Dempsey as a modern fighter-

It IS interesting I admit to imagine Dempsey getting in tow with a manager who is inexplicably obsessed with the HW division despite the fact that he is looking at a SMW very early in his career who is also for some reason keen to pay him to train but not fight. Filling Dempsey up with steorids when he was very young and cycling out before his debut would make for fascinating viewing. But that's true of any chemical experiment. Callum Smith is a former super middleweight weight-cutter who was taller and rangier than Dempsey who would have been a very interesting HW experiment. Kelly Pavlik talks about this on the Joe Rogan podcast and they were both very interested in taking a MW frame and boosting it to higher weight classes with enhanced power-punches and musculature, and it is hard not to be fascinated with the idea if you're a boxing geek.

 

Yeah, this is the "weights in the pockets" story, right?

I mean if it's true, Dempsey basically IS a LHW in 2021 for this fight. If you get on the scales at 180lbs and are under thirty and haven't cut, you should be able to blast 5lbs off in time to make a second weigh in. If you woke up the morning of the weight in 5lbs short, you would probably do your cut unsupervised these days. Athlete could choose - not eat, sit in the sauna, static bike, whatever.

 

If it's the case then the argument is over. Arguing that Dempsey couldn't modern-cut 5lbs healthily is the same as arguing for a whisky stream.

 

I'm pretty confident he could make 168 with a modern weight cut back when he was boxing under the 175lb light-heavyweight limit in 1915. I don't know anything about what Dempsey did to make weight then. He might have been "killing himself" which would make it a different argument. But it would be routine, yes, for a healthy, young fighter "ready" at 174 to make 168 with real ease by way of cut.

It would be absolutely normal in every conceivable way.

My real bugbear though is the people who can't accept that "prime Dempsey" is a clear 175lb candidate. Unless he's a real outlier for shifting weight, it would be very, very easy to make him a 175lb fighter in 2021. Easy.

 

Yes, that sounds about right.

I'm digging around Dempsey's pair with John Sudenberg and he's referred to as "husky Pueblo middleweight Jack Dempsey" a couple of times. Possibly far from being a "modern super-middleweight" he might just have been a super-middleweight.

Edit: tbf he's also referenced as "fighting as a light-heavyweight" in some things i'm reading. Of course, 161-174 is a light-heavyweight in these days.

 

"Jack Dempsey, the elongated middleweight of Goldfield, who on two occasions, in the opinion of the fans, secured a shade over Johnny Sudenberg, only to have both bouts called draws, has been matched to meet the Omaha battler for a third time."

That's Dempsey pretty well known to the local press at this point being referred to, still, as a MW. But I don't think he was a MW at this time. I just don't think he was a LHW. Probably really was a SMW if I'm guessing, but now way to know really.

Natural, modern progression for Dempsey would probably be:

168, first title.
175, bulk of his career.
200, possibly, if the right fights were there (note they usually aren't, but i could see him moving up for the world super series or something)
200 plus, Roy Jones style, maybe, for the right fight(s) approaching the end of his career.

That's what I make of modern Dempsey and IMHO heavyweight would likely never see him.

 

Dempsey would make more money than Mayweather.

Oscar was the A-side for his Maywether fight.

 

Top earners in boxing working back from now to 2007.

Alvarez
Mayweather
Pacquiao
Oscar

There hasn't been a number one that was a heavy since Holyfield and the last time the number one purse was a HW purse was Holyfield-Tyson II. It's absolutely clear to me which way the wind has blown this century and i'm 100% sure of the fact, if you need more data points and fewer outliers, google is your friend!