He cross trained in wrestling for conditioning, catch as catch can wrestling as well (something common in those days) new about street fights, also got very good at Judo (though this may well have after his prime) anyhow, lets say we get a time machine, grab dempsey, and start putting him in fights at 185 with, lets say, 4 weeks of modern training at a top flight mma school. Who does Dempsey beat at 185, who does he lose to? PS< the big weakness's i can see is...his down low bob and weave might leave him open to knees..but he didn move his feet well when doing this..and he would likely have been hard to plant with a knee..also..with four weeks training..he might have been able to at least somewhat break that. Also I dont know that he ever had to deal with kicks (other then maybe in street fights.)
interesting thread:good without seeing his other skills(judo,wrestling) its hard to say for sure. his aggressive style, power and speed would make him a dangerous opponent for sure. but he would have to inevitably contend with the grappling skills of his opponents. his boxing talents and cross training would probably take him far by itself, but how can we know his abilities in regards to the other martial arts? perhaps you or someone else has more info on the subject?
A mix of world class boxing, judo and wrestling is lethal. Dempsey was incredibly strong, fast and powerful. He could handle bigger men in a way that Fedor does today. Jack actually trains too. If a boxer is to make the swap (Toney, Butterbean, Botha, Mercer etc) they could at least come in shape.
Recommended reading: "Fight Tough" by Jack Dempsey. It describes his training regimen that he designed and implemented for the Coast Guard in WW2. You can see lots of MMA techniques.
- wiki When the United States entered World War II, Dempsey had an opportunity to refute any remaining criticism of his war record of two decades earlier. He joined New York State National Guard and was given a commission as a first lieutenant. He resigned that commission to accept a commission as a lieutenant in the Coast Guard Reserve. He reported for active duty in June 1942 at Coast Guard Training Station, Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, New York, where he was assigned as "Director of Physical Education." He also made many personal appearances at fights, camps, hospitals and War Bond drives. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in December 1942 and commander in March 1944. In 1944 he was assigned to the transport USS Wakefield. In 1945 he was on the attack transport USS Arthur Middleton for the invasion of Okinawa. He also spent time aboard the USS General William Mitchell (AP-114) where he spent time showing the crew sparring techniques. He was released from active duty in September 1945 and he was given an honorable discharge from the Coast Guard Reserve in 1952. True to his passion for the Sweet Science, Dempsey wrote a book on boxing called Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense, which was published in 1950. The book emphasizes knockout power derived from enabling fast motion from one's heavy bodyweight. Though no longer in print, Dempsey's book became and remains the recognized treatise in boxing and has influenced such works from Edwin Haislet and Bruce Lee. Dempsey was also something of a cross-trainer; he wrestled in training camp and later took judo lessons. He later wrote a book on this, How to Fight Tough, which dealt with close-quarters combat incorporating boxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu.
How to fight tough - http://www.paladin-press.com/product/How_to_Fight_Tough/Combat_Classics Paladin is pleased to present this rare reprint of a little-known hand-to-hand combat classic. At the outset of World War II, boxing heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey was appointed as a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard and given the job of director of physical fitness. His orders: "Make 'em tough!" His task: to teach rookie Coast Guardsmen how to fight down and dirty in the face of the very real threat of enemy troops infiltrating American shores. Get in the ring with "the Manassa Mauler" as he gives 18 fully illustrated lessons in the art of bashing and brawling on the battlefield, including Subduing an Armed Enemy, The Unbreakable Strangle, Beating the Punch, Hammering Your Way Out of a Stranglehold, The Belt Trick, Fooling the Smart Knife Man, Turning the Tables with a Bayonet and Breaking a Standoff. All students of nasty close-quarters combat in the tradition of Sykes, Fairbairn, Applegate and other giants of the World War II era will thoroughly enjoy this fascinating piece of CQB history.
