Adam Pollack's Dempsey Book?

Even Roger Kahn says John Lester Johnson was the better. Hiring John Lester as a sparring partner means very little.

As for Jeannette he was well past it by then. It was an exbition for a war drive ( Dempsey had draft issues ) , and boxing here could have helped them. Dempsey should have given the older man a try. Had he Dempsey fans would be talking about this to this day. As it was John Lester Johnson was the last African American Dempsey ever fought

Dempsey also passed on an older Sam Langford.

 

It's funny because of Mcvey's contradictions too.

" I can imagine the stick you would give him for feasting on a middle weight." - McVey

Well Jack Johnson was Ko'd by, outboxed by, and floored by three different men who would have been in the super middleweight division today. Well, Maybe Choynski would have made the light heavyweight limit.

 

I must be pregnant, apparently I'm having contractions!lol Dempsey was 22 when Jeannette tried to engineer him into the ring in a fight for nothing.
He was 20 years old when his then manager tried to overmatch him with Langford.

There is no limit to either the stupidity of some people nor indeed to their blind hatred.

 

Yeah Dempsey was frightened of an old Jeannette who got a very debatable decision over a 20 years old Carpentier 4 years earlier.Yet he had no problem fighting a prime Carpentier, carrying him for 3 rds and flattening him in the 4th.It must have been that colour that spooked him ya think?

 

We must all be boring and repetitive. You & K hate Dempsey. Pernel despises Duran. I loath Cooney. The new guys love dinky fighters. Same arguments. Same responses. Same time each yr. The Duran/Benitez debate resumes July 7th. The WitherspoonPageTubbs fat Titty coalition takes off in Sept. Marciano & Primo have reached all yr status. The Sonny Liston is Actually A Squirt/His dimensions are a lie thread hits July 3rd. DempseyGrebWills returns November 2020-Jan 2021. Know yr role boy!!!!!!!

 

Afraid may be too strong a word. I think he and his handlers (but make no mistake Dempsey was part of this decision making process) felt Wills was a risk. Defeating him wasnt a lock. As much revenue as Dempsey was generating for himself and others they werent willing to risk that. Dempsey was a financial juggernaut that was being protected.

 

So let me get this straight. Dempsey felt Wills was slow footed in the Fulton fight, which he stated he would fight the winner, so because he felt Wills looked slow footed in crushing Fulton's ribs he decides to fight Billy Miske who he later admitted he knew was dying, who had retired for over a year due to poor health, had one fight in the previous year against a nobody, and whose last fight against a name opponent was a clear loss to light heavyweight champion Battling Levinsky. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion that Miske was an acceptable sub for Wills "because Dempsey thought Wills looked slow footed..."

 

Rather than call Wills "slow footed" here are his actual words quoted the day Wills knocked out Fulton: "...he (Wills) had what I called that "panther" appearance. I mean that he seemed eager to spring into combat. His eagerness however did not prevent him from carrying out a well formulated plan of attack and a plan of attack that absolutely sealed Freds doom. Within 10 second of the first bell Wills had back the plasterer into a corner and was raining blows on Fulton's mid-section with an occasional right jab to the jaw." I could go on but nowhere in Dempsey's recap of the fight did he call Will slow footed. In fact he used terms like "panther" "clever" "strong" "aggressive" "leaped from his corner like a bronze cat" "covered with ferocity and determination" "Wills could have killed Fulton". Then the next day he signed to fight a guy the New York Herald described this way over a month before the bout was fought: "We note that Dempsey has entered into an agreement to meet Billy Miske at Benton Harbor, Mich. This match should not be taken too seriously. It is a huge joke. Miske could not stand up to Dempsey in a fair fight in his best days. The Miske of 1920 is just getting over the effects of a serious hip and kidney trouble and is no fit opponent for the worlds champion. A thorough physical examination of Miske would result in the prohibition of the fight by the police. Dempsey must fight Wills and then Brennan. Or he may reverse that order and take on Brennan first. A Miske match is a burlesque and a menace to boxing and to Dempsey himself."

 

I gather Miske, the Minnesotan, didn’t pay the New York press off for good reviews either.

 

Thanks for the reply I think we can agree to disagree about Dempsey's wilingness to face Wills.
Wills was the standout challenger for some time and deserved his shot,on that we can agree.

