David Tua -vs- Jack Dempsey

Tua had serious skills and potential. If he'd had Kevin Rooney training him back in the day, he'd have dominated the heavyweight division in the 90's. He may have even had the potential to overshadow Tyson's greatness in the 80's.

 

Tua by KO with end the first 30 seconds of the bout. Sick of these head to head match ups putting 180 pound fighters of yester year against modern fighters.

 

Tua by murder, literally. I'd be shocked if Dempsey came out alive after absorbing bombs from Tua wearing those old school gloves with minimum padding.

 

Marciano's adversaries said that he was hard to nail cleanly, even though they'd go into the fight having watched film that said otherwise. They were a pretty skilled bunch, by and large.

Film can sometimes be deceptive. Grainy 1920s film moreso.

(Not that I'm picking Dempsey here, necessarily.)

 

I find it hard to somehow believe a good fighter could beat a great fighter...if we switch era's, diet,training etc., not to say one training method,diet,etc. is better we would still have to look at who was greater and who fought the better men of their respective era's

I go with Dempsey and I think he get a KO over Tua

 

Dempsey s defense was fine for an aggressive guy, I see a lot of similarity to Tyson with his fast hands and killer instinct. Ali was dropped and hit by smaller quicker guys like Cooper, Frazier,Banks,Jones but handled the Big bombers like Foreman,Liston,Lyle,etc.

 

Yet Tua failed against every single top ten fighter he ever fought, whatever weaknesses they brought to the table.

He is not the dreadnought that people make him out to be.

 

The only ones that decisively beat him were Lewis and Byrd, both of whom were on their BMX's the entire night and pedaling harder than Lance Armstrong at the World Cycling Championships. Will Dempsey constantly move away from Tua as Lewis and Byrd did and try to outbox him or will he try to take Tua head on and bang it out with him? And that leads to this, there was only one fighter that ever banged with Tua and survived the fight out of over 50 professional heavyweights who fought Tua including 5 future and former world champions and even that one fighter, as exceptional as he was ended up mentally destroyed.

 

It's pretty difficult to beat the best fighters in your division when you're the most feared and avoided amongst your peers. Like it or not, many fighters didn't want to have anything to do with Tua and the ones that did fight him were routinely and regularly destroyed , 5 former and future world champions knocked out, John Ruiz who was an exceptionally durable fighter, was only knocked out a grand total of 1 other time and he was way past his prime at 38 years of age, this same man faced Tua in his prime and was destroyed in 19 seconds. Fres Oquendo, another undefeated top contender with a record of 22-0 who was headed for a title match was never the same after being brutalized and KO'd by Tua.

We're talking about a fighter who is a legit killer fully capable of destroying not just the bodies but careers of opponents, why would you fight a guy like that when you can avoid him? These weren't 180-190 pounders that Tua was destroying either, these were tall and massive men who would tower over and outweigh Dempsey by 50-60 pounds on average. Ike Ibeabuchi 242 pounds, Hasim Rahman 259 pounds, Oleg Maskaev 245 pounds. Who has Dempsey fought that were anything like these monsters?

Take a look at the Lewis fight for the fear and respect that I am referring to. In the first round, Lewis came out like a greased pig against Tua, vaseline all over his face and ran all night from an injured Tua ailing from a muscle pull in his oblique, an injury that was recorded in a documentary filmed during the training leading up to the Lewis fight, this injury can be verified by watching the "Destiny In My Hands" documentary. But what did Lewis do when he fought Tyson? He stood in front of him and brutalized him.

If Dempsey took Tua head on, he wouldn't last 1 minute against one of the most explosive and powerful heavyweight specimens in the history of boxing.