How good was Dempsey's title reign?

Agreed 100%. Well said. :thumbsup

 

Mc, I did not for one second besmirch the career of my favorite heavyweight Joe Louis. NOT AT ALL. What I was trying to cite was that great as his heavyweight reign was [13 years],fighting and whipping the best before him his mgrs. had the opportunity to fight some fighters as Lem Franklin, Bobo, etc,before Louis entered the service in 1942, but chose not to, but did fight
less gifted boxers of his 'bum of the month tour'. For example Lem Franklin
if i recall, kod Lee Savold, Jimmy Bivens, Tony Musto,Abe Simon,and was a
great puncher,was overlooked while other less talented boxers Louis fought got a title shot. Was Louis afraid of Franklin or Bobo, or Murray ? Hell NO, but
as you imply,his mgr,went for the bigger gates,not necessarily for the more deserving fighter,all the time.Joe Louis was and will ever be my favorite heavyweight and most loved fighter of alltime. The Brown Bomber reigns supreme.:good

 

Agreeing with burt, II do think it's a bit silly when champions are expected to fight the "best" fighters or the ones they are "most likely to lose against" regardless of whether the financial reward or immediate Kudos will correspond and increase proportionately with the task at hand.

Most great fighters had smart managers, not dummys.

 

Wow. I find this statement shocking. So you think champions should be allowed to rest on their laurels, cherry pick their comp. And pass the title only as a matter of happenstence? Athletic competition and the idea of the best vs. The best has no meaning to you? He'll if you just want to see your hero bash some no-hoper why not just wheel opponents in on wheelchairs or better yet gurneys... nothing like trying to rationalize ducking the two best opponents for YEARS...

 

Once again your timeline doesn't work burt. Franklin defeated bivins when bivins was an unknown. He didn't defeat musto until AFTER louis defeated musto. Prior to fighting louis musto had actually defeated franklin. Franklin defeated simon but when Louis fought simon it was planned as gimme bout for charity. By the time louis could have fought franklin franklin was getting kod by savold and host of other fighters. Talk about revisionist history. For someone who was supposedly there you would think you'd know this...

 

No, I don't think that.
You've extrapolated the point I was making and magnified it to absurd proportions, and produced a caricature out of it.

In the real world, these noble principles of "athletic competition and best v best" cannot be expected to apply in ABSOLUTE and pure terms, in professional boxing. It would be naïve to believe the sport has ever been run on those lines. We need to be realistic and strike a balance.
It's Utopian fanaticism otherwise,IMO.
Ducking certain fighters and styles and delaying certain fights when the money and the time isn't right, and milking the title reign, is the norm rather than the exception, in the boxing game.

Guys like Greb and Langford would be exceptions, I reckon, but Langford ended up blind and penniless, Greb ended up half blind. Dempsey earned more money than both, enjoyed perhaps even more popular acclaim, and lived in decent health and of sharp mind and good eyesight, and died when he was 87 years old.
They didn't do what they did so men like us 90 years later, long after they are gone, would decide their rank in some imaginary "Valhalla" of long dead boxers - our reverence towards them means almost nothing. They were PROFESSIONAL BOXERS, men making a living at a trade they had mastered. They were fighting for money and life, not death and immortality.

 

What an absurd joke. So, in your mind Dempsey could have been seriously hurt by Greb and Wills and as such he was smart to avoid them? Wow. Any way you spin it if it quacks like a duck its a duck and Dempsey was quacking for seven years... If you think thats fine and dandy that he cheated two deserving challengers out of an opportunity then I dont know what to say about that. Ever consider that guys like Langford, and Greb end up the way they do because guys like Dempsey and Johnson prevent them from getting the opportunities that they themselves recieved???

 

I think they should be allowed to cherry pick (or more appropriately sit on their title a little) to an extent. Once you become the champion, you deserve to stay that way until someone knocks you off the perch. In fact, i think it is far more important what the challenger does to earn a shot at the title. Sometimes, there simply will be no deserving challengers (for a prime example look no further than right now, where no one has really earned a shot at the klitchskos), and the champion will have to make a call based mostly on who brings the most money. Obviously right now, that is David Haye because of the paper title. In previous years, Kirk Johnson got a shot at Lennox because of the Canadian Connection. If a challenger wants to earn a title shot, he needs to clean up the entire division as an undisputed champion would need to do, in order to clearly say i was ducked.

Jack Johnson did it, and his claims couldnt be ignored. Peter Jackson almost did it, although note that he failed to beat his no 1 challenger in Corbett and this (with the colour line) cost him a shot at Corbett. Jeffries did it. Sonny Liston did it. Lennox Lewis did it.

Harry Wills, and Harry Greb almost did it. I dont think there is any doubt that these were the two best challengers out there for a period of time, but i dont think they were the standouts that is suggested. 1921 and 1922 are the years that clearly put Wills in the picture, though i believe Janitor is right, in that there was a bit of a stall over the Tate situation, where for some reason it seems that Tate was given a lot of Credit for his results with Wills, because of their drawn match which the insiders seemed to give to Tate from what i recall. But, it seems that Wills was guilty of sitting on this hard earned ranking and cherry picking a little bit. (he was the second best paid fighter in the world from some articles i have read). Wouldnt you think that if both Wills and Greb were so desperate for a shot at Dempsey, they would have made more attempts to fight each other. Though I would like to know if Klompton knows of any huge pushes for such a fight.

