Jack Dempsey and Floyd Patterson, a stylistic comparison

There is little doubt Dempsey had a much better chin than Patterson and was a much better two handed puncher ... that being established, unless Dempsey was mentally rewired he has little shot of making out of a round or two against Liston ..

 

similar styles.
diffrent in mentality and durability.


dempsey v liston ? who knows.. & who cares ? worse fighters than patterson did better than 1 round with Liston and with crude wide-open styles too. guys like willie besmanof and mike dejohn. Floyd patterson freezed against sonny

 

Its a great comparison. Merry Christmas. You're good n that. I dont mind you calling me a useless troll or that cos youre Scottish.

 

There are similarities but also differences (some may have been pointed out), ie:

1. Tradition Crouch versus Cus De Amato Peekaboo crouch - this in itself gives quite a few different in advantages and disadvantages. Traditional is crouching largely from the back at a diagonal angle, peekaboo/bob n weave a little more square and using more bending from the legs. Traditional is maybe more energy efficient but less flexible. Peekaboo puts a boxer in a better position to quickly react, makes the bobbing and weaving possible but it is to move demanding/draining

2. Low Guard versus a Highguard of Peekaboo

3. Defence - whether by bob and weave style, reactions or reading an opponent Patterson seems much better at slipping punches than Dempsey, he's a very underrated defensive fighter and was much better at evading fast jabs

3b. Reative headmovement or circling headmovement, Patterson generally uses more head movement on the way in

4. Footwork - Patterson takes more half steps Dempsey is constantly looking to move to the left to set up his left hook

5. Desired fighting range, Dempsey wants to get inside and put his head on his opponents chest to work, either than or stay at mid range at fire bombs. Patterson at time does this but is also happy to step back out to the outside

6. Left hook leads - both throw them, Patterson leaps with his

7. Jab - I know that's been mentioned but significant

8. Reaction to being hurt/knocked down. Dempsey seems to fight better hurt, I know this isn't only style but it's important

9. Punching technique - Dempsey's are wider and he puts his whole body into them which can leave him off balance if he misses but can generate more power if he lands. Patterson is very compact leaving him with much better balance, still powerful but less so

Now there are similarities that have been pointed out granted#

Tyson and Patterson have to be the 2 most similar HW CHamps stylistically

Patterson had a glass jaw? Yet the powerpuncher Johansson put him down 7 times and still couldn't keep him down. Yet he recovered from a KD from the same man to come back and KO him. Even in the Liston fights against a much bigger A Class opponent he took plenty of leather to go down. He fought everyone over a 15year career and only 1 man could keep him down for a 10 count. That's not a glass jaw

 

I'll stay calm as long as you do.

Your fine efforts are appreciated, as always, but, honestly, apart from some technical, not necessarily stylistic similarities, I don't see Patterson when I see Dempsey, nor vice versa.

Over the decades, I've read comparisons between Marciano and Frazier as well as Dempsey and Tyson and, most recently here, a great one between Roberto Durán and Dempsey, but never between Dempsey and Patterson. This, to my knowledge, for one basic reason:

Floyd Patterson was primarily a boxer with swarming qualities whereas Jack Dempsey was a killer-instinct-fueled puncher with a sophisticated defense-offense binary style.

From a peek-a-boo crouch, Patterson would throw his body behind lightning-fast spear jabs, often repeated, and left hooks, á la that other D'Amato creation, Mike Tyson. This style, requiring great conditioning, is quite taxing on its practitioner, but usually more so on the guy on the receiving end.

Dempsey sprung in and out with lower hands, now frontally, now from a lean-back orthodox stance, seeking to counter in a swarm or come in with shots downstairs to then pounce upstairs or--often--with a hard right to the body, also emulated much later by Mike Tyson.

Apples and oranges, if you ask me.

A man is his style and a style is colored by the man: the modest, workmanlike Patterson boxed you; the mining-town-bred, rod-riding Dempsey sought to destroy you from the opening bell.

Plus, if you have that special gift, a killer punch, as Dempsey did, you will be extremely aggressive, relentless, as Dempsey was; technique is the delivery system, but you are always thinking: kayo. If you lack a killer punch and choose to box, as Patterson did, you will do so seeking to win rounds, as Ali, Holmes, Charles, Tunney, and other great boxers have through the decades, and, if the kayo comes, it comes.

Again, apart from some technical similarities which can be pointed out, Dempsey and Patterson are apples and oranges to me.

 

Does it not seem incongruent to you to admit Dempsey has "a much better chin" and is "a much better two-handed puncher" than Patterson, yet predict he will suffer Patterson's exact same fate?

