He'd been a top contender years before Dempsey was. He was years overdue a title shot by the Firpo fight, and significantly past his best by then. Saying he didn't deserve a title shot because of a sub par showing in that fight is absurd.
Yes...I've just called him; he's on his way in here. Look for dozens of posts all saying the same thing...Dempsey was afraid of losing his title. I asked him DIRECTLY once if he thought Dempsey was afraid of Wills, and that was his response. Dempsey, a guy who rode undeneath trains for hundreds of miles in the Rockies, who went hungry numerous times, who fought everyone he could in bars for a couple bucks. Yeah, Dempsey was a fearful man.
it’s a business and he could draw the colour line if he didn’t like his chances on the gate that’s what happened.
A man like that might well be fearful of losing his meal ticket. It might be that he did not fear pain, or loss of prestige, but he did fear losing the title. Now if Dempsey ever had any intention of fighting Wills, then it is clear that he intended to do it as his last defense.
It turns out that he did. My intuition, is that things had moved on since then, and that a Dempsey Wills fight would have been manageable. However, it would still have been a serious risk!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson–Jeffries_riots Johnson was a huge ******* though, so I don't really think fear of riots is a good enough excuse. Louis became champ without much issue.
@ QTD - I wouldn’t call them implosions v Liston. Williams exploded on Liston then Sonny exploded on Williams who was put out by legitimately powerful punches. When he hurt Sonny, Williams sniffed blood and went for broke and those same punches he landed might’ve levelled a good number of other fighters of the day. Notwithstanding your view of the quality of the rest of the field, it doesn’t alter the strong argument that a fighter (Williams) was clearly more avoided than any of his contemporaries (aside from Liston himself of course). Though Floyd Patterson was the common denominator for a few head to head avoidance scenarios. Anyway, that could be another category again - The two most avoided fighters who actually engaged one another. And not once but TWICE also.
Glad you liked it. I actually used to have that very mag. picked up from a 2nd hand bookstore some years back. There’s quite a few similarly scanned articles floating around. There’s another in which they used Big Cat to test out the theory of using plaster of paris (as it related to the possibility of Dempsey using same against Willard). It may be on that same site, not sure. If there isn’t one already, It would be good if there was a dedicated thread or on site location to link all such material for the benefit of all members. A one stop shop. The info share on the net at large is very good - when you can manage to find it.
Charley Burley, a natural welterweight got special dispensation from commissions to fight guys up to and including heavyweight because nobody outside the Murderers Row wanted any part of him.
