Jack Dempsey and The Color Line...

Carpentier won the Euro crown by koing Billy Wells in 4 rds . After that he lost a disputed dec to Joe Jeannette,then beat the best white heavyweight in the world GunBoat Smith. Point being he didn't come," out of thin air".

So yeah, I got you.
Carpentier's qualifications for challenging for the title are at least as good as Tyson Fury's and he meets Wlad next month.

 

I am not sure where all the negativity comes regarding Carpenter. He was well known all over the world and was talked of being an opponent for Dempsey very early on after beating Willard. Quite a few light hwt champions got a shot at the hwt title throughout boxing history and in the case of Carp he was also European hwt champion.

Regarding Greb I read an article from 1922 where hundreds of sports writers were asked who they felt should next fight Dempsey. Greb did not make the List. Willard, Brennan, Gibbons and Wills yes but no mention of Greb. Obviously some sports writers felt differently but to say this was the general feeling I do not believe was correct.

Wills.... we all know the extreme prejudice of that time and the stigma on the boxing community that was felt regarding Johnson and the Johnson-Jeffries bout. No black hwt was going to get a title shot and between 1908 and 1937 none did. Dempsey to his credit tried to make the bout happen but it was the promotors and commissions that ultimately put the kibosh on this bout. More than likely it was dead from the beginning. The powers that be just would not allow a mixed race hwt championship fight to occur.

 

His win over gunboat smith was a joke and called by even his most ardent admirers inconclusive. So you listed three fights, all of which took place more than 7 yrs earlier, 2 of which he didnt actually win, and another coming against a guy who lost every single loss by KO and in fact has absolutely zero world class wins and who had never won the ebu title himself.

 

He was the lt hwt and European hwt champion. This in itself makes Carp a viable contender for the hwt title. How many other lt hwt champions received hwt title shots? Obrien, Carp, Lewis, Conn, Moore, Foster, Spinks. How many top hwts did Foster beat to get a title shot vs Frazier?

 

I don't believe the Carpentier defense is bad in of itself. I think it just looks a little bad because of the omissions of Greb and Wills.
The promotion and fight were a huge success.

 

Wills was not getting a title shot no matter who was the hwt champion.

At least in 1922 Greb was not looked at as a serious contender for Dempseys title. Even Willard was looked at by MOST as the more viable contender. This is as per the poll of hundreds of sports writers in 1922. Dempseys bout with Carp was a year before this poll.

 

He beat Smith on a foul when leading on the cards, but he did knock him down .The reason for the lapse in time is a little thing called," The Great War", not really Carpentier's fault.

He lost only one of those fights the Jeannette one ,and many thought he deserved the decision. Wells was not any great shakes but he had beaten Moir,Kennedy ,Hague and Flynn.Wells was British Champion ,CommonWealth and Empire Champion ,as well as EBU Champion.

My point is Carpentier did not materialise "out of thin air," as Seamus claimed.

 

The war may not have been his fault but to pretend he earned a title shot with nothing in the interim is silly. His win over Gunboat came on a highly disputed foul after himself had just been knocked down. The referee even admitted that carpentier milked it and that had he seen carps manager jump into the ring (something carp and company were famous for when carp was in trouble) it would have been carp that got dqd. Any way you try to spin it a loss, a highly dubious dq win and a ko over a glass jawed british club fighter 7 years ago, none of whom were even factors in the division in 1921 is hardly grounds for a title shot. Even in 1914 there would have been people ahead of him. By 1921 the division had completely passed his meager accomplishments hence the Levinsky farce, which was yet again a victory over a guy Greb had utterly owned in numerous fights that somehow leap frogged a less qualified challenger to the top of Dempseys waiting list. A pattern that is firmly established for jack.

And for the record Wells was not EBU champion. Who did he beat for that title? And while he beat Moir it took him two tries, getting stopped their first time. Hague was nothing more than a local clubfighter either. Name all of his worldclass victories. Kennedy had a total of 10 fights when he met Wells and only won half of them. He failed to win his previous three and his next three, and amounted to nothing. Porky flynn was being battered by middleweights long before the 6'3" hw wells went 20 rounds with him. If these are the wins we are using to show Wells class then i think that helps my argument more than yours.

 

That point might hold water except for tje inconvenient fact that Rickard signed a promoted a hw title elimination match between greb and gibbons, the winner to get dempsey, which dempsey attended and which greb won easily. That was march, the beginning of 1922, afterwards greb went undefeated despite fighting several hws and lhws not the least of which was gene tunney, american lhw champion, a title rickard had created in hopes of building publicity.

 

His win against Gibbons did not impress the majority. In the end the public needs to want to see a fight before it is going to happen.

 

I've read the referee's account and he said he had no option but to dsq Smith as he hit Carpentier on the top of the head while he was down.Carpentier may have milked it , many fighters do ,B Hop is an example.The fact remains he was hit while on the floor.

I don't say Carpentier especially deserved a title shot but many have received one with less credentials.LeonSpinks? Wells wasn't EBU champ you are correct, they were fighting for the vacant title. Thanks for your considered and polite reply.:good

 

I wrote that incorrectly. It was a poll involving hundreds of newspapers polling the boxing public.

As of March 13, 1922 Greb was not on anyone's radar in terms of the boxing public.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...&pg=2866,5569898&dq=dempsey+harry+wills&hl=en

 

I dont get your point. Gibbons was second behind Wills in that UNOFFICIAL poll. Greb beat Gibbons that night. If Greb was so far and away behind everyone why did Tex Rickard see fit to match Gibbons and Greb as a means of legitimizing Gibbons' claim to a title shot if Gibbons beat him? To say Greb wasnt on anyones radar based on some poll you yanked from google in 1922 is absolutely ridiculous. Go do some more research than just sitting on your ass in your arm chair and trolling google. Greb had been talked about as an opponent for Dempsey for almost four years at this point. Several promoters had made offers to Kearns for the fight and more would follow in the wake of his victory over Gibbons. You said that in 1922 Greb wasnt looked at as a serious challenger for Dempsey and this is patently false. You are basing your statement on one article you found which predates Greb's title eliminator and the saying his title eliminator didnt mean anything to the public. I suggest you go back and do your homework. Plenty of people regarded Greb as a good challenger just because one unofficial and unscientific poll didnt have Greb at the top doesnt mean he wasnt a legitimate challenger. Thats born out by simple math considering he beat the #2 and #3. #4 had only just stated publicly that he was not yet ready to fight Greb and needed more experience. Carpentier, whose place isnt listed but who was rated in that poll ahead of Willard had also refused to either fight or even spar with Greb and within a few months he would turn down the second largest offer of his entire career to face Greb and instead took less than 1/10th that amount for another fight instead. This is all of course beside the point that your article predates the outcome of the elimination match. Do you think that had that poll been held a week later the numbers might look different? Id guess so. Either way you can take this one of two ways: Given how ridiculous this poll looks outside of the #1 (Gibbons had done nothing but pad his record since Greb defeated him in 1920, Carpentier had already been beaten easily and had done nothing, Willard had literally done nothing since getting absolutely slaughtered, and Brennan had done nothing, Bob Martin had been largely inactive since getting exposed and brutalized by club fighter Fay Keiser) you can say its a damn good thing the public doesnt get to decide who gets a title shot, at least not in an era where they had minimal access to these guys, or #2 that Dempsey was clearly avoiding the top guys because the only guy he fought on that poll after it was published was Gibbons who lost that night in one sided fashion. At the very least it tells us what any rational person already knows: Dempsey ducked his universally recognized #1 for the vast majority of his reign and in reality ducked anyone who posed a real or percieved (to him) threat.