Jack Dempsey and The Color Line...

Don't let Klompton hear you say this.
He even has an excuse for a known and admitted case of Harry Greb paying off some sportswriters (or attempting to) that shifts the blame to Jack Dempsey, Tex Rickard and Doc Kearns.

 

True, but he was also the guy a lot of people say was the toughest challenger out there, he was ranked #1 by RING magazine. So Sharkey deserves a lot of credit.

 

Dempsey had been retired for 3 years when he fought that exhibition with Levinsky! At 37 Wills was an active fighter! Laughable? Yes indeed!

 

King Levinsky was one of the top contenders at the time too.

 

But 37 is 37,

check how far Ali and Louis had gone back by that age.

It is an undeniable fact that Wills was old.

 

Boxing and Dempsey aside, this is a very good question in sports and doesn't have a simple answer.

Here are some great historical shot-putters and their best performances:

Ralph Rose--the 1904 & 1908 Olympic champion. His best throw and the world record at the time and for close to two decades was 15.54 meters.

Parry O'Brien--the 1952 & 1956 Olympic champion. His best throw and the world record for a brief period was 19.30 meters.

Randy Barnes--the 1996 Olympic champion. His best throw in 1990 and still the world record was 23.12 meters.

Now being the Olympic champion and the world record holder makes one in his own time a great shot-putter.

But their best throws would come up far short of later competitors.

So I guess the answer of whether they are great shot-putters ends up yes and no. In their own time, yes. Compared to the more recent best, no.

So in a way you can be great and then become less great.

 

The shot put record progression is interesting.
The fact that the current record has stood since 1990 suggests that this particular event has been impacted by advancements in drugs testing.
In other words, the good old fashioned anabolic steroids that Randy Barnes was on haven't actually been improved upon for this particular event.

It's worth noting that old-time throwers like Ralph Rose didn't specialize completely in the one throwing event. They tended to do several throwing events, and some of the competitors would do other events too. Not to mention they were proper amateurs.

 

I got the solution folks. Put an asterisk on Jack Dempsey's name.
Burn the boxing writers accounts of those times as they were all
"conspirators " to bolster a journeyman named William Harrison Dempsey.
Bestow a knighthood on the few Dempsey critics on ESB for they surely
know more than the myriad of boxers, trainers and boxing writers of those
long ago days, and fine the posters who bring up the name of Jack Dempsey in a positive way...My check is already in the mail....

 

Bert, let "the few" crow for now. They're bitter cos they are "the few". Dempsey was a game changer, his performance vs Willard alone set him apart from everybody, to this day that fight is spoken in awe inspiring terms. Nothing til Louis came along was there the excitement that these two genarated.
"the few", on the hand, will continue to find fault, they will say oh, but Willard was old, hadn't fought, wasn't in shape bla, bla bla into the sunset . About what didn't happen, what should have happen, he was afraid, scared, a racist. Jeez I guess when you are drowning you grab at straws. The fact is Dempsey will always be revered while Wills sorry to say will remain an asterick. "The few", will nitpick, pick who is telling the truth and who isn't, whatever fits their storyline, like the saying goes, "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can't think of anything better."

 

# 750 replies not bad for a "fraud"

 

If a 185 or 190 pound fighter (effectively a modern LIGHT-HEAVY) stepped in a ring and KO'd even some of the lesser heavyweight contenders at the moment in 2015, with great speed and ferocity, people would be in no doubt that they are looking at a great fighter.

This is where Dempsey gets badly underrated, I think.
He knocked out some men who weighed 210, 220, 240 pounds in 1, 2, 3 rounds and made it look unfair and one-sided.

 

Thing with those shot-putters is they all used different techniques which advanced the event.

Rose would have used the early style of rocking back, not much more than a standing throw.

Parry O'Brien introduced the glide technique and set a stack of world records.

Randy Barnes was an early rotater which most of the top throwers now use.

It's like comparing a Fosbury flopper with the old straddle jumpers in High Jump.

 

But still, he was 37, fighting a much younger contender who went on to become champion. Very few fighters are still at the top of their game at that age.

 

Which doesn't mean we can be certain he would beat Sharkey if both were in their respective primes. Certainly comparing Wills at 37 and the long retired Dempsey at the same age was ,well to be frank, totally dishonest.

 

I agree. But I rarely see anyone holding the Sharkey loss against Wills.