 

Here we are in 2020 America and we have 9 major cities with peaceful protests going on as well as riots, looting and assault over a killer police officer in Minnesota. Currently This country is far more diverse and liberal than it was 100 years ago and we still have violence and inequality. I can only imagine what would of happened, and what the promoters feared back in 1920 if something went wrong with a bout against Dempsey. Not just for a clean win for Wills, if that did occur, but what would happen if Wills hit Dempsey on a break or some sort of DQ win ensued. Disaster.
Their was no way Wills was going to get his shot so soon after Johnson’s title reign. The race riots over the Jeffries bout were well documented. I don’t care how good Wills looked or if he looked like garbage and just had the liberal media backing him, he wasn’t going to get his shot. This was a societal issue far bigger than Dempsey. Major League Baseball didn’t even have a color player until 20 years after Jack retired!
From what I see on film Dempsey looks better than Wills imo and Dempsey’s track record against large fighters is outstanding. I like everyone else acknowledges Wills got a raw deal, I just don’t subscribe to the motives some are posturing on Jack 100 years after the fact.

 

Then why were so many promoters interested in staging the fight if they were so concerned? Thats the big caveat here. People want to say that because Rickard was protecting Dempsey no other promoter wanted that bout. Not true. People want to say that because A state temporarily poo pooed the bout, every state (and by extension every country) did as well. Not true. Its one thing to judge events a century ago through the lense of today (never considered a good practice) but then to further make broad generalizations about “promoters” fearing the fight as an excuse when every year of his reign promoters came out of the woodwork from across the country and other countries to make offers to stage the fight only to be met with silence or excuses by Dempsey and his team and again this continued after Kearns was out of the picture and despite the fact that Dempsey fought for promoters other than Rickard when it suited him and accepted less money to fight easier opponents as well. When mountains of excuses have to be invented out of whole cloth only to fall by the wayside like so many dominos then theres a problem with the narrative those trying to protect Dempsey then and now are trying to weave.

 

Maybe because cooler heads prevailed against quick buck promoters out for themselves? I never said the bout wouldn’t make money which is a promoters goal, but at what expense on society. It’s a complicated issue, and I’m sure many factors went into the decision making process. It’s also easy for promoters who don’t have the right to the bout to shout from the sidelines how they want to get the bout made. I’m sure that played very well to the segment of the population that wanted the bout. No black heavyweight fought for the title until Louis and he got his a decade after Jack was gone from the scene.

 

How many black heavyweights between Johnson and Louis had a real, legitimate claim to being the top contender? Exactly. The fact that national polls conducted always rated Wills the most deserving challenger disagrees with your analysis. The fact that numerous black fighters fought during this period for other championships (sometimes promoted by Rickard) further disproves the idea. Itd be one thing if polls conducted regularly even hinted that Wills wasnt the popular choice but the reverse is true, he was always ahead by a whopping margin. Furthermore, its ironic that you are drawing conclusions one hundred years later about protests demanding equality as a reason why Wills was denied his title shot when in fact nationally people were behind Wills getting his title shot, not afraid it would cause some national scandal. In fact Wills was considered a paragon of virtue. I quiet, humble, hard working, intelligent family man. He was the antithesis of Jack Johnson and it was often noted. Sunday magazines did articles about the guy and frankly Ive never heard a bad word written about the man personally. If the majority of the press, the majority of the public, the majority of the promoters, and most states and countries are behind Wills getting a shot then your argument holds no water. Look who was against Wills getting a shot: the people who stood to gain from Dempsey continuing as champion. Pretty simple. When Dempsey was out of the game Rickard lost an ENORMOUS amount of money promoting Tunney-Heeney despite it being his favorite promotional vehicle, a white American champion against an exotic foreign heavyweight. He never again earned like he did when Dempsey was fighting and despite pumping money into promotions as he always had he died having lost most of his fortune a few years later. Dempsey was the cash cow and Dempsey had to be protected. The idea that no other promoters had a “right” to promote Dempsey-Wills is a very modern view that doesnt apply to that era. Dempsey didnt have an exclusive promotional contract with ANYONE. Not Rickard or anyone else. Promoters at that time threw their hat in the ring and bid on fights hoping to land them. Itd been that way for at least a quarter of a century. You went where the money was. I cant think of a single fighter from that era that had an exclusive multifight/multiyear promotional agreement. Its not how promoters typically operated if ever at that time. So when promoters are offering increasingly large sums every year to stage that fight (in excess of what Dempsey is actually fighting lesser opposition for) it begs the question why and forces one to look at the bigger picture. Dempsey could generate a lot more income fighting setups every couple of years and leveraging his championship status outside of the ring than he could for a bigger purse but a potential loss.