Also note, that when Tunney became mentioned as an opponent, it is Wills who steered clear of him, and ultimately tricked up against Sharkey and Uzcuden. In fact it is probably these two losses which cost him an elimination match against Dempsey, i would have thought. It is often a little overlooked, imo, that when Dempsey lost his title, to earn a shot at Tunney, he had to beat Sharkey, who had emerged as the no 1 fighter, and he did this. Something that Wills or Greb probably didnt really do. Saying all this the Dempsey debate is such a hard one for me.

More than any other fighter my opinion on Dempsey fluctuates. on the one hand, you have the testimonials that Burt points to, and on the other Klompton and Co do make some valid points regarding his level of competition he faced. ON the one hand he looks impressive against Willard, in his prime, on the other hand, this same film shows a smaller fighter, standing over his opponent, yet unable to deliver the decisive KO Blow in the style of a Mike Tyson.

This Dempsey debate is a tough one for

 

Professional boxing is a business. Dempsey made a load of money and ended his career acknowledged as having been a great fighter, a great champion.
He made a load of money outside the ring as a result of his success inside it.
The proof is in the pudding. Success is what counts.

If Greb and Wills were much more likely to take his title than, say, Carpentier and Firpo, but Dempsey could make comparable money fighting the latter two, then it just isn't very smart to fight the first two.
And if he can make comparable money in Hollywood or on an exhibition tour, that's even smarter.

It's not that fights with Greb and Wills would be risky to his health per se, but making the least smart choices as a habit would be.

I'm not spinning it.
I'm telling it it like is.

Life isn't fair.
Dempsey's and Johnson's unwillingness or hesistance in wanting to swap places with Greb and Langford make perfect sense.
I don't say it's "fine and dandy", but it's understandable.

 

Yes but this all ignores the fact that in 1920 Fulton was placed against Wills as an eliminator to Dempsey and was destroyed, two years later it was Norfolk (who Dempsey refused to even spar with) and he was destroyed in an eliminator, 2 years later it was Firpo and he was dominated. How many endless eliminators do you have to fight before the champion is forced to fight you??? By 1926 when Tunney was finally being touted as a challenger to Dempsey (and a lesser one than Wills at that) is Wills, at 36 years old, supposed to just keep fighting everyone on the way up until someone actually beats him? Well, I guess so because thats what happened. Its not like Uzcudan or Sharkey beat Wills in his prime. It took 7 friggin years to get this guy out of the picture. Thats ridiculous. In the case of Harry Greb he fought an eliminators with Gibbons, and one with Tunney. Along the way both he and Wills fought lesser bouts against Weinert and Madden (both of whom were being pushed by Dempsey and Kearns as challengers) that were talked of in some quarters as eliminators. Meanwhile lesser fighters (Who certainly hadnt cleaned out the division as you claim they should) leap frogged Greb and Wills to title shots. Is anyone really going to argue with a straight face that Brennan, Carpentier, Miske, Gibbons, and Firpo cleaned out the division? Please! After getting dominated four times by Greb Brennan wouldnt go near him in hopes of getting a shot at Dempsey. Carpentier didnt come close to cleaning out the HW division and wouldnt fight Greb or Wills in a million years. Miske had been inactive and had one fight against a nobody before getting his title shot. He wasnt HOF material, or even a top ten contender when he fought Dempsey and he was DYING!!! Gibbons had actually LOST the only eliminator he had fought in for the right to face Dempsey and was still given the shot, and Firpo was purposely steered clear of anyone who could beat him including Greb and Wills for the sole purpose of being sent up like a lamb to the slaughter against Dempsey. Once that happened you saw his true quality in getting dominated by Wills and Weinert and refusing to face Greb. How were any of those guys more qualified to challenge Dempsey year after year in regards to cleaning up the division?

 

I think thats sad. Its people who accept this mentality that drag the sport down. And it is a SPORT first and business second. Guys like you who follow this way of thinking look at Roy Jones, and Floyd Mayweather etc and cant get enough of them regardless of their shoddy competition or their lack of competetive spirit. Its a shame. Boxing is weaker for it. But I'll just spell something out for you. If boxing is a business, and you get offered purses that equal or exceed anything you made in the past to fight two fighters who your deluded fans think you can beat easily and you turn it down because its "safer" to continue fighting undeserving competition and making money on the side off your status as champion that says one thing and one thing only: You KNOW that those are dangerous fights that you could lose just as easily as your fans think you could win. Otherwise you would take them, win, collect your pay, and be a bigger star for it. Thats the bottom line. Dempsey and his team knew those fights were dangerous, he refused them because they were dangerous (not because they were too black, or too small, or nobody wanted them, or the purses werent good enough), and if that isnt ducking then maybe you can explain to me what is...

 

What you are claiming is that all those great boxing historians who took part in those Polls which ranked Dempsey as the greatest fighter of all times are wrong.. you are saying that those historians never knew that Dempsey avoided Grebb & Wills or that they never seen either Greb or Wills fight and that had they ever knew of Harry Greb and Wills then they would not have voted Dempsey as the greatest fighter ever but would have voted for Greb...

List for me the fights you have seen of Dempsey and i will then list mine and we can see who has seen most of him.