Ike Ibeabuchi vs Jack Dempsey

Oh Jesus, I need to get some sleep.

 

Some seem to indeed.

 

I have an alternative explanation.

Dempsey was reluctant to fight Wills, but wanted to cash out in a big money fight against him.

The negotiations for the fight, were taking place just before he announced his retirement, and the purses on offer were the biggest of his career.

Now lets look at the sequence of events:

The New York State Athletic Commission blocks one fight.

Dempsey's cheque bounces for the second.

Then Dempsey retires.

I suspect that Dempsey wanted to cash out against Wills, and could probably have lived with a loss, for the money on offer!

 

At worst, he could be bought, for the right price!

 

Great truth

Garbage and by the #1 Dempsey hater on classic forum

 

Lmao going to Compton to get any opinion of Jack Dempsey is like going to Isis to learn about JESUS Christ!

 

If it's such garbage, where are your references that debunk it? I've seen the details from people other than Compton that support his rendition of what went down. The "contracts" weren't worth the paper they were written on. Are you holding onto some materials that counter those?

Also, anyone quoting Kahn's flimsy propagandist read is proclaiming their ignorance on these affairs. That book is a low point in boxing literature and more akin to the hero worshipping tripe of many decades earlier.

 

There were a million and one reasons the fight didn't happen. Dempsey's manager was against it, his promoter was against it, checks were bouncing and other promoters were clearly unreliable, not the right amount of money, commissions blocked it, even the government blocked it at one point, blah blah blah the list is endless.

At the end of the day it's Jack Dempsey not superman. It was hard enough going against just your manager in those days. Imagine what it's like going against the most powerful boxing figure in the world at that time named Tex Rickard.

 

I believe that's because Dempsey didn't hit hard enough to separate him totally from his senses.

Cool. When and to whom?

No, they couldn't.

No problem. I wish some of the other posters arguing in favour of Dempsey would realise that.

Nah, it really isn't.

No one ever said Tua was indestructible.

So you want to apply his KO loss as a teen amateur to his whole pro career. Fine.

To clarify my position, in case special snowflakes get the wrong idea and throw their toys out the pram over something I never said.

Yup.

Oliver McCall wants a word with you.

 

I can get with this. Byrd had never been stopped or knocked out before, and could have approached the Ike fight with a little more recklessness than he later displayed. Hard to say.

Personally I don't think he wasn't noticeably different from his prime incarnation by this point (he was already 28), and was actually clowning Ike before the stoppage, the way he did many larger fighters to come after him. The difference was that Ike was able to get to him, and they weren't.

I believe his advocates know exactly what he was: a guy with a huge punch, a granite chin, and a very solid workrate in his prime. Literally no one has said he was invincible, or an unstoppable wrecking machine or whatever.

You've mentioned time and again that punching power alone does not guarantee you success, and Tua is a case in point. Anyone who could keep him at the end of their jab and weather a few shaky moments here and there was in with a great shot at beating him.

Choose to come at him and match fire with fire and you were in for a tough night. Ike did so, and not only lasted the distance without suffering any significant hurt, but ended up winning.

That's why it's an impressive performance, because of the way Ike beat Tua, not the fact that he beat him in the first place.

Tua was inconsistent in his career, and sometimes dialled it in for fights. Plus, he was short and had a ton of stylistic limitations that fighters would often exploit.

That doesn't have any relevance to the point of discussion though. Like I said in the post above, if Tua managed to hurt you (drop you), you were pretty much finished. If you don't agree with me, find me an opponent in Tua's prime that got dropped by him and went on to complete the fight.

Sorry, but what relevance does that have to the discussion?