If we switch Dempsey and Marciano, does anything interesting pop up?

"Most of the boxing writers that saw Dempsey in action, would tell you he was one of the best ever."

No one is doubting that. It doesn't preclude his being knocked out by Flynn, though, the same as Johnson was ko'd by Choynski or Lewis by McCall.

"I think Dempsey wasn't telling the whole story"

Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. My judgement is that the weight of evidence is heavily against this fight being a fix and that the fix evidence is hearsay and not very plausible hearsay at that.

By the way, as you didn't comment--did you read the ringside reports of this fight which were posted on a separate thread?

 

"throw this fight or retire"

What is the evidence of any of this. Look, Dempsey was a strong local attraction. No one has answered my question of why everyone would kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. The gate for this fight was $5000, ten times as much as Dempsey supposedly accepted to risk throwing his career into the sewer. He could have fought the next month and the next and the next, with sizable purses each time. If someone wanted a gambling coup, they could have gotten one just as easily by fixing Flynn and kept Dempsey as their golden goose.

The newspapers did not even hint at fix talk for this fight. In contrast, there was open talk of a fix for the Jeffries-Fitz fight in 1902, as incredible as that idea seems, and for the Jeffries-Goddard fight in 1898. Fulton was suspended in Minnesota for claiming his fight with Dempsey was a frame. I don't think any of those fights were fixes and I don't think this fight was a fix, or that the evidence is even particularly suspicious.

And who in the hell is anyone in Salt Lake City going to blacklist. This was a pretty backwater area in 1917 and your conspiracy threory about gambling rings which might make some sense in London or New York City is nothing short of goofy for a cow town like Salt Lake, and a Morman cow town at that.

 

There have been countless amount of fights that were fixed back then and they were never known either. I have talked to a lot of all time boxing people and boxers that were involved in such bouts and they stated that they did it for one reason or another.

I also read the newspaper reports on this bout BUT I also read the reports on other fixed fights and at the time they never had anything about the bout being fixed either, and most never did at all.

Flynn only won 7 of his last 28 bouts before he fought Dempsey. He was not a KO puncher, he only had 1 other KO in the 1st round, and that was against a fighter that only had that 1 bout in his entire career and that was against Flynn. Dempsey was known for his iron chin. IMO, it just don't figure.

Jack Johnson was KO'ed 7 times during his career and Lewis was KO'ed by a couple of pretty good punchers. McCall had 37 KO's in his 63 bouts (52 wins). Rahman even had a better KO %, with 36 KO's in his 55 bouts (45 wins). Both McCall and Rahman were big heavyweights, both weighing over 230 pounds. Dempsey had a much better chin then both Johnson or Lewis.

 

"Dempsey had a much better chin than both Johnson or Lewis"

This conclusion is used to shape historical evidence rather than the historical evidence being used to shape the conclusion.

The argument that Johnson had a weaker chin than Dempsey is dubious. Yes Johnson was knocked out seven times but mostly as an old man. He was only knocked out once between 1901 and 1926 and that in the 26th round. Also, you are holding Johnson's early knockouts against him but denying Dempsey's ko by Flynn, a man who failed to knock out Johnson. Some might argue you are just using a double standard. You could bring Johnson being knocked down by Ketchel, but Dempsey was knocked down by Sudenberg who was nothing like Ketchel. The fact is--how tested was Dempsey's chin? Fulton could punch but never hit him. Firpo had him badly hurt and knocked him out of the ring. How many of the others were heavyweights and had better ko percentages than Flynn? How many were noted as punchers?

I would need to know the example of the fixed fights you are talking about. Most alleged fixed fights, such as Carnera and Sharkey, are hotly disputed. The best known obvious fixed fight smelled from the get go. This is the New York Times in November 1947 on the just concluded Fox-Lamotta debacle:

New York Times, Nov 18, 1947

JURY MAPS INQUIRY OF LAMOTTA FIGHT--SUSPICION OF SPORTS WRITERS IN GARDEN MATCH WITH FOX BRING ACTION BY HOGAN

The New York county grand jury, which since February has been investigating alleged underworld control of prize-ring figures, will investigate "unsparingly" last Friday's match at Madison Square Garden between Jake LaMotta and Billy Fox.


