Harry Wills quote

Any evidence of this? I have a strong suspicion it's fabricated because Wills always complained about the injustice of being the best contender for over a decade and never getting his shot.

 

Yes it is possible that Dempsey was sincere in his intentions to defend against Wills, but one observation should be made.

If he intender to do it, then he clearly intended it to be the last fight of his career.

He was going to fight Wills after Firpo, and that was going to be his cash out fight, win lose or draw.

 

Klompton would’ve had this thread locked by now

 

Dempsey's critics say that he shamelessly ducked Wills, because he was wicked and cowardly.

His supporters say that he wanted to do rights by Wills, but was prevented by his wicked promotors.

My take is that neither of these interpretations is correct.

I think that he saw Wills as a high risk fight, but one to be exploited for maximum profit and minimum risk.

I think that he decided to put the fight off, let Wills get older, and make it his retirement plan.

The truth is somewhere between.

 

Excuse teh flowery language and hyperbole, but I think you know who I mean.

 

I can live with 1 and 2, but not necessarily 3.

The idea that Dempsey teh champion ducked the shell of Sam Langford, is in my opinion a rather silly one.

We have to assume that he ducked him at some point his his career, because he explicitly said so, that Dempsey Langford for the title?

Be glad that abomination never happened.

With Greb the case is much stronger, but by no means as strong as his advocates claim.

The reality is that Greb was circulating between three weight classes over that period, and occasionally losing dud to his hectic schedule.

If Dempsey was ducking Greb, he was probably relatively easy to duck.

 

Words like duck and robbery have a way or getting used inappropriately.

In order to duck somebody, you first have to have some sort of obligation to fight them, such as a title they might want.

As far as I am concerned, a contender of a gatekeeper can refuse to fight the equivalent, for any reason or none at all.

When we look at the early middleweight rankings, we don't really see Greb anywhere except middleweight.

We see Wills riding high at #1 with Gibbons and Firpo still in the mix.

 

Just want to point out that Dempsey talked up nearly everyone and would even embellish how well some opponents did against him in order to make a good story.

His was an era when a good story mattered and tall tales were the American tradition.

Dempsey also had so many people proclaiming his greatness that him giving someone props in their success against him or saying that he'd avoided someone could be seen more as an act of kindness towards them. It could also be used to show his greatness in overcoming the ones he did fight.

A modern example of this could be George Foreman who would give a lot of props to others and downplay himself. During his time it was a given that George was a great, he didn't need to tell anyone. Beterbiev does this as well to an extent when talking about wanting to learn to box better.

Maybe if Dempsey would have known that given enough time people would use his words against him he would have been a more vocal self promoter of his greatness.

Anyway, this is just a little pet peeve of mine that I think needs to be recognized when Dempsey quotes are brought up.

 

Dempsey was fond of the phrase "if you have nothing good to say don't say anything at all."

 

Why was he on trial in 1930?