How good was Dempsey's title reign?

Im not good enough to say so, but all those writers you put so much faith in from the 1940s and 50s back me up. So who is wrong, you or them? You think they just forgot to write about one of the most popular fighters in the world fighting a top ten contender (not to mention a pretty popular guy himself)? If so then your faith in those same writers is oddly misplaced. They cant even write about a contemporary great in their own town but they are experts on something that happened 30 years before? Good luck with that one Burt, and let me know when you find proof that this fight actually happened and proof that Dempsey never ducked anyone and was the toughest orneriest rootin tootin heavyweight champion of them all who was faster than a locomotive and could jump tall buildings in a single bound... sigh...

 

haha every damn dempsey thread goes like this. ****, this guy just seems to be difficult to analyze objectively. there always seems to be two camps: guys who ADORE him and guy who hate him; the former are called nostalgic, the latter ignorant

 

J, I don't mind when someone disagrees with me on Jack Dempsey's place in history.Fine with me. But for someone to come out of left field ,and demean me by saying that a fight I know I saw 55 years ago ,never occured , making me a liar or a senile fool, well that shows a meaness not usually seen on this
much argued ESB forum. This foul remark of an event I saw in the 1950s, had nothing to do with Dempsey at all, but an attempt to hurt me...atschatschatsch

 

i hear ya burt and it goes to the heart of the dempsey argument: it's passion on both sides.

btw: what is the fight you saw?

 

i'm on this side of the dempsey argument as well and in the end it's tough to gauge the REAL dempsey because his career is captured so much more in descriptions than film. much the same as with other fighters of this and earlier eras; believing the description, dempsey was a beast

 

I have mentioned the fight I saw in a post a few minutes ago. It was between Ray Robinson and the tall lanky Bobby Dykes at the old Coney Island Veledrome in NY in the early 1950s,which is not in the record books . But see it i and a couple of thousands of fans witnessed that fight. It is concievable that Dykes was a last minute substitute for someone else, and was almost certain their second fight. The first fight between the two I saw on early TV
in 1950 from Chicago, so I was very well aware of the fighter Bobby Dykes.
Maybe as I have said Dykes substituted for someone else,and it was never recorded. I know it is strange, but TRUE ! I have years ago tried to contact
Bobby Dykes kinfolks in Florida, where i am now with no success.
But for Klompton to bring this up out of the blue, in a Dempsey title reign debate,was way out of line, in an attempt to discredit me. He should go into politics, he would feel at home... Take care J....

 

Double-standards again by you JAB.. when i posted a link up by Frank Lotiertzo the same historian as above on a different subject, you rubbished the guy as a nobody who did not know what he was talking about. yet here you are using that same guy to back up your argument

 

^ This is the worst post on this entire thread, and one of the worst I've ever seen.
It succinctly sums up what klompton is all about though.

burt says he saw a fight, a first hand eyewitness, with some reasonably precise details concerning time and venue.
A proper historian and record-keeper would at least pencil it in as a possible event that for one reason or another got missed from the official record. Not tell burt that he must have a "failing memory", simply because it is not on the official record.

There seems to be almost a resentment of anyone who actually bases their judgements on having actually SEEN and LIVED THROUGH the period in question, and complete dismissal of the comparisons and judgements made by people who were close to the action, unless it comes via a newspaper report that suits a certain agenda (though, this is contradicted by a further dismissal of entire generations of first-hand sportswriter witnesses when they claim the greatness of Dempsey).

It's a convoluted, contradictory mess, driven by ego and an inflated sense of self and purpose.

 

Ballyhooing exists in professional boxing. It's not something peculiar to Dempsey.
Dempsey beat several good contenders - before, during and after his championship reign.
He wasn't the fraud you like to portray him as - he was a proven (and great) fighter.

I don't understand your point about Roy Jones Jr. - his domination of James Toney stands as perhaps the most one-sided fight between two pound-for-pound ELITE fighters of their era.
Toney was a professional fighter, IMHO. As were Bernard Hopkins, John Ruiz, Montell Griffin ... ... etc. Professional boxers. I'm not sure how many RJJ opponents were not pro boxers, it's the first I've heard of it.

 

This is a fallacious argument.
There's a big difference between a few reporters omitting or failing to report or record something and entire generations of writers and insiders flat-out making stuff up or being 100% wrong on Dempsey.

What I don't understand is your own reliance on contemporary sources and the value you put on them is contradicted by the dismissal of the consensus opinion formed and passed down by the very same generations of writers, reporters, and various insiders.