In Defense of Jack Dempsey {article} + The great trainers and fighters on Dempsey

I have studied Dempsey for over twenty years ... I have read everything I could read and listened to all who I could listen to and watched all I could see ... my end result, filtering out fables, the huge publicity machine at the time, ect is an incomplete ...

He gets a A plus for physical gifts ... his power, speed, strength, stamina, chin and heart were all first rate .. however he stopping fighting once winning the title and regressed as a fighter because of inactivity ... we simply never saw how great Dempsey could be ...

As far as that Teddy Hayes stuff I say it is sour grapes .... Gibbons was a better James Toney of the day ... he was destroying everybody and he was the one who was active . Dempsey was coming off a long period of inactivity and still pounded out a win ... it was im many ways his best title defense ...as far as avoiding boxers, past his prime Dempsey fought tooth and nail with an excellent, prime Sharkey before stopping him and almost stopped an ll time great in Tunney ...

 

Is this true? Can't be true of the invincible Jack Dempsey. I know the rules were different in that time, so getting more knockdowns is easier to come by. But getting a knockdown in the first part is not easy to do. This nobody putting Dempsey down in the first place amuses me. Not just because he did it 8 times. Marciano gets criticized for nearly being KOed by Lowry and Simmons, yet he wasn't even dropped. I'm sure he was hurt, but the glorified revisionism against Marciano is stronger than it is against many legends (Not because he is white, but because he is undefeated). I'm sure Dempsey was hungry and fighting in a very tough conditions, but the iron-chinned fighter some make him ought to be is something else.

 

At his best he was "iron-chinned". Those who saw him thought so.

Not that any great fighter actually takes loads of flush shots on the chin. As Marciano said himself, no one can actually take a load of punches flush on the chin.
Tunney noted that Dempsey was incredibly hard to hit on the chin.

And when Dempsey was dropped he always came back fighting. (apart from the Flynn episode).
His punch resistance cannot be doubted.

People who bring up Marciano being wobbled in early fights are being as silly as those who think Dempsey being knocked down in some obscure fight as a fledgling fighter back in 1915.

 

Thought it was Bat - his fight with Wolgast is sickening stuff - you're an Ali man? I met Ali in (think it was) 1991 in Nottingham England when he was touring around to promote his then just released biography - he was huge - like the size of a door and his hands?? Jeez?? Talk about bears paws!! Had a bit of a play fight with him - one of my favourite boxing memories - remember my dad weeping and giving him a big hug - it was heart wrenching (my dad now suffers with the same syndrome thats affecting Muhammad so it's quite poignant when I look back now) but it will be a day i will always remember like yesterday

 

You mean get his ass kicked for 6 of the first 7 rounds losing nearly every round, before illegally hitting sharkey with a combination to the balls while well behind on the scorecards? This defines greatness to you? Really?

I thought Sharkey was far and away the best opponent dempsey ever defeated. Jack Sharkey is a great fighter. But he did not defeat Sharkey without severe controversy in my eyes.

And Gibbons himself was 32 years old. But I see you only bring up age of opposition when it comes to Marciano.

 

This is a bit hard to ignore. A 37 year old Journeyman knocks him out cold, flat on his back, with 1 punch? A bit hard to swallow even if he was not at his best. I do think Jack Dempsey had a solid chin though.

 

Fireman Flynn had never - repeat -- NEVER, stopped any opponent in the first round until Dempsey! Jack never attempted a punch. Dempsey had over half a dozen first round knockouts by this point. Yet we are to accept that he was starched instantly because he did not warm up properly?

Let's assume the outcome actually was legitimate. Does this say any more about his vulnerability to anybody else than Griffith's blowout at the hands of Ruben Carter says about Emile? I am not giving Hearns or Cuevas a free first round pass over Griff based on the Carter anomaly.

Does anybody rate Abe Simon over JJWalcott?

 

It's not the only thing to by, though. My problem is when people put him on the elite level regarding chin. I don't think his chin is in the Marciano, Ali, Tyson, or even Bowe level at his best. Just my opinion... but Dempsey seems to get excused for the knockdown he suffers. Yet in arguments you hear about Tyson getting KOed by Danny Williams. The latter is far worse than I've what I've just done.