I have to admit that the absence of evidence of a fix might not prove there was not a fix, but it obviously weighs strongly in the balance. You base your case on Dempsey being too great and tough to ever be knocked out, despite the evidence of nine knockdowns by the mediocre middleweight Johnny Sudenberg. I don't find that line of argument very persuasive. Your premise is your conclusion. If you dismiss all contrary evidence, you will undoubtedly arrive at your preconceived conclusion of an iron-jawed Dempsey.

 

I agree BUT the evidence is that he did.

By the way, I went to the Boxing Writers Awards dinner last night in New York. Manny Pacquiao, Joe Calzaghe, Israel Vazquez, Freddie Roach, Larry Merchant, Harold Lederman, Steve Farhood, both George Kimball and former world champion Genaro Hernandez, who both have cancer were all honored.

I went with my good friend, Boxing Judge Steve Weisfeld and we also took Julie Lederman home. I also sat with Vito Antuofermo.

Also attending was Iran Barkley, Max Kellerman, Bill Gallo, Leroy Neiman, Bob Arum, and many more.

 

Well, the case that Dempsey had a stronger chin than Lewis is even more dubious in my judgement than that he had a stronger chin than Johnson. It rests entirely on the Flynn fight being dismissed. Lewis fought many more proven punchers.

 

You have an interesting life. Congratulations and all the best.

 

Agreed, BUT Flynn was not a proven puncher and Dempsey had a proven chin.

 

Thanks, I was also sitting with Joe Dwyer, who is a newly elected President of the NBFA. He offered me a position as a supervisor, so maybe I'll be going to some big fights in the future.

 

Just one thing on Flynn. I think you are way overdoing his lack of punching power.

Flynn for his career which went into middle age had 36 ko's in 126 listed fights. Compare him to Gypsy Daniels, who ko'd Max Schmeling in 1928 in one round. Daniels had 33 ko's in his 141 listed fights. Are we to conclude then that Schmeling's ko by Daniels must have been a fix? You could argue Schmeling did not have Dempsey's iron jaw but he beat Louis and Sharkey, as well as Uzcudun and Stribling and Hamas. He stood up to a lot of strong punchers. Yet Daniels blew him away in one when Max was older and more experienced than Dempsey.

And Flynn through the course of his career fought a many more top men than Daniels did.

 

Your 100% right, Schmeling did not have Dempsey's iron jaw. Schmeling was stopped twice before the Daniels bout and twice after.

Look the only person that knows for sure was Dempsey himself, and maybe his handler and they can no longer tell us the truth about that bout. One year later, almost to the day, Dempsey stopped Flynn in 1 round.

 

"Schmeling was stopped twice before the Daniels bout and twice after"

True, but I don't know what any of this actually says about his chin. The two prior to Daniels stoppages came in 1924 when Schmeling was 19 on cuts to Max Dieckmann and in 1925 on cuts to the much more experienced Larry Gains. I don't think either of these mean much, and the Gains fight probably nothing at all. We are talking about a youngster still short of his 20th birthday taking on a much more experienced fighter who would soon go on to fight for the colored world championship. Dempsey simply did not meet anything like this sort of competition at 19. Very few other champions did.

As for the two knockouts after the Daniels fight, they were against Max Baer and Joe Louis. I think it fair to say that Dempsey's chin was NEVER tested by punchers of this calibre. Other than Dempsey himself, Louis and Baer were probably the two strongest punchers of the first half of the century. It is fair to point out that Schmeling was ko'd by these men. It is mere speculation to insist that Dempsey would have done better. The strongest puncher he fought, Firpo, had him badly hurt and knocked him out of the ring. Who knows how Dempsey would have fared against the much more precise punching Louis (especially when in his thirties) or a Baer who was more rugged and durable, and more polished, than the very crude Firpo.

