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

Careful! There are those among us who claim Willard was only a fat, out of shape cowboy so as to besmirch the legend of this beatdown.

 

Love this for Dempsey guys ..

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The book of all books would be a 580 page Pollack megabook on Wills that incorporated some serious sections on Langford, Jeanette and McVey .. I"m gonna start working him midway through Dempsey 2

 

This is not true. He did not train hard. He got substandard sparring partners, was very lax in every aspect of his training, and it was well noted, repeatedly and often by the writers covering his camp that he was not taking the fight seriously. He took days off, cut sparring sessions short, neglected roadwork, and refused to spar with sparring partners who made him look bad. If the book tries to make the case that he was well trained and well prepared then thats a complete load of hogwash.

 

You may very well be right. The surely the sparing partners selected cannot be disputed .. I"m just going on the coverage the local papers gave that is reported in the book.

 

Pollack quotes reports where Willard was only training 30 minutes a day. He used the same two, old white sparring partners, neither of whom was very accomplished and both of whom preferred to do as little as possible while still getting paid.

 

There were many reports of Willard training and many glowing reports of how good he looked. Pages and pages of actual coverage and many folks that watched I'm train and picked him to win based not only on past accomplishments but on what they were seeing ... that aside the film is the film and he astonishingly manages to rebound more than a bit in round 2 and that proves something ..

 

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According to various documents in digital form on Ancestry.com, Harry Wills was born on January 20, 1889.

- Chuck Johnston

 

I would question any book that tried to rewrite history by claiming Willard was anything but ill prepared for a serious fight.

Him merely doing "better" in the next two rounds is hardly proof that he was trained to perfection. He was 247 pounds and 6'6" tall. He was fighting a man nearly 60 pounds smaller than him and only 12 pounds over the light heavyweight limit who by his own admission had shot his bolt in the first round. Willard could have literally stayed upright and done nothing in the second and third rounds and still had a "better" round than the first.

The fact of the matter is that Willard himself even admitted he was overconfident and didnt train properly, something that was noted by most of the press who covered his camp. Were there outliers who sang his praises? Of course, there are always are. But anyone who tries to reframe the stories of Willard being lazy and disinterested in training camp as bunk in favor of the idea that Willard was some herculean athlete ready for war is merely trying to build up the event to build up Dempsey's victory.

Willard was 37 years old, hadnt fought three years, and had a **** poor training camp. When Joe Chip, a guy who naturally weighed about 155 pounds and had won just one fight in the last three years is the best sparring partner in your camp and you cut off all sparring with him because hes making you look bad you arent really trying to polish your skills.

Willard was an enormous man, its not surprising that he was able to absorb punishment and stand upright, particularly when the damage done has been greatly exaggerated. Willard suffered none of the horrific injuries that have since been described as gospel and of the injuries he did suffer its never mentioned that he went into the fight with a split lip and a cut over one eye, both acquired in sparring and both reopened by Dempsey.

Billy Murphy covering the fight referred to Willard as "the great engine of fat", and a "clod" and castigated the few press men who werent discerning enough to recognize that Willard was never very good and even still hadnt taken this fight seriously.

W.F. Donovan wrote a LONG article two weeks before the fight about how bad Willard looked in training.

"Jerry" the pen name of the sports editor of the Dayton News was highly critical of Willard, his conditioning, and his performance over all. He said he was big and nothing else. In fact he lays out four reasons why Willard lost: He was too old, too inactive, "loafed" during training, and was never much of a fighter to begin with.

Billy Miske and Robert Seiberlich, St. Paul Boxing Commissioner, traveled Toledo together for Miske's fight with Levinsky and to stay over and watch this fight. Seiberlich had been picking Willard to win until he saw his training camp then reversed his pick to Dempsey saying Willard was too slow.

Miske agreed stating Willard was big but not much more.

Visiting Willards camp Jack Curley noted that four years earlier Hemple and Monaghan were poor sparring partners for Willard. Now they routinely landed on Willard, one dropped him, and it wasnt because these two ham and eggers improved it was because Willard had gotten worse. Curley stated Willard brought nothing but size to the equation and that within two rounds his condition would tell on him.

Tex O'Rourke who trained Willard for Johnson picked Dempsey to knock him out and after seeing Willard train and stated that he was not the same fighter he had been four years previous.

John Wray visited Willards camp several times at various stages and was critical throughout. He stated Willard shirked roadwork, was lazy, had poor sparring partners and in order to "look" the part had reduced his weight by dieting rather than hard exercise. He questioned the sanity (or his own) of experts claiming Willard was in any kind of condition and noted that various outlets quoted Muldoon firstly as saying Willard was in condition and then that Willard was 25 pounds out of condition as a means of exhibiting how some outlets were simply all over the place with their coverage.