 

Okay, this is completely irrelevant, but when can you get me that fight :hey:hat

 

1. Well, I wondered at first what got this strong a reaction, but I did use the word "naive" and that was snarky. So I apologize.

2. Still, I don't agree that we can just take Maxine's word for the Flynn fight being fixed. Maxine was the star witness at a trial in which Dempsey was acquitted. She accused Dempsey of a lot of things, some much worse than throwing a fight. Dempsey did not hold it against her, which speaks well for him. Roger Kahn quotes Dempsey on Maxine, "She was a good woman. She just turned out not to be strong enough to fight off all the pressures they put on her."

3. I agree that we will never know for certain about this fight. However, the ringside descriptions are the primary source, after all. It is interesting that most of the fix controversy seems to have come years later after Dempsey became a great fighter.

4. What book has Dempsey saying he took a dive? Dempsey denied that in his autobiography, and Roger Kahn simply quotes the denial.

5. How hard did Sudenberg hit? His record is 3 ko's in 61 fights, none over a name opponent. He was a mediocre middleweight. His record is probably incomplete, but there is not much here to claim him a strong puncher.

6. Flynn as a puncher. In recorded fights, Flynn ko'd 37 men in 131 fights, including George Gardner, Bill Squires, Al Kaufman, and Tiger Flowers. He stopped Joe Cox the same year Cox stopped Jess Willard. He ko'd opponents who went the distance with Dempsey--Andy Mollay and Al Norton. Perhaps not a great puncher, but clearly a much more dangerous fighter than Sudenberg.

7. "if he could, he would be considered one of the greatest heavyweights ever"

Facts are supposed to critique theory, not the other way around. Your position is that Dempsey was too tough to be knocked out. But if he was knocked out, that theory just is not true. And did Gypsy Daniels prove himself better than Max Schmeling because he stopped Schmeling in the first round?

 

McVey, you brought up the name Tommy Gibbons...He was reputed to be a great boxer who could punch too.
Well a couple of months ago while browsing through Youtube, I came
across a clip that I never saw before..It was a clear clip of a fight between Tommy Gibbons and Jack Bloomfield of England in 1924, in
which Gibbons knocked bloomfield out in the 3rd round, with devastating
punches, that revealed why Tommy Gibbons was held in such high esteem by his peers...I never thought he could hit so hard !...It is no longer on Youtube, which is a shame as it would be a revelkation to ESB Posters as it did me...Have you any ideas how to get it back on Youtube for our
ESB posters ? b.b.

 

Maybe you should watch the fight so you won't sound so uneducated ... after a shaky start Dempsey clearly fought his way back into the Sharkey fight with a brutal body attack. Going into the seventh he was he stronger man.

Gibbons was thirty two ... or you can say eighteen months younger than Charles or five years younger than Louis or six years younger than Walcott or seven to ten years younger than Moore ... take your pick ..

 

Maybe as good as your immortal Rex Laynes ?

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKUlBPErrn0[/ame]

Show me another heavyweight who took flush bomb after bomb from Bob Satterfield and survived to win the fight? :good

 

I watched the fight last night. Perhaps you should rewatch the fight, this time without your rose colored glasses on. Your extreme bias as a closet jack dempsey fan clouds your judgement.

A. He did go to the body, but it was far from brutal. In fact, it hardly appeared to have any effect on Sharkey as he continued to tatoo straight shots off dempsey's noggin. Watch round 4 in particular, as Dempsey goes to the body time and again, but Sharkey easily weathers it off and rips sharp left hooks and fast right hands into Dempsey's face at will.

What's your scorecard? Let's see it. I gave Sharkey 5 of the first 6 rounds.

:rofl:rofl What leads you to this conclusion? Because Dempsey was losing badly on any fair scorecard and was receiving a thorough boxing lesson, he was the stronger man? Sharkey hurt Dempsey 3 or 4 times in that fight, and had him nearly out in the first. Dempsey landed some body blows, but it was nothing Sharkey couldn't handle. Dempsey got angry, got frustrated, and decided to throw a combination right into Sharkey's nuts.