Gene Tunney's heavyweight resume

Yes it is true. The colour line was drawn to avoid difficult black fighters. White champions of earlier eras stated as much. Many of the top contenders before and after Tunney's title win were black.

If you're racist and you're pretty sure you don't need to call the colour line you take the challenge you do so. You only avoid it for the fear of loss.

Sorry but as a mod you're an apologist for duckers and you pretty much sound like a white nationalist in your defense of both Tunney and Janitor

 

It is that simple. The racists who commited crimes should have been prosecuted. The fighters who drew the colour line should of been discarded from the top ten

If you disagree with that you're probably a racist

 

His resume is flimsy. Almost farcically so when considering where old-timers rank him.

He beat a stale Dempsey, out of the ring for FOUR years, twice over 10 rounds. The first fight was fought on a rain drenched canvas where the powerpuncher couldn't get grip. The second fight remains one of the most controversial decisions in the sport's history. Dempsey is visibly a step slow in comparison to even his previous fight against Firpo. He was a ripe fruit ready for the picking.

His next best victory was over a 179 pound Tommy Gibbons in Gibbons' final and 100th fight. This is the same Tommy Gibbons who lost a heavyweight eliminator to a middleweight four years previous. Again, Gibbons had no heavyweight pedigree.

You people really think Tom Heeney is a feather in anyone's cap? He was a decidedly mediocre heavyweight, considered such by contemporary writers, a handpicked Patsy for Tunney to ride off into the sunset. He had losses to sub .500 fighters... and worse, two to Phil Scott.

These is simply no "there" there when looking at his resume above lightheavy.

 

Oh, Seamus, you forgot about Tunney's big victory over Carpentier. Doesn't that make you want to change your analysis?

 

Yes, Tunney cherry-picked his way as he worked his way up the ladder, but by the time he became champion he was likely the best heavyweight of a mostly weak division. I would have loved to see him fight Jack Sharkey, though. An argument can be made that one of the reasons he retired was so he wouldn't have to fight Sharkey. Heeney backed into the fight with Tunney by squeaking out a draw against Sharkey. Sharkey blew the fight with Tunney when he lost a split decision to Johnny Risko. If Tunney hadn't retired, Sharkey would have been the next logical contender. Tunney could see that coming, and decided to quit with his million dollars from the Heeney fight while he was ahead. Tunney may have been able to defeat Sharkey, but by not fighting him he lost the right to claim he cleaned up the division. To me, that qualifies as a demerit to his legacy.

 

Not fighting the best guys is a minus
Racism is reprehensible but it is factually inaccurate that all that drew the color line were cowards or thought they would lose
Tunney was brave by any rational standards & i think Janitor is correct that he essentially missed more quality *at his HW run by not getting several white fighters

But the manner Dempsey beat Sharkey_when he was losing_detracts from how good Jack should be seen as then

And it is confusing not blaming Tunney due to his opponent"s size with it being fair to rate how good he might be against all future HWs to *not* consider their relatively small size

 

Reading through this, a couple of reactions.

Several are giving credit to Tunney for beating Jack Renault, but off multiple sources I have checked their fight was a no contest with the referee calling it off because of a lack of action. Am I missing something here?

On the color line, I believe the first thing Tunney did after becoming champion was to announce he was drawing the color line. This was before Wills lost to Sharkey so Wills was still an outstanding contender.

On the size issue, I don't think Tunney ever beat a man who was both 6' tall and 195 lbs. Can anyone pull up an example? Heeney was 203 but only a bit over 5' 10" and so was short and stubby and made to order for a jab and move guy. And Heeney was generally unimpressive.

Dempsey was 6' 1" and 192 for Tunney. Spalla was 6' 1" and 191 for Tunney.

I might be wrong, but my guess is Tunney fought the smallest group of opponents of any Sullivan or after heavyweight champion. The color line took out Wills (6' 2 to 6' 4" and 215 or more, and Godfrey 6' 3" and 220 plus) and somehow Tunney was never matched with big fellows like Firpo or Fulton. One problem is it was Sharkey who defeated Wills and Godfrey and Tunney didn't fight Sharkey either. So it boils down to Dempsey and not much else at heavy. Tunney had a fine resume at light-heavy.

 

Did you know Tunney offered Wills a fight? Wills declined.

 

It's clearly false.

Jeffries basically cleaned out the top black heavyweights, then refused to give the same fighters a title shot. Even though he'd come on leaps and bounds.

 

This....

 

Spot on.

 

Source for this claim?