Is it weird that I don't see anything special in Jack Dempsey?

Tyson and Dempsey both suffer from the amount of attention they continued to receive when they were passed their prime. Dempsey was the result of the improvement in technology, Tyson from the increase in press attention generated by the drum roller coaster in which he was riding.

 

I have no reason not to believe what Senya is saying here: That back then the heavyweights "stole the thunder" so to speak... and that very little attention was afforded the lower weights. With this in mind, its probably no surprise that Dempsey and Louis finished at the top of the list... way ahead of everybody else.

Still, there were votes (albeit only a few!) for non-heavyweights... presumably from reporters who had actually watched the boxers in question and been impressed by what they saw. So you cant help but wonder, why Greb didnt pass the "eye test" with any of the sports writers who had seen him in his prime (and here Im guessing that in 1950, out of close to 400 sports writer... there must have been several who had been ringside for some of Greb's bouts only 30 or so years earlier)

 

We know Greb was a great fighter because of his resume,we dont know
that he was "easy on the eye" when in combat,maybe he wasn't?

I don't think Monzon or Mike Spinks look much on film ,but they were great in their respective divisions,and they got the desired results the vast majority of times.:good

 

I remember when in 1950 they gave the results of that boxing poll but cant recall if they meant the intent of that poll was to cite as the "greatest fighter", "which fighter would have more likely to have beaten any other boxer in history ", or "what fighter was the best fighter with the most attributes in history P4P"?.
If it was the latter, can you picture a 200 pound Harry Greb or Benny Leonard or
Joe Gans not being No.1 ? I can't...

 

The term, unbeatable fighter, is an oxymoron.

- Chuck Johnston

 

The question was simple - name the "best boxer" of the last 50 years (1900-1949). There was no further clarification, just the "best boxer".

 

This is my first chance back here since I posted this and I cannot find my thread w/ a question to you. So, how does your boy do against Tyson, Marciano, Louis, Ali, Liston, Saad, Lewis, Holmes, Frazier. Answer that for me and don't have them delete the question or the remarks. It is a legitimate question to you Klompton. And I did read yr whole book and enjoyed it for the most, but there is no frickin' way you are objective. I've worked in journalism for 30 years and know objectivity when I see. And for the most part I did not. It is amazing that you dig up these opinions that according to you everyone had, yet STILL Dempsey is considered an all-time great. Everyone was wrong but you. I have books of many of the writers from that era who covered Dempsey, and almost to a man, they consider him one of the best ever. And yes. Dempsey took out this "unskilled plant" quickly, yet Wills went the full route in a fight w/ him. He wants a fight w/ Dempsey, so instead of taking Firpo out quickly too, he lets him go the distance and looks like crap. TORO CACA! Just admit you have an ax to grind against Dempsey and answer my first question w/out having them edit me out and lets see who else you think Greb beats. For every article you show supporting Greb, I would say there are far more supporting Dempsey vis-a-vie a fight between them.

 

This is my first chance back here since I posted this and I see they got rid of my thread w/ a question to you. So, how does your boy do against Tyson, Marciano, Louis, Ali, Liston, Saad, Lewis, Holmes, Frazier. Answer that for me and don't have them delete the question or the remarks. It is a legitimate question to you Klompton. And I did read yr whole book and enjoyed it for the most, but there is no frickin' way you are objective. I've worked in journalism for 30 years and no objectivity when I see. And for the most part I did not. it is amazing that you dig up these opinions that acoording to you everyone had, yet STILL Dempsey is considered an all-time great. Everyone was wrong but you. I have books of many of the writers from that era that covered Dempsey and almost to a man, they consider him one of the best ever. And yes. Dempsey took out this "unskilled plant" quickly, yet Wills went the full route in a fight w/ him. He wants a fight w/ Dempsey, so instead of taking Firpo out quickly too, he lets him go the distance and looks like crap. TORO CACA! Just admit you have an ax to grind against Dempsey and answer my first question w/out having them edit me out and lets see who else you think Greb beats. For every article you show supporting Greb, I would say there are far more supporting Dempsey vis-a-vie a fight between them.

 

No ****. I can attest to that!

 

If youve worked in journalism for 30 years it should be easy for you to go find the facts and sources to illustrate that Im not objective when I criticise Dempsey and Tunney. Do it. You say you have my book then you also have a comprehensive list of my sources, go through it and point by point illustrate where I was too hard on these guys? No? I didnt think so. You cant. Its as simple as that. I didnt look at these guys through rose colored glasses or the veil of hero worship. In fact objectivity is exactly how I approached. As you will notice, if you indeed read my book, my interest in Greb grew out of my love for Dempsey. It was only through researching these time that I realized Dempsey wasnt all he was cracked up to be and neither was Tunney. I never started the book with the idea that I would write a love letter to Greb (and I dont think I did) and that I would bash Tunney and Dempsey. Indeed I dont think I did that either. I could have been much harder on them than I was but instead I chose to state the facts, cite my sources, and let the reader draw their own conclusions. Thats what an objective observer does. Did they not tell you that in your journalism courses? Its not my fault if certain readers read those facts and conclude that Im being hard on these guys for actually stating. I guess I should have just done like so many others and NOT WRITTEN about what was actually going on. :-( Would that have suited your preconceived notion of these guys? Maybe I should have just continued the myth that Greb was a wild drunk who ****ed his way through boxing, never trained, and couldnt be bothered with the rules. I chose to write about the truth and small minority of people who pathetically cling to the party line cant be bothered to accept it, never mind to actually go through the citations and read what was being written on the ground at the time. God forbid you actually learn something... but Im biased.:roll:

As for your post I answered it. I didnt have them get rid of it or edit you out. Its not my fault it got deleted for some reason and its not my fault that it took you half a week to get back here and see it before they did. Saying I was somehow behind it getting deleted makes you sound like a ****ing conspiracy theory nutcase. You think Im scared to answer questions from SOME GUY on the internet who HAS BEEN IN JOURNALISM FOR OVER 30 YEARS. Please. Anytime anyone has questioned anything in my book or my research Ive always come back with a plethora of sources to support my argument. So far you have come back with "your biased". atsch Ive already answered your question, Ill answer it again when you come back here and illustrate how my book was biased and do so with actual quotes and evidence that refutes it. Pardon me if I get comfortable for a long wait mr. journalist...

