black fighters (Jeff Clark, Sam langford, Jack Thompson) seem to be of dubious quality. These guys toured together, often these fights were fake, or not competitive. It gets a bit ridiculous when little old Jeff Clark can't manage 3 or 4 rounds as Wills' punching bag but is still getting booked for 2 fights a year. Or when reports suggest Wills was holding back against an fat old slow (blind even!) Langford.
Obviously these guys really needed to earn a living, and were warriors until the end.
But they had to play it out long past the point where the fights were any longer meaningful contests.

 

:good

"Greb is out of the question. The truth is that Harry can't hit a lick. He's a good aggressive boy with a good fighting heart, but he's not ready for a man of Dempsey'd proportions, and probably never will be."

That sort of perception is what I was highlighting earlier. Greb was a little guy with no real KO punch, hence his credentials were unstable at best.

 

Robert Edgren's opinion (published May 1924) :

"Wills hasn't done any real fighting or fought any dangerous opponents for years. He has been challenged by two or three heavyweights who could give him a real fight, men like Jack Renault and George Godfrey, but he has picked easier opponents. Last year Wills eased through with bouts against Homer Smith, Jack Townsend and Jack Thompson - men who couldn't stay in Dempsey's training camp as sparring partners."

"Perhaps Jack Kearns has the right dope when he says Wills was a pretty good fighter 10 years ago, and has slipped."

Full article :

[url]http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=E91VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0-EDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6232,5772233&dq=harry+wills+dempsey&hl=en[/url]

 

Again, too much fantasy hoopla here....... Nobody was alive in the 1920s to see all of this action live from "Dempsey, Greb, Willis and Tunney," and the film footage that does exist is rough and crude, so therefore most of us are left merely speculating.... No doubt these guys from the 1920s were great for the decade and times of that era, but to think them dead ol' ringers would be successful in the modern world of boxing, or so the post 1960s era of boxing is hard to swallow on this end of the line...

HOWEVER!

"Dempsey-Marciano" would pair nicely...

"Louis-Johnson" would match well, too...

"Greb-LaMotta" would be of deep interest as well...

I do believe some fighters do pair / match well with fighters from different era's of boxing...

bbb:hey:good

MR.BILL:hat

 

Yet he kept beating the guys that Dempsey fought instead. You only read what you want to read. It actually says that both Greb and Gibbons didn't impress, despite the fact that Greb beat him from pillar to post. Yet who gets the title shot? You guessed it right..

What was Wills supposed to do? He raked up so many wins that a century later, people rate him as one of the 10 best heavyweights in history. Yet he was still refused a title shot and held on a leash. Sorry but trying to discredit Wills as a challenger is utterly pathetic rhetoric. Wills was clearly the best out there, and Dempsey never fought soft touches instead. He never fought the second best man (Greb), either, though he did get in the ring with the boxers who lost to him.

 

No. Gibbons didn't get the title shot until after won a further 8 fights and he'd beaten a heavyweight Billy Miske (who himself had gone unbeaten for 2 years, about 20 fights).

Gibbons-Greb fight was at light-heavyweight.

You say, "You only read what you want to read." ... actually I read the whole thing, and my point was entirely about a perception of Greb as not really HEAVYweight championship style of fighter. (A point I was making earlier in the thread.)
Obviously I wasn't suggesting Gibbons deserved a title shot for losing to Greb.
I think it's YOU who is reading things into my posts that simply aren't there.

I'm not trying to discredit him as a challenger, but I am very sceptical about this idea that he was continuously clearly above the rest of the field.
Not only that, I'm showing that some voices in the press were at times quite sceptical of it too.
And if you look at the opposition he was facing at times and his performances it's understandable.

WILLS DESERVED A SHOT REGARDLESS (As I've stated many times before).

You want to stick to some simplistic dogma about Wills being in a different class from the other contenders, and that he was willing to take on anyone (unlikely), and you slam me for looking more deeply into his form at the time as "utterly pathetic rhetoric".

Is it utterly pathetic rhetoric to say that a draw with Big Bill Tate would be real cause to question Wills' supremacy as leading contender ?

Is it utterly pathetic rhetoric to say that fighting old Jack Thompson or Jeff Clark all those times, and several set-ups, may not have been the clearest indication of Wills being ahead of the field during Dempsey'd reign ?

 

Thanks for sharing the story.

 

So it's a ridiculous notion that to be regarded as the "unqestionably best" you have to have beaten the best? That Dempsey beat what perhaps (and that's a big perhaps) could be called the best in 1919 didn't automatically make him the unqestionably best for the next 7 years, not without proving it against the best challengers out there and he didn't.

I always think it's silly to base someone's ranking on what fighters they'd hypothetically beat. I only rank a fighter after who he actually beat.

Johnson's ranking take a dive because of his abysmal reign. They're probably quite close to Dempsey in HW rankings.

In those days, under those conditions, it was. Today we would laugh off the notion of him being a worthy undisputed champ a couple of years into his reign. The titles would certainly have been stripped off of him by the time he fought Tunney.

 

What I find interesting is that as Dempsey's stock declined, Rocky Marciano's rose. Many people who saw both of them fight said that Dempsey was better. But as those generations died out, Rocky gradually became rated higher and higher, while Dempsey's ranking began to decline.

 

Ever notice no threads on fighters bring out more passion than those on Dempsey and Marciano ? Every time ?

 

HeGrant - not really sure who your favourite heavyweights are but I'm assuming it's probably the usual suspects Ali, maybe even Tyson and Holy Lennox somewhere high too?? Well if a percentage of people came on dissing them and putting down around the number 10 mark or lower wouldn't you argue passionately to the contrary?? Especially if those same people displayed a certain racsist slant influencing their views??