It is equally legit under this line of reasoning to say that every fight in the history of boxing was fixed, because "some" fights have been. In which case any discussion of boxing history, P4P debates, etc., have no meaning. But just because a few people have been historically proven to be murderers doesn't mean it's really legit to suspect every single person who ever lived as being a murderer just because someone they came into contact with died ... it takes evidence to make such a supposition reasonable. It's debatable whether a couple of claims by people of questionable reliability are enough to make it reasonable to believe that this fight may have been fixed. To me, it's a stretch at the very least. But I'm a guy who suspects that it's likely that some of Jake LaMotta's wins came as the result of fixes ... it seems reasonable (to me) that if the mob would fix at least one fight for him to lose that it would also fix some fights for him to win so as to cash in on betting on him as well as against him. That doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but it's a litte thing that makes me wonder ... he lied down (literally in the boxing sense) with dogs, so I figure he probably woke up with fleas at some point.
but there is a difference between saying a fight was fixed and that it could have been. the history of boxing (and all sport) is so full of fixes and cheating that it is perfectly reasonable to ask the question of every fight (and every sports event) that people were betting on. some fight are on film for us to see whether there was a dive, some fights are too important to 2 cash cow careers that there is much less likelyhood of them being fixed(or in the case of only 1 cashcow, fixed against him), some are so hardfought that the possiblility of one guy having been paid to lose is very low. none of these things is true in this case.
No, it is not equally legit or valid to say EVERY fight was fixed. That's jumping from the uncertainty of specific results to question the entirety of results. That would be like saying ( a more extreme example, similar to yours below) "any man could be a rap!st or murderer, we cannot know" Therefore, "It's equally valid to say ALL men are rap!sts and murderers" .... !! NO, that's logical fallacy. Not only did rumours and allegations about the fight come from the mouths of 'unreliable witnesses', (including apparently, AJ Auerbach who was actually Dempsey's manager at the time) but people surrounding the fight game, and the specific fight in question, are dubious. The promoter of the Dempsey-Flynn fight was Fred Winsor, who was later barred from California after his fighter Tony Fuente KO'd Fred Fulton in 1 round in 1924, in a fight where Fulton "took a dive". I mean, if we're going to say "LaMotta probably had crooked wins because he is known to have done business with the mob" then we can say the same about most of the characters surrounding Dempsey and/or Flynn or their fight. If we actually look at the facts, these people were dodgy characters. People are saying "Dempsey's Wh0re wife was bitter, so she must have lied" ... yeah, maybe, but realistically Dempsey was no angel either, so maybe she didn't need to lie. What was Dempsey doing marrying an old wh0re and living in a brothel ? If he was such a saint. All these guys were crooks, or associated with a crooked business, as far as I can tell. Jack "Doc" Kearns certainly was a crook, and Dempsey hooked up with him a little later. Fred Winsor was barred by the California commission. This wasn't a clean game. And, yes, I'm totally prepared to believe that a lot of Dempsey's WINS might have been crooked too. :good
If Fred Winsor was banned in California after the Tony Fuente vs. Fred Fulton debacle, it wasn't for long. Winsor managed a number of fighters who were active in California starting in the late 1920s, notably Fred "Dummy" Mahan. - Chuck Johnston
Based on what I have read, I feel that the bout between Tony Fuente and Fred Fulton was far more suspect than the first one between Fireman Jim Flynn and Jack Dempsey. By the way, the Fuente-Fulton bout took place in a nice new arena in Culver City, California at the tail end of the California Four-Round Era and shortly after the 1924 General Election in which a majority of California voters cast their ballots in favor of the Ten-Round Law amendment, which allowed professional boxing under the control of a state athletic commission. - Chuck Johnston
My own position on the Flynn Dempsey fight, has shifted towards it being on the level during my time on this forum. Despite this, I must insist that there are still good reasons to regard it with suspicion.