Ring Lardner noted that Willards sub par sparring partners were able to land on him repeatedly and even cut his lip. He picked Dempsey in five rounds.

Dr. Ignatious Powell who had witnessed Willards training for Johnson and Dempsey stated before the Dempsey fight that Willard was not in good condition. When it was noted that he weighed less now (1919) than he did against Johnson (he did not) Powell noted Willard had lost muscle and gained more fat, fat being less dense accounted for the weight differential. While the basis of this observation wasnt true (that Willard weighed less for Dempsey) its interesting to note given that Willards weight was less than for Moran which would give the impression that Willard was in better shape but if he did indeed go to fat then that would explain why. Powell picked Dempsey to win.

H.C. Hamilton noted multiple instances of Willard taking off training and/or holding "light" training days.

Benny Leonard, covering the fight for the newspapers, noted that Willard had refused roadwork and that many experts felt he was in poor condition. Leonard found it hard to believe Willard was in the sorry state many made him out to be but did note several examples that led experts to that opinion.

I could literally type on these eye witness accounts all day showing Willard to be poorly trained but the fact is that if you separate opinion "I THINK Willard is in good condition" from the facts that we know about his training camp: He did little to no roadwork, had a relatively short training camp for a guy who had been inactive for three years, utilized very poor sparring partners (most were very poor HWs who had been inactive for three plus years. Jack Lavin had literally been kicked out of Dempseys camp because he was so limited but found a place in Willards camp as a sparring partner), took it very easy in training, etc. combined with the fact that he was thirty seven and a half years old, had just two fights in the previous five years, had been inactive for the previous three, and had only 25 bouts total despite being a pro for 8 years after having turned pro at 29 with no experience (a paltry record even by todays standards). Its hard to see how anyone could attempt to spin that as Willard being ready for this fight in any way shape or form.

 

Adam's book does not portray Willard as being well prepared or much invested in his training. After the fight, Willard admitted he wasn't a fighter by nature and was only in it for the money.

Should we denigrate Dempsey for his performance? Of course not. He scored one of the most emphatic championship victories in the history of the division. But let's not pretend Willard was more than a holdover from the division's stasis perpetuated by the War and the Color Line.

 

I dont denigrate Dempsey for Willards performance at all. But it needs to be put into perspective. For so long its been framed as this incredible giant slaying effort that shaped the mythos of Dempsey as this rampaging monster. Dempsey trained incredibly well for the fight, he went at it just like a pro should. Willard, for all of his faults, was the man to beat. Period. Dempsey went in there and took the title like a boss. Just like a champion should. But with that being said how many participants of a championship fight in the history of the sport were as ill prepared as Willard? Not many. Willard was already big, sliw, inexperienced, and clumsy. His size and strength was always his chief asset. Even his stamina gets a bit overrated because with his enormous size he could and did lay back and make his opponents come to him, fighting in a very conservative style. Take three years off, come into training over 37 years old for a roughly six week training camp that you do almost zero roadwork for with sparring partners that arent capable of sharpening you up, you take days off, slack off in training, and generally disdain hard work and its really not that big a stretch to see why an incredibly well trained fighter who was active, fast, aggressive, hit hard, hungry, and allowed stand directly over and often behind his fallen opponent and strike him upon rising could beat Willard. I dont find Dempseys win all that remarkable and the plethora of experts who picked him based, if nothing else, on their experience witnessing Willards poor approach to training kind of illustrates how that win has been blown out proportion. I think if we began compiling a list of the fighters throughout history who could have knocked that Willard out, on that day, under those conditions wed be here a while. Thats not taking anything away from Dempsey unless you refuse to put the win in perspective and instead subscribe to belief that this was some incredible feat.

 

" Great Ceasar's Ghost !!! ". Perry white

 

The Dempsey KO of Willard impressed Mike Tyson...and Mike's opinion on this matter is orders of magnitude more important to me
than any keyboard warrior in this thread.

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I can agree with your posts here and there was little doubt that Willard was arrogant, overconfident, highly inactive and ran his own training camp with questionable sparring partners but there are many detailed, quoted first hand accounts that were impressed w Willard in the book, many picked him to win after watching both fighters train and most importantly he took a horrific beating in the first round and came back to show himself still dangerous in the second and third .. that shows he was in pretty decent condition and came to win .. I've always wondered if Dempsey didn't stand over him and keep slamming him the way he did and got away with how the fight may have panned out over the distance ..