 

Patterson was floored 17 times in 13 championship fights, according to the Independent.

Ali, in contrast, met the canvas 1 time in 22 championship fights, against many more and much greater punchers than just Ingemar Johansson.

The film shows: one solid shot from a great puncher put Patterson on ***** street.

Patterson had a dubious chin but a great heart.

 

Duran and Chang are the best for me, as far as head movement and positioning goes.

 

Firstly a KD doesn't prove a bad chin, a bad chin is being put to sleep easily.

Secondly 7 of those KDs came in 1 fight against Johansson which he kept getting up in until the ref stopped it. If he got up another 10 times would he have an even worse chin?

No Patterson doesn't have the chin of Ali but neither does Dempsey or most in history

 

P, very well said !!! Aside from their crouching styles and left-hooks,there was a vast difference between Dempsey and Patterson..,Vast difference.
Dempsey's chin was always hidden in his shoulder, making him a very difficult target for a solid right hand , as Tunney, who should know alluded to quite often...A very hard target to hit,butressed by his perrenial bob and weave style...He also had a terrific chin. Forget about the first Flynn bout
in 1918,when he was coming up, without Jack Kearns, and very probable a "dive ",as his estranged wife testified in court. At any rate ONE YEAR later
under the banner of Kearns, Dempsey obliterated Jim Flynn in less than 1 rd. His chin was vastly superior to Patterson's . But we must be aware that Dempsey inside was probably the greatest infighter ever as a heavyweight. Just witness those shovel blasts to the body his heavy hands inflicted on his opponents. Like pistons to the "slats", as Fitz would describe those
terrible body blows. So all in all Dempsey was harder to tag solidly on the whiskers, took a better punch than Floyd, and was the roughest and toughest infighter ever in heavyweight history... Patterson, as nice a gentleman, I ever had the pleasure to meet, was no Jack Dempsey of Toledo... Cheers P.:good

 

Actually, I'd say Patterson was more of a boxer-puncher than a swarmer. Obviously Patterson and Tyson are the two most similar HW champions stylistically, as PP pointed out. They're not quite the same thrust, but it's not a case of apples and oranges. It's somewhere in the middle.

 

Perfectly acknowledged. Though Dempsey is not limited to this "same height". He can attack "tall", as Willard found out.

Dempsey's wild streak, not easy at all to exploit, is a fascinating point you bring up: first, the wildness was the momentary inertia of one of the most aggressive styles in heavyweight history. This is hardly Floyd Patterson!

Whereas the technically correct Patterson was helpless in trying to jab into Liston, a more aggressive fighter such as Big Cat Williams stunned Liston early, for one simple reason: he was an aggressive puncher used to getting off big blows first. A crystal-clear difference between Dempsey and Patterson!

Even the Big Cat never reached the plateau of relentless savagery of Jack Dempsey. Dempsey became a legend because of it! Patterson? Hardly.

Sure, it can be envisioned that Dempsey would be walking into a bear trap by coming to Sonny Liston. But Dempsey thrived in war and ratcheted up another gear when stunned. The Big Cat? Patterson? Hardly.

Liston was easy to hit upstairs for a hard puncher with confidence such as the Big Cat or, yes, Jack Dempsey.

Sorry to bring Liston in here, but he is a convenient example to distinguish between Dempsey and Patterson.

You are good at the technical breakdown. These similarities are readily acknowledged. To me, as regards Dempsey and Patterson, the whole is much greater than the sum of some parts.

Well, apples and oranges are both fruits. They can stand in for a boxer/puncher such as Patterson and a lusty puncher such as Dempsey. On the other hand, Ali is an apple; Foreman is broccoli.

Excellent point for strict technical analysis.

But style is more than technique, and here is where the man himself comes in.

The savvy Holmes understood it was folly to just get hit for nothing, so he fought as a boxer. And he's enjoying his money with his marbles. More power to him.

Stylistic analysis of Dempsey must include his "kill-or-be-killed" mentality that informed his slashing style, a mentality bred in his hardscrabble past and excellent basic self-image as a winner.

He would not soon relent in coming in with both hands on Liston who, at heart, was a bully. Dempsey would give Liston a gut-check, and we all know, when the stakes were highest, how that went with Sonny.

Styles make fights. Background makes some aspects of style as well as intangibles.

Many fighters share technical similarities. Heck, we could probably break down similarities, in some sequences, between the Liston jab, the Ali jab, the Holmes jab.

When I try to see the forest for the trees, you're right, I must stay in the minority who doesn't see Jack Dempsey when watching Floyd Patterson. :good