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

Actually he did. Jersey Joe Walcott, Jimmy Bivins, Ezzard Charles, and John Henry Lewis are all HALL OF FAME great fighters and were among the top fighters/heavyweights of the day. Sure Louis missed out on fighting some good black fighters, but he also missed 3 years due to war...unlike dempsey who missed 3 years due to laziness. Louis took on FOUR black hall of famers, Dempsey took on NONE.

 

When he was the Champion, he only boxed his good friend John Henry Lewis, because Lewis needed a pay day, and it was his last fight. After 10 years, he finally boxed Walcott. He didn't box Bivins when he was the Champion, he boxed him when he made his comeback and Bivins was on his way down. As far as Ezzard Charles goes, he had to fight him because Charles was the Champion.

I am not saying that Louis ducked them, all I am saying is that for some reason or another he didn't fight them.

 

"If you had bet on Dempsey to win would you be content having lost your money under those circumstances."

Hardly anyone is every "content" to lose money, but one ringside report actually refers to this issue and says that the fans in the arena who witnessed the knockout indeed accepted as legitimate what they had seen and were, I guess, "content" with losing money, albeit disappointed.

All the "inferences" drawn after the fact by journalists are of no value next to primary sources. There does not seem to have been much doubt in Salt Lake in 1917 that Dempsey was indeed knocked out.

You are correct that we will never be certain. But the facts which support this being an honest knockout---such as the ringside reports and Dempsey's unwavering testimony that it was on the level---can not just be brushed aside by anyone seriously interested in history, especially as this is stronger evidence than the hearsay that this fight was a fix.

 

Like I stated before, there many articles right after bouts that didn't sayanything about a fix, then years later they found out the truth (LaMotta/Fox).

Some of the top boxing people that were their, stated what they knew and saw in Cox's article. If you know more then all of them. so be it, BUT I have to go with them and others who have researched this for years.

 

He boxed Walcott when Walcott was the number one contender.

Criticizing Louis for ducking blacks does seem a bit like criticizing Jackie Robinson because he was playing against mostly whites in the first few years in the bigs.

My take is you can make some sort of case that he COULD have fought Lem Franklin, and if he had been more active after the war, he SHOULD have fought Elmer Ray. But he did fight Jersey Joe Walcott, the best of them all.

None of this is in the same ballpark as Dempsey not fighting Wills.

Louis, after all, defended against three black challengers. What previous champion could say that?

 

Your right BUT what took him so long to fight them. I say it was the people that didn't want to see 2 Black men box for the Heavyweight Title, not Louis. The same goes for Dempsey, no one wanted another Jack Johnson, when there were race riots all aross the country.

 

Did you read the New York Times article I quoted from November 18, 1947 about a grand jury investigating the LaMotta-Fox fight of the previous Friday because of the skepticism of the ringside press.

That certainly is a lot different than the ringside reaction to Flynn-Dempsey.

On the Cox article--only the Chicago Tribune article presents anything like evidence, but the evidence is hearsay--people who might know something are quoted blindly by an unnamed reporter. We have to weigh this in the balance but it is not convincing to me when stacked up against actual ringside reports and Dempsey's testimony.

The rest is comments from men who were not there and frankly do not seem to have done much if any research, combined with modern speculation.

As for what old-timers thought---well, old-timers once thought the Earth was flat and burned at the stake the young guys who presented evidence to the contrary. One of the main reasons to study history is to check what the facts actually were compared to popular beliefs.

 

"what took him so long to fight them"

World War II.

Without the war, I think Louis would probably have defended against Bivins in 1943 or so, and probably against other top black challengers like Elmer Ray and Lee Q Murray and Turkey Thompson.

 

There is a strong case to be made that it was Rickard and Kearns, and perhaps political higher ups, who prevented the Dempsey-Wills bout, and not simply Dempsey ducking Wills.

That would be my view.

But it still leaves the undoubted historical fact that Dempsey did not fight the best contender of his era, something one can't say about Jeffries, Louis, or Marciano. That is why I find it difficult to rate Dempsey above these three. Also, Dempsey does merit criticism for deferring so much to Kearns and Rickard. He, after all, was the champion. I think that if he had it to do over again, a more mature Jack would have told Kearns and Rickard to take a hike and figured out a way to fight Wills, even if the fight had to be held in South America or France.

 

So he fought guys like Paycheck and Roper instead.

As far as old timers go, we are both getting up there are selves. I knew most of the boxig historians and writers from way back and I know what your saying BUT most of them knew Dempsey pretty well, and if they say it wasn't on the up and up, so I would tend to believe them.

I use to sit with many of them for hours, in fact one of them was just Inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this past weekend, Abe J. Greene. They all had a lot of knowledge and I really enjoyed it. There some things that they told me that I can't even repeat, as I gave them my word.

I don't believe either Louis or Dempsey actually ducked them, it was just the times.

 

I agree BUT the reason why he didn't was that Richard and Kearns made the money for him. Without them, he most likely would have fought for a lot less.

 

"we are getting up there"

I don't know about you Henry, but I've gotten up there and am looking back. Where did all the time go?

"most of them knew Dempsey pretty well"

You beat around the bush that Dempsey while maintaining publicly that the fight was on the level confided privately that he took a dive. If you have such evidence, you should state it directly rather than just hinting.

Who did he confide this to and when? All this certainly makes Dempsey look like a two-faced hypocrite.



On Joe Louis---It seems a bit churlish to focus on Roper or Paycheck with a champion who defended against almost everyone. Janitor has had several threads showing that Louis defended against the ranking contenders consistently until WWII interrupted his career.

 

Your 100% correct, BUT I can't tell you much more. Several people told me the same thing and it did, according to them, come from Dempsey. How true it is, I really don't know, BUT that is what I heard.

Sometimes you do things when your young that you wish you could take back, BUT you can't. I think we have all done that.

 

Sorry. I misread you. No comment. This is probably true.

 

Okay, but history is not about hearsay. On the record, Dempsey said and wrote repeatedly that the fight was on the level. That is what I will go by until better evidence comes along. One thing, I don't doubt necessarily these men's honesty, but memory is tricky and conversations can be misunderstood. They may sincerely think Dempsey told them he took a dive, but it also could be they put a spin on his words which he did not intend. That sort of thing happens all the time. That is why courts won't accept hearsay.