He’s always been a bit of an enigma to me Godfrey. He clearly had the size and power to make a giant splash but he had some strange results that made me wonder as to his true worth. But as said in the article he fought “to instruction” reputedly anyway so who knows how good he really was? Interestingly I read somewhere that Dempsey put a hurting on Godfrey in sparring which is contrary to this article but again who bloody knows? Sparring stories are so much bunkum anyway.
Godfrey's manger tried to make a match with Wills several times. Wills refused. Tunney said he'd fight Wills, Wills refused. Godftey had size and ability. He was also a shameful fighter who went low often, and DQ'd himself upon his manager's command. As such it's hard to tell how good he was with the handcuffs off.
Larry Gains Fought Godfrey without handcuffs twice. He wrote a book. Larry said Godfrey was one of the two most terrifying men he ever shared a ring with, the other was Dempsey -and that was only in sparring. Larry rated Godfrey as equal to Dempsey given his experience in sparring (which he said Dempsey never sparred anyway, he fought flat out). The period he sparred Dempsey was one of the aTunney fights.
This is basically true but I don't think I'd describe Godfrey as shameful,the circumstances that brought about those dsq's, and sub par performances against white fighters, could be said to be though. We don't know how sincere Tunney was about the Wills match, if the aging Harry had accepted its possible Tunney may have pulled out. To be fair to Wills he had proved his case for a title shot several times and should not have be asked to participate in another elimination for one..
Its interesting that when Gains finally beat Godfrey it was on-------a foul . Godfrey had nearly 46 lbs on Gains "Godfrey loses his World 'colored' heavyweight title claim. Gains's aluminum protection cup was badly dented from the low blow. The Globe" The book? "The Impossible Dream". From a failing memory "The sparring partners would be lined up and the relief on the faces of those not chosen that day was something to see" We sparred ,then Dempsey sparred someone else, then he asked his trainer,"can that colored kid go another round?"
Yeah, that’s how I remember it. Gains was very impressed with the Dempsey training camp. Each fighter A Round each with Dempsey. No holding back. Starting with lighter faster boxers to progressively bigger ones.