As per your last sentence: When did I ever say Greb would beat Dempsey? Show me. I never said it. The problem with fanboys like you is that you want to justify Dempsey's cowardice by saying "he would have beaten this guy so he why should he fight him" "he would have beaten that guy so why should he fight him" Bull****. Boxing is fought in the ring not in the heroworship clouded mind of some nobody 90 years later. It doesnt matter to me one iota if YOU think Dempsey would have knocked out Greb and Wills in the same night in the first round with his first punch. It doesnt matter to me if EVERYONE thought that. What matters is that those guys where his most qualified and most dangerous challengers and he always found a way to avoid them. You can blame that on Rickard. You can blame that on Kearns. You can blame it on everyone but Dempsey. There is blame to go around I admit. BUT whether Dempsey fanboys want to hear it or not Dempsey was ACTIVELY involved in and benefiting from avoiding those guys as well. Simple as that and it hurts his legacy. So I say again: When someone comes on this board and says they see nothing special about Dempsey in reference to the extent footage of him I can easily understand since he is seen fighting: A near 40 year old overweight, out of shape fighter who hadnt been in the ring in 3 years and wasnt terribly interested in fighting, A dying man who Dempsey had beaten twice already and who was coming off a year layoff (barring a meaningless quick KO return bout) and who was described by some as sickly looking and on occasion unable to train for the match, a guy that he had already knocked out once but who this time he struggled with mightily, was rocked, had his ear nearly knocked off his head by, and against who he looked decidedly ordinary, a smaller fighter who had lost (often by KO) to the best fighters he had faced who were much smaller than Dempsey yet he still managed to badly wobble Dempsey, a tepid safety first fighter who Dempsey could do little with whose only qualification for getting a Dempsey fight was to lose his title eliminator, a lumbering oaf of a fighter who was so bad that ancient Jack Johnson totally embarrassed him in a public sparring session yet still managed to drop Dempsey three times, knock him out of the ring and by Dempsey's own peoples admission came within a whisker of winning the title, two dominant one sided losses to Tunney, and a boxing lesson by Sharkey only pulled out of the fire by numerous fouls and a cheap shot (and Ive always said it was Sharkey's fault for not defending himself but anyone who tried to ignore that Dempsey played billiards with Sharkey's nuts is the one who isnt being objective).

 

"forget Rickard"

But Rickard claimed to have Dempsey under exclusive contract--

Tex Rickard reacting to the news Dempsey had signed to fight Wills

"I have what I consider an ironclad contract for him to box Wills for me."

Time Magazine, 10-19-1925

If Rickard is correct, the whole Dempsey-Wills signing was a charade.

 

This is a very good point,

it raises legitimate questions about Greb's status in his own era,


*but, it might also raise legitimate questions about the poll, about which more in a later post

 

It might depend on what question was asked.

I know modern writers and posters quote this poll as being who was the best fighter or some variation of that,

but this poll was addressed in an article by Al Buck in the April, 1950 issue of The Ring which raises questions for me
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"The choice of Dempsey over Louis in the poll conducted by the Associated Press to name 'Boxing's Man of the Half Century' has become a subject of debate."

"Shortly after the A. P. poll was announced Col. Heinie Miller, secretary of the National Boxing Association went on record as favoring Joe Gans as 'Boxing's Man of the Half Century.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no other info about what question was really asked, and Buck might have been an imprecise writer,

but putting quotes around "Boxing's Man of the Half Century" seems to indicate that this is the question being asked, as in

Who is boxing's man of the half century?

Buck then goes on to name his own candidate:

". . . consideration must be given to James A. Farley. He became Postmaster General of the United States and Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, but at the recent dinner of the Boxing Writer's Association, he said the thing he was most proud of was the no-foul rule.

"The no-foul rule in boxing is Jim Farley's rule. He conceived it and wrote it into the boxing code. When he did, he saved boxing. For years the sure thing gamblers had stipulated that in case of a foul all bets were off. Heavily backed fighters, on discovering they couldn't win, were fouling out and saving their backers' money.

"Farley changed all that. He did it with the aid of Foulproof Taylor, inventor of the Taylor protector. Now no fight can be won or lost on a foul. Incidentally, Foulproof Taylor has never been given the credit for the part he played in saving the sport. He conceived the idea of a foulproof protector, now universally used."

Farley and Taylor were not even boxers.

By the way, Taylor gets my vote.

 

My conclusion about the above,

If the question was something about "boxing's man of the half century" in such a vague way, it might explain why so many famous boxers got so little support. I don't go back to the forties in memory, but do go back to the fifties, and fighters like Gans, Ketchel, Greb, Walker, etc. were household names to boxing fans.

I would not pick Dempsey as the best heavyweight or fighter or the first half of the 20th century, but if the question was

"Who was boxing's man of the half century?"

or something of that sort, I think Dempsey is a great choice in the sense of popularizing the sport with the general public.

 

It just shows that the sporting writers of the time were largely NYC centric asswipes who were on payola…

Well, at least that is part of the story.