How good was Dempsey's title reign?

Well those fighters beat other greats to make up for it, Dempsey beat NOBODY, to justify how high burtard and Unforgiving rate him. Possible no.1 P4P ATG that is.

 

Thats because there were some glaring and obvious holes in his record that were not missed even in his era much less 90 years later. Its easy to focus on the fights that WERENT made because the fights that WERE made over a 7 year reign were few and far between and fairly underwhelming as competetive competitions between a champion and a deserving challenger.

 

A question to Dempsey naysayers with all due respect :
If you and your many friends today had seen fighters John Smith and Paul Jones ,both top heavyweights fight. By a vast majority you are convinced that John Smith was the better fighter,indeed the best fighter you and your pals ever saw. Would you and your boxing pals
be closer to the truth relative to John Smith's greatness, than EIGHTY YEARS later,when
distortions, innuendos, mis-facts take hold and DILUTE,what OBSERVERS of the two fighters actually saw with their own eyes. Who comes closer to the true abilities of Jack Dempsey, the BOXING experts who saw him and lauded him to the skies, as a Ray Arcel,
Max Schmeling {read Schmelig's biography],and other unbiased boxing men attested to, or
naysayers 80 years later, when time erodes the truth.
I pick the people who actually saw Dempsey and his succesors, to come much closer to the truth as to the greatness of the Manassa Mauler. I have seen over a lifetime how an event that took place,becomes so changed and distorted over time.
Yes, Dempsey for whatever reasons was not as active as we would have liked today. No doubt. But in a man to man 15 round bout , the Dempsey of Toledo, would be a terror for
anyone, anywhere, anytime, irrespective of the fighters he DIDN'T hook up with. I go with the guys who actually saw the prime Dempsey,for they were closer to the truth than we today, eighty years after the fact...Peace.....

 

with all due respect, burt. I'll never know half as much as you know, but nostalgia overrides knowledge. In tme im sure Dempsey looked impressive for the time, but we do have film of him, and he does look like ****.

 

Dempsey looks good on film to me.
But then I haven't seen his fights with Fireman Flynn and Fat Willie Meehan.

 

I think you are right about the lack of punch being held against Greb by the public. Yes, he was highly rated, but he was not the standout he seems today, because he didnt have that KO punch (rightly or wrongly). Chris Byrd was a similar situation. He really deserved a shot at Lewis towards the end, but he did not really demand that shot because no one thought he could beat Lewis' size and power. In fact, there was more interest in Vitali Lewis even though Byrd had not only beaten Vitali, but he had beaten a higher class of fighter than Vitali had, in Evander Holyfield.

If you look at Greb, many of his fights were NDs. Yes he dominated them, and yes today, they would read comfortable UDs (although presumable the odd Don King paid judge might turn a few into SDs or even losses), but despite what Tunney eventually did, i dont think anyone thought he was ever likely to shut out Dempsey, and i certainly dont think he would have knocked him out. I just dont think that marketing angle was there. Maybe if he could have knocked out say Smith, chip, Levinskey, Gibbons, Renault, Wiggins, Loughran, Miske, McTigue, McGoorty, Roper etc. But he really only got NDs with all these types of guys. If those were KOs, i am certain things would be different, but they were not.

In fact, the Tunney results, great as they were must have also hurt his standing after the first fight. I will admit that Greb did enough to earn his shot and at some stage may have even been the no 1 or 2 contender and certainly more than some of the guys who were given a shot, but so what. Once a champion has proved he is a champion, he will give some guys shots, but if a fighter really wants to earn a shot they will get one (no matter who the champion is) when they earn a shot. By earning a shot, i think they simply need to do enough to prove they are a standout no 1, not because they look better than everyone else, but because they have beaten all the best challengers.

In history, this is what Jack Johnson did to earn his shot. Fitz pretty much did the same to earn a shot at Jeffries. Ali (or Frazier) depending on which way you want to look at it did enough to demand a world title shot. Peter Jackson almost did enough, to face John L, but he didnt because he failed to beat Corbett. I actually think this (and perhaps one or two additional wins) is what denied him his shot at Sullivan. Ali earned most of his rematches, because he beat the top contenders. Dempsey did the same against Tunney. I think Wlad has done enough to demand a shot at Vitali (assuming Vitali had been the king and Wlad wanted it).

