In the Ring With Jack Dempsey - Part I: The Making of a Champion

This is bull****. When Dempsey didnt like the direction Kearns was leading him he dumped him. And after he dumped him Dempsey used the exact same roadmap that Kearns set out to continue avoiding Wills. Thats on Dempsey. He was calling his own shots at that point.

Exactly, Dempsey's motivation wasnt race. It was the fear of losing his championship to the greatest threat he was faced with.

 

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Thanks - that should settle this question.

 

Thats it ?

 

"What in the he'll is that s____t ?" Blazzing saddles

 

" you've got to be kidding me !". McEnroe

 

A man who rode underneath trains, holding on just above the rails for hundreds of miles in the Rocky Mountains. A man who fought in mining towns against grown men as a teenager.
Who rematches the guy who KO'd him in a few seconds. A man who brutally ko'd a boxer who outweighed him by almost 60 pounds. A man who, often hungry, worked menial and dangerous jobs.

This man was PHYSICALLY afraid to fight another boxer?

Ok.

 

Good point. I have it on sound authority that Wills lived a soft life of privilege as a black man in the South born in the 19th century... No racism, no Jim Crow, no Battle Royales, no struggles at all... It was all Easy Street.

 

Irrelevant comment. We're addressing Dempseys fears, or supposed fears, not Wills.

 

Totally relevant in that Dempsey's experiences were not unordinary, let alone unprecedented, for his time... AND certainly not for his profession.

 

It had nothing to do with physical fear. Dempsey was afraid of losing his status. He had been a hobo and dirt poor for most of his young life and his greatest concern was that he would return to the lowly station of his early years. He was a man absolutely driven by a fear of poverty to the point of constantly looking over his shoulder. That was why he worked like a man possessed in the 1930s and afterward with countless vaudeville appearances, boxing exhibitions, and refereeing engagements to restore his former wealth which had been depleted by high living and the Great Depression.

So, the "fear" of losing his title to Wills was not that he would be hurt, but that he would lose the one asset which set him apart from other people and made him a marketable commodity, that is, the heavyweight championship. It is important to remember that while he was still champion, it had been only a few short years since he had been vilified as a draft dodger. He had no way of knowing that he would become an all-time icon which would allow him to cash in on his name for the rest of his life. He was still facing what he considered to be an uncertain future.

 

Peter Jackson, Sam Langford and Harry Wills were all liked guys.

From what I've seen on film, I think Dempsey would beaten Wills, Two main reasons, Wills does not hit as hard, at least on film evidenced by taking Fripo the distance, and he wasn't fast handed while Dempsey was. Wills was nothing special on defense either.

However Demspey never wanted to fight Wills and ducked him for many years. When you never fight you one and two ( Wills and Greb ), and get badly outclassed by the best you do fight ( Tunney ), objectively speaking its hard to rate highly. Yes, it was all easy street for Dempsey as champion until he fought Tunney and IMO he got away with low blows to beat Sharkey.

 

Your post does more to reinforce my point, not tear it down. Thank you. Yes a woman born poor who lived the life of an itinerant laborer was afraid of losing the one thing that completely changed his social and economic status. Makes perfect sense to me anyone with two brain cells to rub together who has ever had to skip meals due to having nothing more than the lint in their pockets.

And its laughable to suggest that Dempsey was some fearless monster because he rematched a smaller, older complete has been who happened to catch him cold and who had one fight in the intervening year which he lost to a ham and egger. Lets not pretend that rematching the washed up Jim Flynn in the 19th year of his career was the same as stepping into the ring with Harry Wills. It wasnt. There was a hell of a lot more on the line for Dempsey financially, professionally, personally, and physically if Wills were staring across the ring at you.

 

I have been busy, but just ordered the book and it's on its way.

Several points reading through the thread:

Wills--off his gravestone and the US census, Wills was born in 1889.

Flynn fight--will be interested in the info Adam Pollack provides. One problem with accepting the fix theory for me is that Dempsey clearly didn't remember what happened in the fight. In his autobiography he had himself knocked down several times with his brother throwing in the towel. He mentioned that he came around fighting Bernie in his corner. The newspaper accounts agree with that part of it. This is all very consistent with Dempsey being KO'd and only repeating what Bernie told him about the fight, with the throwing in the towel story apparently an effort by Bernie to take the sting off a 20 second out cold knockout.

Jess Willard--it is interesting to me that Willard was older than Jeff was versus Johnson, or Louis was versus Marciano, had laid off three years, and was visibly not in as good a shape. Johnson's and Marciano's victories are generally dismissed, but Dempsey over Willard is like the greatest thing ever and proof of Dempsey's outstanding superiority. But Willard was never in the same class as Louis, or Jeffries, in the first place.

July 4, 1910 riots--I would be interested in what the average number of racial killings were over a typical July 4 holiday. I wouldn't be surprised if the often quoted figure of 19 deaths is not an unusual number. I think perspective would be valuable. The crowd at the fight at Reno filed out peacefully.