It seems Dempsey was the first mixed martial artist -http://www.mmbolding.com/Heavyweights/Boxer_vs._Wrestler_Jack_Dempsey.htm Aging Bull Jack Dempsey's 1940 'Comeback' Was a Sad and Mercifully Short Spectacle Mort Kamins Sport Illustrated April 17, 1995 Whatever one might say about the current crop of heavy-weights—or rather, the crop before Mike Tyson's recent release from prison—the sight of 26-year-old Michael Moorer crumbling to the canvas at the urging of George Foreman's 45-year-old right hand constituted a unique moment in boxing history. Goliath falls all the time, but it is usually a young, quick and clever David who brings him down, not some Methuselah of the ring. Until Foreman's 10th-round knockout of Moorer last November, attempts by aging champions to regain their former glories brought only memories of Joe Louis, slow and flabby, being taken apart by the clumsy but ferocious Rocky Marciano in 1951, or of Muhammad Ali, his lightning reflexes gone, absorbing hundreds of punches from Larry Holmes in 1980. Perhaps the most bizarre of all the heavyweight-returning-from-retirement tales is one that has been largely forgotten. In 1940 Jack Dempsey was 45 years old and desperately in need of money. A notorious soft touch, he had spent, given away and been cheated out of the millions of dollars he had earned during his flamboyant boxing career. His restaurant in New York City would not become profitable for a few years. And among Dempsey's other troubles, he had separated from his third wife, Hannah Williams. Enter Max Waxman, the fighter's fast-talking, pastrami-craving business manager. Waxman was keeping Dempsey afloat by booking personal appearances for him, mostly as a wrestling referee. One day in May, perhaps befogged by his own cigar smoke, Waxman concocted an extraordinary plan: The Manassa Mauler, the boxing hero of the Golden Age of Sport, would box again. Would the public buy it? Waxman figured it was worth a try. One evening later that month, while Dempsey was refereeing a wrestling match in Atlanta, he got into an argument with a notorious mat villain, Clarence (Cowboy) Luttrell. The two exchanged words and swings, and a few days later, the fortyish Luttrell issued a challenge. "I've licked tougher guys than Jack Dempsey," he bragged to a reporter. "There's never been a boxer who could beat a good wrestler. I want to be known as the guy who K.O.'d Dempsey." The fight was booked for the night of July 1 at Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Park. "We'll try out the show here, boys," Wax-man told Georgia sportswriters. "We might work our way up to a fight with Joe Louis [the reigning heavyweight champ]." When Dempsey returned to Atlanta a few days before the match, thousands greeted him at Terminal Station. There followed a boisterous, police-escorted parade through town. On fight night a crowd of 12,000 showed up at the stadium. People cheered as the paunchy, 205-pound Dempsey, who hadn't trained a minute for the match, made his way to the ring. But the man who had drawn the first million-dollar gate, in 1921, and had packed Sesquicentennial Stadium in Philadelphia with 120,757 fans for his first bout with Gene Tunney, in 1926, now found that his corner stool was an empty beer crate. The bout was as quick as it was brutal. Dempsey, his foot and hand speed gone, nonetheless pounded the clumsy 226-pound Luttrell to the canvas four times, battering his face into a bloody mask. Early in the second round, an exhausted Dempsey caught Luttrell flush on the jaw with a left hook, knocking him head over heels through the ropes and into the first row, where he struck his head on a camera case and lost consciousness (video). The crowd roared. Dempsey, gasping for breath, was exhilarated; he had earned only $4,000, but he had the old feeling. As for Luttrell, he woke up in the hospital an hour later, $800 richer. Two weeks later, in Detroit's Fairgrounds Coliseum, Dempsey fought another wrestling villain, a young cop from Hartford named Bull Curry. "Dempsey thought he could make a few easy bucks fighting wrestlers," Curry recalled almost 40 years later in a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut. "I showed him he'd get himself hurt." A professional ruffian, Curry had spent several years traveling around the country with third-rate carnivals, fighting all comers. He was neither intimidated by Dempsey's reputation nor inhibited by boxing rules. Despite having to fight with gloves, which he viewed as hindrances, he quickly turned the fight into a wrestling match. Early in the first round, he clamped a headlock on Dempsey until the former champ's face turned purple. The referee. Sam Hennessy, a dour, white-haired gentleman, finally pried the fighters apart, but Hennessy was overmatched. Grunting and grimacing, Curry took a few punches and was able to cuff Jack's ear with one of his own swings. Near the end of the round, Curry grabbed Dempsey by the legs and jack-knifed both Dempsey and himself out of the ring and directly