Full Timeline of Dempsey-Wills - Evidence of Dempsey-Wills Contract Photo Staged?

It's weird cause I also like the buzz from Black Label better than Green... I just don't get why that is.. but it is... I like your taste in liquor buddy :good

 

Maybe 200k wasn't a good enough offer.

As far as London goes, the British government and many influential British persons were openly opposed to mixed bouts of this magnitude.
Jack Johnson's scheduled 1911 bout with Billy Wells had been scrapped a week before it was due, due to legal action taken by the Home Office to ban it. And this wasn't because they hated Johnson - Johnson wasn't hated in Britain - it was more to do with potential consequences, racial politics, imperial policy.
Lord Lonsdale - the boxing lord - later wrote letters to the Home Office urging them to ban Sam Langford-Frank Klaus and Langford-Gunboat Smith bouts in 1913 and 1914. He stressed that Langford was an honest decent man but such matches were not in the interests of the nation.
British authorities spoke out against the Carpentier-Siki match in France, in fear that it would undermine colonial rule.
By the 1920s the British certainly wouldn't have put on a Wills-Dempsey match if America didn't want it.

 

I agree with this.
Also, something that changed was the fact that all these riots and lynchings became a NATIONAL POLITICAL ISSUE that politicians saw as urgent to address and prevent. On a national scale. I'm sure it was all tied up in some way with fear of revolution, Bolshevism and anarchism too.

 

:yep

 

No.
Based on what was a consistent British Home Office policy in regards to mixed bouts of such magnitude throughout the era.
Seeing as Dempsey-Wills would only have gone to England in the knowledge that something racial-political (fear of unrest) was preventing it in the USA, how can we possibly believe the imperial British government (who were more OPENLY opposed on precisely the grounds that such events would cause unrest in the colonies) would have welcomed it ?

On top of that, the British government have consistently barred America's racial problems and controversies finding a home on British soil.

 

There is never a lack for excuses when fans feel the need to defend their hero in a situation he was clearly in the wrong.

Dempsey should have, and could have fought Wills but he didnt and ultimately that reflects very poorly on him.

 

Does Legend X = Unforgiven?

 

Whoever LX is he makes sense !!!

 

So darn noble of you LT, 87 years later to tell Dempsey to buck the system and valid race fears of that time...Dempsey did the fighting, Jack Kearns and Tex Rickard did the fight planning for Dempsey, just as Louis's braintrust could have picked several black opponents more worthy than some of Louis's bum of the month victims, but CHOSE the Brown Bombers
less worthy white opponents...Nary a word is ever said by the Dempsey
modern naysayers...I'll say this one more time...Dempsey and Wills did sign for a fight that was cancelled, due to the promoter Floyd Fitszimmons failure to get the necessary funds as contracted...This is history sir, whether you LIKE it or NOT...Cheers...

 

I think you might be underestimating the strength of the colour bar in Britain.

Boxing in Britain was controled by the NSC up to 1929, which had the colour bar enshrined into ints constitution. It was replaced by the BBBC, which also had the colour bar enshrined into its constitution until 1948!

I would also question the premise that it was never challenged. Len Johnson tried repeatedly to get a shot at the British title, and was very vocal in pressing his case.

I think it very likley that the NSC would have blacked a Dempsey Wills fight.