Ike Ibeabuchi vs Jack Dempsey

I grow weary of fending off the illogic around here.

Please put me down. Ah, the blissful silence of the sweet abyss.

So, you're basically saying that a modern Marciano if he were blessed with Coppers speed of hand and foot could be a C rate heavyweight.

 

No, I am saying that a better version of Cooper, could have been in the mix, with a bit of careful match making.

 

Yawn.

No, the problem is the ****-poor quality of your inductive reasoning with respect to this topic. It's really just dogma masquerading as logical, evidence-based argumentation.

You acknowledge that it would be incredibly difficult for any researcher to demonstrate definitively that the training or nutrition approaches used by modern boxers are actually superior to those of their predecessors. But when asked why you are so sure that modern training and nutrition techniques are not superior, you basically rest your argument solely on the absence of empirical evidence (which you admit most likely wouldn't exist even if modern methods were superior). What gives?

 

There is a story that Dempsey landed on a typewriter and was helped back into the ring by people at ringside, which technically is a DQ as you need to return to the ring without the aid of others.

The film of this match is highly edited!

 

Dogma, by definition, is an a priori declaration that one's position is unquestionable in principle. My claim is not only readily questionable in principle but easily refuted (in potentia) simply by the presentation of the evidence that I deny exists.

Once again, I adopt not the slightest onus to affirmatively demonstrate that it doesn't exist, any more than I need demonstrate the nonexistence of the Cuban space program. I don't have do a single goddamn thing but sit back in my chair with my hands clasped behind my head.

 

If they were able to give him Cooper's speed of hand and foot.

You have a much better base with Dempsey on this one.

 

Not really. More to do with strategy. Fighting a war with Cooper is risky because that's the only real way he could win. He wasn't going to outbox these guys. Bowe made it his plan to outbox Cooper and avoid fighting in close range because that's where Cooper was having success. Watch the first round.

Do you seriously think that it would have been smart for Foreman and Bowe to just brawl with Cooper at close range?

 

No, as a practical matter your claim is not at all easily refutable. We will most likely never have reliable, high-quality studies demonstrating whether particular techniques and advances aid the athletic performance of professional boxers, and you know it. It's disingenuous of you to pretend otherwise. Again, your argument is really just one big logical fallacy that you're too biased to recognize.

Anyway, it's probably clear to anyone's who's following along that you don't know enough about training or nutrition to have any credibility when you insist that there's "no such thing as modern training." So with that being said, carry on.

 

He's up there sipping dry martinis with Roger Moore.

 

I assume that he would be significantly smaller than he is today, but who knows? For what it's worth, a more important hypothetical question might be how that smaller Anthony Joshua would have fared against the current Anthony Joshua's opponents.

 

I think Dempsey might very well be faster than Cooper in both hand and foot. It's hard to tell from the choppy old footage, but he certainly had a reputation for both and to me looks about as impressive in both departments as one could expect from the quality of the film.

It's always possible I'm "over-correcting" in my mental reconstruction of what Dempsey would look like on modern film, but this cuts both ways and surely applies just as much to the "modernists" as the "classicists".

The 3D glasses issued in this theater just have the one rose lens.

 

I hear you. But while I may be an outlier, I tend to think that world class athletes gassing like that represent mental lapses and weaknesses more than physical ones. He's a "tight" fighter in general (which depletes stamina like crazy--see Oscar de la Hoya), and he clearly sold out and went for broke when he thought he could get rid of Wlad. Maybe I'm wrong but that was my gut reaction while I was watching the fight.

 

I mostly agree with the above. But I think you're overlooking a few things. Foreman was coming forward at Cooper the entire fight, offering him all the close-range war he wanted.

Bowe got off to a lazy start but he took Cooper's best punches with aplomb (punches that might have really hurt Holyfield or Moorer). And once Bowe decided to use his size to fight from his preferred distance, Cooper was basically a dead man walking. If Bowe had been closer in size to Cooper, Bert would have had a much better chance of keeping the fight within his preferred range. But as it was, he couldn't. Bowe was too big and his straight punches were too powerful.

 

Wait, by "typewriter" do you mean the person operating the typewriter? Someone analogous to a stenographer? (It just occurred to me that there doesn't seem to be a specific word for a person who operates a typewriter.)

Or are you saying Dempsey was cushioned by the keyboard of the actual machine itself and/or used it as a makeshift stepping stone to climb back into the ring?

 

Cooper never would have beaten Foreman. Foreman was lightyears better in every way. Brawling suited Foreman more than it did Cooper. In the other fights brawling suited Cooper more than it did the others.

Bowe won because he used his height and reach. Not because he weighed more. He was just a better all around fighter. I don't see what's so hard to get about that. Just because a fighter weighs more doesn't mean that's why they won.