into the lap of John Hettche, chairman of the Michigan State Boxing Commission, which had sanctioned the exhibition. Hettche, after recovering his hat and his glasses, may have wondered at the madness he had helped let loose. At 1:05 of the second round, Dempsey landed a vicious right to Curry's midsection. The wrestler, in agony, crumpled to the canvas and was counted out. But Curry got up almost immediately after the count and demanded to continue. He cursed the referee, shoved him aside, ran over to Dempsey's corner and smacked the boxer on the back, challenging him to keep fighting. The two men traded shoves and punches until Dempsey's handlers and the local police hustled the boxer out of the ring. Curry shouted insults at Dempsey as he left. The meager crowd—only 4,509 paid—jeered at the shabby burlesque. "I won his respect, I'll tell you that," Curry claimed years later. "That's all I wanted to prove." Still, Curry always thought he had been given a raw deal. "I was on my feet when they all jumped into the ring," he said. "I wasn't knocked out." Asked why the tight was stopped, Curry said, "They knew Dempsey would get hurt, let's put it that way. I'm the guy who ended his career." Curry may not have ended Dempsey's comeback—there would be one more fight—but he certainly hastened its conclusion. There was no more talk of meeting Joe Louis, and if Waxman still floated trial balloons, including a possible bout with the Chilean contender Arturo Godoy, they were immediately deflated. Meanwhile, 62-year-old Jack Johnson, who had been heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915 issued a challenge to Dempsey, and a Los Angeles promoter offered Dempsey a match with the former wrestler Ed (Strangler) Lewis, who was 50 and weighed 290. Bob Dumby, a New York sportswriter and a Dempsey admirer, spoke for many others: "Already he has sold a magnificent fistic birthright for a cheap mess of small-time pottage." The last serving of pottage was offered on July 29 in Charlotte. Dempsey's opponent was another wrestler, who had been known as the Purple Flash until someone pulled his mask off in the ring. Now he was merely Ellis Bashara, who had been a star lineman for the Oklahoma Sooners from 1927 to '31. Bashara registered a flabby 209 pounds at the weigh-in and promised that he would behave himself in the ring. Among the 6,500 or so at Charlotte's Memorial Stadium was Grady Cole, then a popular local radio personality who was also the chairman of North Carolina's boxing commission. Cole remembered the night well. "There was a real threat of rain," he said in an interview in 1979. "The promoter, Jim Crockett, stopped one of the preliminary bouts after two rounds, even though it was supposed to go six. Nobody complained, though. Hell, we were all there to see Dempsey." Cole, who had boxed a little himself, remembers the fight as an easy one for Dempsey. Former lightweight champion Benny Leonard had been hired to referee, but he had little to do that night. Bashara was bloodied early and went down three times in the first round. At the start of the second round. Dempsey flattened his opponent for good. "Jack could still hit a ton," Cole said, "but his legs were gone."Happily, the grotesque image of a wheezing middle-aged man clubbing wrestlers has faded. What remain vivid are pictures of the young tiger of the Western minefields using his flashing fists to destroy Jess Willard. Georges Carpentier and Luis Firpo—images of the Manassa Mauler, the greatest fighter of sport's Golden Age. As for Bashara, he had no alibis. "That Dempsey has a lulu of a right," he said after the fight. "You don't see it coming, but you sure know when it arrives." Four days later Dempsey quietly announced that his comeback was over. Surely he and Waxman realized that to continue would permanently tarnish Dempsey's still-brilliant name. Happily, the grotesque image of a wheezing middle-aged man clubbing wrestlers has faded. What remain vivid are pictures of the young tiger of the Western minefields using his flashing fists to destroy Jess Willard. Georges Carpentier and Luis Firpo—images of the Manassa Mauler, the greatest fighter of sport's Golden Age.
According to this website there are a few wrestling matches on his record... http://cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/dempsey.htm
interesting find! this makes for an interesting topic. if only he had gone to brazil and competed in the [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_tudo] This content is protected [/ame] I can guarantee he would have been a success.
I highly highly doubt it; the grappling level has increased so much in the past 2 decades alone. At the time, he would have been able to compete at a high level against the level of competition, although the talent pool would have been much smaller obviously. This content is protected
The early UFC and Pride would have been ****ing interesting. He is very talented and he would have evolved.
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