Greb was one of the best around and would have been a great challenger better than several who got shots, but he never beat Wills decisively, he never beat Fulton who was the no 1 a fair while, he never beat Firpo who was highly rated. Wills has a much better case as the standout challenger, but even he ended up blowing his chances by not continuing to fight the big fights.

 

P,with due respect. How the hell can I be nostalgic for Dempsey who I have never seen ? Your wrong on that "nostalgia" bit.
But I know or knew intelligent hard nosed boxing observers who have passed on who did see Dempsey and his contemporaries, and raved about him, just as I rave about the greatest fighter I ever saw ringside Ray Robinson. Is it
nostalgia I "suffer " from when I laud my man Robinson to the skies, also ?
One other point to make. You say you have seen film of Dempsey fight : It has to be with Jess Willard,when lil ole Dempsey slaughtered the giant Willard ,who was never floored before,something that took Joe Louis 13 rounds to do against an inept Abe Simon in 1941. Or the 15 round decision over a defensive master Tommy Gibbons in the hot sun in Shelby, Mont. in 1923, or when Jack Dempsey flattened the crude but powerful Luis Angel Firpo, with a blurring two punch combo in close ,almost too fast to be seen.
So P what other film have U seen the prime Dempsey fight ? Forget about his THREE YEAR layoff bout without a tune-up,against a great boxing master Gene Tunney. Dempsey was but a shell of himself at 32 years of age. An old
tiger sans legs and quickness was this Dempsey... So P,what is your true beef with Dempsey ?, At his best, he was a force of nature, and the roughest ,toughest of all heavyweights, and a gentleman to boot...Cheers...

 

You say forget about the Tunney fight, because Dempsey was 32 and a shell of himself at the age of 32 and coming off a 3 year layoff.....yet you praise this "great" victory over Willard, who was age 37, coming off a 3 year layer himself:huh Surely Willard was also a shell, yet this is supposed to be one of the greatest victories of all time...whilst the Tunney bout should be forgotten?

 

You're a logic trap-smith Pachilles. It's just not fair!

 

Yes, big Jess Willard was old and rusty but he got absolutely butchered by Dempsey, really.
Should have been stopped in round 1 really.
It's an impressive performance from Dempsey, whatever way you slice it.
And the size difference was immense.

I give Tunney a ton of credit for beating Dempsey too. But it went the distance and prime-for-prime, against a Dempsey with young legs, you have to wonder whether Tunney could survive him for a full 10 or 15 rounds.
Tunney was an elite all-time great too, I believe.

 

P, good try, but no cigar! Of course Jess Willard was 37 and past his prime, for sure. But by your logic whatever Dempsey did, Dempsey couldn't "win" by your standards. After all Willard [never floored before] lasted truly one round, [7 knochdowns in 1st rd]. Dempsey should have done better,after all,Willard was 37 years old. But Willard was still never floored BEFORE,and 187 pound "overated" Dempsey used Jess like a yo yo... What did a prime Mike Tyson do with a Bonecrusher Smith, by the way ?
If U can write off the fact that Jack Dempsey then 32 years old without a fight in 3 years, without a tune-up bout, without his long-time mentor Jack Kearns
and mourning a brother Bernie, who just commited suicide, as indicative of a prime Jack Dempsey, than I have nothing more to say. Then the Ray Robinson who got his ass-whipped by a journeyman Ralph Tiger Jones in 1955, by your standards was the "real" Ray Robinson. I think not...

 

While we're piling on excuses for Dempsey losing to Tunney lets not forget the only excuse he ever used which was that he was poisoned... :-(

 

Yeah, he was poisoned. :good

 

Dempsey sure threw his buddy Mike Trent under the bus on that one. Trent had been his friend and bodyguard for years and yet when Dempsey was looking for excuses and a scapegoat to blame his loss to Tunney on he wrote this long convoluted story about poisoned tea that Trent gave him then stated that Gene Normile, his business manager was convinced Trent was the reason why Dempsey lost but that he (Dempsey) did believe it, that he and Trent had been together too long... Yeah? Then why write all of that nonsense to begin with unless you wanted to create an excuse?