Any Jack Dempsey fans here?

Jack Kearns was correct in cancelling this illegal act of purposely putting in a " ringer " in the 37 year old Joe Jeannette...Any mgr would have and should have,walked out of this obvious ploy...Boxing woud be in anarchy
if signing one fighter to a bout and at the last moment substituting another fighter for whatever reasons...
For Dempsey it is a no win situation,for he was on the verge of his title shot with Jess Willard,after years of poverty..Why risk that?
And if he overcame the shock of the wrong opponent Joe Jeannette in place of Joe Bond, and flattened the old 37 year Jeannette, he would lose prestige even in victory...A bioxing contract woukld be meaningless and anarchy would reign, for surely it would happen again and again...Kearns did the right thing for once...

 

:happy:happy:happy:happy

 

Why do you always talk down Sonny Liston on threads irrelevant to him? What's your problem with him?

 

That is not what this article says. It critisizes Dempsey for not fighting Jeanette.

 

Those articles are not good arguments against Jack Dempsey with adults. I repeat, Jack never signed to fight Joe in a prize fight, period. Joe might as well have walked up to Jack on the street and challenged him to a duel. No way a sensible professional fighter, with title aspirations, in 1918, would engage in that sort of thing. You can accuse the two Jacks of a lot of things, if you want to, but I don't think stupidity is one of them. They weren't looking for popularity with newspaper people; they were looking for a title shot against Jess Willard. In no way was an unscheduled pissing contest with Joe Jeannette going to aid them in that quest. The Jacks showed some real class and good sense there and they should be applauded!

 

djanders, amen to your post...Some posters ca not be reasoned with...Such is their scorn for Jack Dempsey...Various opinions yes, but undisguised hatred NO, I say!

 

So according to you, its hatred to say Dempsey ducked the two best heavyweights of his era? :huh

 

Yeah, Liston's the man.

 

Yeah, right he didn't duck Wills. Wills was promised a title shot if he got by Fred Fulton. He knocks Fulton out in 3, but of course never gets that title shot. They were keeping him on a leash. There was huge public demand for this fight, which I can back up with public polls, newspaper articles and pictures.

Dempsey-Wills is just as much "not a smart business move" as Bowe vs Lewis was... i.e. it's pure, blatant ducking, while fighting the guys that were losing title eliminators to Greb (Gibbons, Brennan, a terminal ill Miske, etc).

Eyewitness accounts are completely unreliable as the time scale grows larger than a year. Especially when you haven't seen it with slow-motion playback from multiple angles. I even find myself surprised from time to time, when i re-watch a fight and see the knockout to be a different punch from what i was sure to remember.

Why do you think those "reliable" eyewitness accounts can't even agree on how many knockdowns Dempsey suffered against Flynn, not to mention which punch it was that did the damage?

Yes, he was a force.

Since the 70's, we've had:

Ali
Holmes
Tyson
Lewis
Holyfield

The first two are definitely greater heavyweights than Dempsey and Jeffries (who you mention). Lewis has a very strong case, and Tyson/Holyfield can be argued over them as well.

The performance-enhanced-drugs thing is speculation. By the same means I can say that Dempsey, from 1918 on, was well funded and had a nutritional advantage over his opponents. So what?

 

I have to say that I cannot get particularly exercised about Dempsey refusing to fight Jeanette when he was told that he was going up against another fighter.

If Wlad Klitschko was told that he was fighting an exhibition against a no name fighter, then at the last second he was told that he had to fight, say an older Hasim Ramhan, then he would be right to refuse.

 

Basically, Jeannette and/or his people tried the old bait and switch scam on Jack and Jack didn't fall for it. Simple as that.

 

Is this the same Fulton that Dempsey kod in 23 seconds 2 years earlier?

 

Yes it was the same Fred Fulton, whom Dempsey kod in 23 seconds of the first round in 1918.

 

So Dempsey says he is going to fight the winner of Fulton-Wills...Yet after Wills hammers fulton breaking 3 of his ribs...Dempsey reneges on his deal.

Also instead of fighting Harry Greb, he fights the men who LOST to greb(Dying Miske, Brennan, and Gibbons)

What's up with this?