Did Dempsey duck Wills?

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Photo courtesy of Baltimore Sun, November 1923.

 

That is good...very good...

 

There are few ducks out there not to be messed with:

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The male Argentine Lake Duck and his 42.5 cm ***** (Pic: K. McCracken/Nature).

 

Why is it in color?

 

No, he did not duck him. Johnson -Jeffries ruined any chance for the other great black fighters for a championship fight.

 

No, Dempsey's words and conduct pretty plainly indicate that he himself did not avoid Wills. He signed to make the fight, he says in his autobiography that he was fine with making the fight, and while, for example, he was frank about the fact that he thought he couldn't have beaten Langford in 1917, he said he believed Wills wouldn't have been too difficult an opponent for him, being more of a big, stationary guy (which I agree with). Wills was a tall, stand-up guy who didn't have a granite chin- just the sort Dempsey liked. The fight's failure to come off was mainly a result of the promoters'- particularly Rickard's- dislike of the idea of making another black-vs.-white championship fight after the scandal that was Johnson-Jeffries.

 

Did Dempsey ever face any great fighter?

 

great question. I honestly rank him the lowest out of all the great heavyweights.

 

Of which there is zero film to back that up.

It's easy to write him off, but for a big slow stationary target he must have done something right to go on a six year win streak against guys like Langford and Jeannette who Dempsey didn't want.


And based on what evidence does Wills have a suspect jaw? If you didn't mean to say then ignore this, but to make a comparison:

Early in his career, Wills gets knocked out by a nobody. Fair enough. At a similar stage, Dempsey got knocked down 9 times by a mediocre middleweight. After that, Wills only got knocked out twice by a Langford, both well past the 10th round. Dempsey got knocked out in a single round by Flynn. At the same time, Wills was exposed to much more dangerous fighters while Dempsey fought pretty safe opposition and wanted no part of Langford or Jeannette. It took until 1927 when Wills was shot to be knocked out again while still facing top opposition all the time. If he fought a big hitter instead of Tunney for more than a mere 10 rounds, Dempsey may well have not finished the fight. To me, Dempsey's chin is no more proven than Wills is.

 

Let's just say if Dempsey didn't duck, he lost. Read into that whatever you want, but it is true.

 

Um, no, at the very least, there is a bit of film of him against Uzcudun. While it's hardly extensive or greatly informative, it does clearly show him as a tall, flat-footed stand-up fighter. This is what you'll find in newspapers and historians' accounts as well.

I didn't write Wills off OR say that he wasn't doing something right. I said he had the type of style Dempsey generally handled soundly.

I don't believe Wills had a "suspect jaw" and didn't say that I did. In discussion about Dempsey, it seems that whenever I make a moderating statement ("____ was not this style of fighter" or "____ was not top-notch in this department"), you interpret it into an extremist strawman argument ("____ was a one-dimensional caricature" or "_____ was bad in this department") which I did not use.
I don't believe Wills was a "big, slow, stationary target," but that he was a larger fighter who was not characterized by fleet-footedness or elusiveness, but tended to fight flat-footed. I don't believe he had a "suspect jaw," but that his chin was not granite, eg. he was susceptible to being knocked out when caught flush by a top-notch power puncher. Since Dempsey was most troubled by smallish opponents who were characterized by their fleet-footedness and elusiveness in the ring, and least troubled by larger ones who were not characterized by those things, and since he was an extremely powerful hitter, it seems logical to me that Dempsey would likely then be at a stylistic advantage against Wills and that Dempsey himself would be aware of this, hence his personal statements to this effect.

Dempsey had one stoppage loss in 83 recorded fights (and that was probably a fix). Wills had fivein 103. It's true Langford was the only one to stop Wills during his heyday, but no one stopped a peak Dempsey, and Dempsey fought his own host of top punchers in the likes of Firpo, Willard, and Fulton. I don't think Dempsey had a great chin, but I think he has the edge over Wills in this department (I judge Wills' chin to have been above average, but not especially strong for a top-flight heavyweight).

 

If the only film of Ali was of him vs Lyle, would it be fair to conclude he was fairly flat-footed, loved to lay on the ropes and carried a big punch as he basically took Lyle out with one punch? Clearly this is not even close to what he was in his prime.

Okay, but couldn't it be said of any fighter that he is susceptible to being knocked out when caught flush by a top-notch power-puncher? By the same means i could say that Dempsey was susceptible to being ********* by a skilled big man since he never faced one. And Wills may well have been one.

That is true, but Willard never landed much on Dempsey and Langford is classes above all the other punches Dempsey faced. He should've had two stoppage losses, an additional one against Firpo when he was illegally helped back in the ring by thirds. Brennan, Miske, Tunney, Sharkey, Levinsky and Morris were hardly big punchers. Fulton was, but i don't think he landed much in the 20 seconds he lasted against Dempsey.

Put Dempsey in the ring with Langford eight times from 1914 on like Wills did and we might have a different picture on Dempsey's chin.

 

On the chin evaluation, I would point out that Wills faced the two biggest punchers Dempsey fought, Firpo and Fulton, and defeated them both. Firpo never had him down. He had many fights against punchers such as Langford and McVey and several of them were when they were still certainly young enough to be dangerous.

Also, Dempsey's evaluation of Wills is always quoted, but Wills was confident he could take Dempsey, who Wills judged as inferior to Langford.

I think the argument that Dempsey would beat Wills because he defeated Willard, Fulton, Firpo, and Morris is somewhat along the lines of arguing that because Bob Satterfield defeated Nino Valdes, Bob Baker, and Cleveland Williams, he would also defeat Sonny Liston.