Bottom line--when Dempsey first fought someone even close to Gains' level, Flynn, he suffered a brutal knockout. The point of view that he had a better chin than Schmeling to some extent may rest on Dempsey not facing the calibre of punchers that Schmeling faced--Louis and Baer in their absolute best ever performances.

"the only one who knows for sure was Dempsey and he can no longer tell us the truth"

Kind of gratuitious in my estimation when the man said and wrote over and over throughout his long life that the Flynn fight was on the up and up.

 

Just because you think it didn't figure, doesn't mean it can't have happened. Boxing is the most unpredictable of all sports and you will probably attest to that. If Tyson-Douglas wasn't on film, i bet everyone would say it was fixed as well; Douglas had never beaten a ranked contender going in and lost his big one against Tucker. On top of that, Douglas was not a big hitter and Tyson known for his iron chin.. in hindsight even more. Yet Douglas, a 44-1 underdog, knocked him out. Surely a fix?!

Boxing isn't logic, but if you want to argue logic, then why would one make a cash cow lose for a small amount of money compared to the gate, to an aging fighter who is not going anywhere and not half as exciting as said cash cow?

You can see why this argument is weak. Especially considering Dempsey was already knocked from pillar to post by a journeyman middleweight. Flynn, while aging, was world class and a step up from what he fought up to that point.

This is deceiving and twisting the truth and you know it. Almost all of Johnson's knockouts came late in his career, and the early one against Choynski was in his 10th pro bout when he was barely a lightheavyweight himself, against a calibre opponent that Dempsey didn't face until his 30th or 40th pro bout, off the top of my head.


Your last line particularly surprising to me. Count the number of 210+lbs heavyweights with high KO percentages that Lewis fought and beat, and then compare that number to Dempsey and consider how he has a "much" better chin than Lewis. Sorry but there is no way that Dempsey's durability was "much" better than Lewis'.

As for Johnson, i think his beard is at least on Dempsey's level, if not better as well.

How is the latter evidence of anything? Lewis also avenged his losses to McCall and Rahman in dominating fashion, but that doesn't mean his initial knockout losses must have been fixes.

 

I agree with most BUT Flynn was on his way out at the time. Flynn only won 7 of his last 28 bouts before he fought Dempsey, so he wasn't even close to Gains.

Dempsey didn't talk very much about that bout because IMO and the opinion of many others, he thought it would be better to say I lost then to admit he threw a bout.

Like I stated many times, the records of the early fighters are not complete. Almost all historians rate Dempsey's chin over Johnson, Lewis, Louis, Schmeling and most other heavyweight champions, PLUS most of the old-timers thought that his bout with Flynn was not on the up and up. He fought Sudenberg almost 2 years before he fought Flynn.

I can only go by the people that I talked too, guys like Ray Arcel, Nat Fleischer and others. He withstood the punches of Fred Fulton and Carl Morris. Most of the old-time boxing historians and experts rated Dempsey on top and they all said that he had a iron chin.

 

I see just about no reason at all to say that the Flynn fight was a fix. The ringside reports strongly indicated all was on the level and the only "proof" is that iron jawed Dempsey could not possibly be KO'd in the first by a guy like Flynn. For me that's not compelling evidence. As ChrisP said boxing doesn't follow such straight lines. You could make a good many fights seem suspect if that's all we need.

Ruddock standing up to Tyson's best and then getting bombed out by Lewis? Fix. Foreman, who's never been KO'd before or after, gets stopped by Ali of all people? Fix. Scmeling dusting Louis the first time around and then getting mauled? Fix. Etc, etc...

We will never get anywhere on this board with that kind of reasoning. Until something more substantial is produced, Dempsey losing to Flynn is on the level in my book.