Floyd Patterson vs Jack Dempsey

[/QUOTE]
You have to treat the old measurements with caution, because there was no standardisation like there is today.

However, I can only quote the measurements that they gave, and they are all that we have.

I think Burns being equal to Bowe in some measure makes the point, don’t you?

 

Janitor--"It is a question of whether Patterson was similar to Brennan from a stylistic standpoint, and likely to replicate his results from a stylistic standpoint."

I find this very poor logic.

Showing a weakness against one style does not at all prove you have strength against another style.

I can think of a couple of sports comparisons--

A basketball team loses to a team with a 40% winning percentage who plays a slow-down half-court game. This tells us nothing about how they will do against a fast-breaking team with a 75% winning percentage. It only proves they couldn't win a half-court game.

In American football a team loses to a 5-9 team which runs the ball on them. Doesn't mean they automatically do better against an 11-3 team with a great passing attack. They haven't proved they can handle a passing attack. They only proved they couldn't handle a running attack.

Having trouble with Brennan before putting him away proves nothing about how Dempsey would do against the much more talented and dangerous but stylistically different Patterson.

Some previous posts have implied this point, but I wanted to make it directly.

 

I am not arguing that Dempsey is likely to be successful against Patterson, because Patterson has a different style from Brennan.

I am arguing that Brennan being successful against Dempsey is not a strong argument for Patterson being successful against Dempsey.

Is there actually any worse style to fight Dempsey with, than a come forward style, in a fighter of questionable durability?

 

Against anyone under 200lb, I think he's hard to beat. His biggest problem is not style, but the fact that he'd be undersized against a lot of the great heavies who came after him. That's not an issue against Dempsey.

Patterson's right hand was pretty good too. He KO'd Henry Cooper smack cold with a right. Does Carpentier have a comparable KO of a ranked heavyweight?

There's also important evidence that contradicts Maxine's testimony, namely eyewitness accounts of those who were actually at the fight, including Dempsey himself. Was she even at the fight? It was shown that at best she was unreliable as a witness, particularly on anything related to Dempsey. To give credence to the idea that it was a fix based on Maxine's testimony and not much else just seems like wishful thinking to me.

He was still winning rounds, out-working Dempsey and withstood the famous early Dempsey onslaught.

Of course not. But then I'm not arguing that Dempsey has no chance of winning. You are arguing that Patterson has no chance.

I disagree. I thought it was a sloppy performance against an extremely limited opponent whom he made harder work of than he should have.

Bernard Hopkins was coming off some decent performances going into the Kovalev fight. It still doesn't change the fact that he was 49 friggin' years old, and at least he'd had more than two fights in seven years.

Wills and Greb for starters.

He might be a lot stronger, he also might not be. Even here there's some disparity between the figures given for Dempsey. I've seen contemporary sources which give Dempsey a 73" reach to Patterson's 71". Boxrec says 77". This article says 75". There's enough contradictions that I wouldn't take any of them as gospel.

Their last fight was just a couple of months after Dempsey's big win over Fulton. Kearns was concerned enough about the possible damage to Dempsey's standing that he tried to put the word out that it had been a robbery.

I would say so, yes.

You said Louis was only knocked down by rated fighters. Well apart from one fight, so was Patterson. Given they suffered a lot of knockdowns between them, that's not a huge disparity.

Yes I would agree. Not based on their performances against Ingo though. If Patterson's durability is to be called into question for getting KO'd by Ingo, then surely Machen's should be too. Or we could just say Ingo had a damn hard punch (if not much else) that was capable of KO'ing anyone, and getting knocked out by him isn't necessarily evidence of a weak chin.

 

Well yes, never heard the saying back up a puncher and you'll take away his punch?

Not that Patterson couldn't box impeccably when he wanted too. He was also more susceptible to right hands than left hooks.

 

Anyone who tries to argue Dempseys gloves were loaded needs to study up. Fleischer watched Dempseys hands get wrapped before the bout and their are very clear photos of Dempsey sitting in his corner in his wraps just minutes before fight time. All you see is a thin layer of wrapping. Of course if Dempseys wraps were loaded he would not be lounging on his stool letting photos be taken of his ungloved loaded wrapped hands!

 

Patterson never had problems with aggressive / come foward guys. His problem was good jabs and counterpunching

Losses
Liston X2
Ali X2
Maxim
Quarry
Johansson
Ellis

Wins:
Chuvalo
Bonavena
Cooper
Harris
Jackson
Moore
Durrelle
London
McNeeley
Herring
Powell

 

"I am arguing that Brennan being successful against Dempsey is not a strong argument for Patterson being successful against Dempsey."

Fair enough.

I somewhat agree, but struggling with a lesser fighter is not at all a strong argument for doing better against a more talented and dangerous opponent.

"Is there actually any worse style to fight Dempsey with than a come forward style"

The newspaper reports of the 1918 Meehan fight indicate he fought as a quick-handed swarmer, not as a bounce around jab and move type like a fat Tunney.

Getting low and coming forward might indeed be a good tactic against a bob and weave puncher. Is Patterson the right man to pull it off? He tended to dawdle rather than swarm, which I think would prove fatal against Dempsey sooner or later.

Sharkey on film showed that a fighter who came directly at Dempsey could do very well if he can avoid turning away to belly-ache to the referee.

"a fighter with questionable durability"

This definitely doesn't help.