Dempsey or Uysk who rates higher as a all time heavyweight?

I've got Dubois this time man.

 

Uysk by a mile and I love Dempsey but let's get serious .... one man fought everyone and one certainly didn't

 

While Dempsey sat out 3 years to avoid Wills the reason he got away with that is he'd otherwise cleaned out the division. Wills run as pseduo champion showed this when he was fighting Firpo, Weinart and Floyd Johnson. So did Tunney coming to HW and his title eliminator being against Tommy Gibbons.

Dempsey would have also reigned longer if the title wasn't frozen by WW1 and Willard. Dempseys pre title run from November 1917 saw him go 6-0 against number 1 contenders in Fulton, Miske and Morris with wins over the best Brennan and LHW champ Levinsky. Also knocked out Tom McCarthy. That run is better than Usyks whole career. Dempsey fought 3 winless opponents during that run but just because they don't add anything doesn't mean they take anything away.

Whatever claim Langford had to being the best HW was lost when he got knocked out by Fulton several months before Dempsey started fighting at the top level. This was Langfords first stoppage loss in 11 years. I have a hunch in this period there was added pressure(at least in the US) on white HWs to not fight Langford and Wills in particular whose peers in other eras would have fought white opponents fairly regular. In 1915-1918 specifically.

 

Why do you think Dempsey-Wills was never made prior to Dempsey's title run?

 

I'm honestly think of him not fighting Langford more because I think he really didn't want to fight Wills. But the pressure for Dempsey to fight Wills came from Wills beating Fulton in 1920 and then Dempsey pulling out of the fight in 1924 and Wills beating Firpo who replaced him.

I think there was outside pressure(in the US where all these fighters were) to not fight Langford and Wills during those years none fought Wills and only a few fought Langford despite being regarded by many as the top HW. At this same time Norfolk at LHW got all the oppurtunities that had been previously been afforded to the top 2 or 3 black HWs. Miske who was arguably the top contender in both weight classes fought Norfolk twice but no Wills or Langford.