In this short clip, there is a different camera angle that captures the action more clearly. Here you can see Dempseys freakish muscles as he lands fast and powerful haymakers on Jess Willard. https://streamable.com/x2hhj
what was willards injuries at the end of this? I know it was quite bad, but cant find exactly the damage done
His shoulder back and arms look like SHW This guy is a LHW punching with insane power, speed and form.
That's the thing about dempsey, such power generated by those shoulders and arms. Like you say, for basically a light heavy he carries such power. That combined with the speed and the dempsey roll! This guys a legend. Which boxing fan can not admire dempsey s savaging of willard?
Willard's injuries were overstated. He drove his wife back to Kansas (on what at the time were very poor roads and very poor suspensions) a couple days after the fight. No way he is doing that with all the injuries he was supposed to sustain.
His injuries were exaggerated, but they were still pretty horrible. Later in life he used to get drunk, bad mouth Dempsey, and accuse him of having an iron bar in his hand. He used to point at his head, and say "do these injuries look like they were caused by a fist?” The better renderings of the original footage are pretty brutal.
Willard years later would allow those who asked to feel his"caved in" face. He would state "I've been telling people for years that no fist could have done this to me". Willards injuries were horrific. It's more revisionism that somehow twists obvious terrible injuries into slight swelling around his eyes. His injuries during the bout were widely reported....welts all over his body, jaw hanging open pouring blood, right side of his face horribly swollen and disfigured.
It is possible that he said the thing about driving home to save face; it is also possible that he picked himself up and drove home with his injuries. Hard to say. Either way, he was not in good shape!
Certainly it was important to any future boxing career he had that he was not looked upon as damaged goods. It was important that he not proclaim his injuries. In fact it behooved him to present himself in as good of shape as possible after that bout in 1919.
Willard drove his own car one hour after the fight, not to a hospital, but to take a bath at his training camp and then to the house he had rented in Toledo and sat on the sun porch. He drove to Lawrence, Kansas three days later. His biggest complaint and the only reason he saw fit for the fight to be stopped was his swollen eye. He complained of nothing else. Again, three days later, he drove on 1919 roadways that were designed for covered wagons in a car that used wagon and bicycle suspension technology. That would have been one helluva bumpy ride and nothing you want to do with severe injuries.
I've read that very short article from 1919. Anyone can see watching the bout Willards face is caved in just as he spoke about 40 or more years later. Multiple and separate writers coverages of the bout exclaim the same thing....terrible beating along with terrible injuries. Again it greatly behooved Willard to play down any severe injuries. He was beaten to a severe bloody pulp. Little wonder you read of no loaded gloves or iron spike at that time as Willard would then have had to reveal his true injuries.
I'm just repeating what multiple newspapermen witnessed in the days following the fight. Sure, he got his @ss kicked but the fractures were well overstated. And it far more behooved Dempsey & Co. to overstate the injuries for future marketing. Everyone wants to see a killer. However, printed Monday July 7 in Jackson Citizen Patriot... "Willard has entirely recovered from the effects of the punishment Dempsey gave him and has decided to motor to his him in Lawrence, Kan."