With No Color Line, Who Would Have Actually Been Lineal HW Champs?

I don't think footage of this fight exists. Its such a shame that all we have of Greb is a few rounds from the Walker fight.

 

You think correctly.

I am going from ringside reports.

If you have any footage of Greb, then pleas PM it to me, and don't tell anybody!

 

You can pretty confident Peter Jackson and Harry Wills would have been. There's question marks around Marvin Hart, Tommy Burns and Jess Willard. To a lesser extent James J Corbett, but I think he most likely gets there still.

Jack Johnson may or may not become champion sooner, and probably has a better reign. Sam Langford had a good chance.

I think the others would need significant luck to get there.

 

"Comparing Dempsey to Moore and Wills to Liston and Foreman is laughable"

Except I didn't. This is a non sequitor extrapolation on your part. What I said is that Moore beat Valdes and Baker, two pretty good big men about the size of Liston, but it does not follow that Moore would beat Liston. The comparison is actually between Liston versus Valdes and Baker. In the case of Dempsey, it is similar. It simply does not follow that because Dempsey beat Willard, Fulton, Firpo, and Morris, he would also beat Wills. The comparison is between Wills and these other four big men.

"Wasn't flatfooted Max Baer often called a 'Tiger'?"

I have been following and reading about boxing since the mid-fifties, and I have never seen Baer compared to a tiger. Perhaps some did, but I have never seen it. Dempsey often was.

"Flynn"

So your argument is beating a 38 year old Flynn proves Dempsey would beat Wills?

"footage would be helpful here"

That is where your argument falls apart. We have no footage of Wills until he was 35. What can we draw from that? We have to be careful. The Joe Louis of 1950 looks quite a bit different than the Louis of 1941. I recommend watching a film up on you tube now under the title "Jack Dempsey vs Gene Tunney II, complete fight HD" It is properly speed corrected and brought closer to the action than usual and has all the rounds. Dempsey was only 32, but I think a fair minded observer would say he looks very limited. No jab. Hands low and wide open for jabs and right crosses, which he eats all night. Doesn't seem to know how to cut off the ring. Unlike Sharkey, Tunney shows himself an expert at tying Dempsey up in close. I had Tunney winning 9 of the 10 rounds, and while I don't think Tunney was all that wildly impressive, he almost always got off first and easily out-boxed Dempsey.

There is also the film of the four round fight with King Levinsky in 1932. As the commentator says, Levinsky was by then much the faster man. Dempsey at this point was younger than Wills was when Wills fought Sharkey and not that much older than when Wills fought Firpo.

My bottom line is Dempsey had the heart of a champion and a punch, so who knows, but there is nothing in the record or on film which provides strong evidence that he would actually beat Wills. I didn't say originally that Dempsey would lose. I only said that I think the outcome is uncertain and I stand by that.