Jack Dempsey in the Klitschko era

I love those who use an old, fat, inactive Jess Willard, a guy, who even with his prime performance is routinely ranked as the worst heavyweight champ of all time, as a litmus test for today's division.

Keep feeding me this comedy, folks. I've been a little down lately.

 

Who has used Willard as a litmus test for today's division!

Name and shame these fools!

Hope you begin to feel better soon mate.

 

Why would you make that assumption? Show me one fighter in history who put on 20 pound of muscle and retained his speed, quickness, agility and stamina.

Has that ever even been done before?

I could be wrong, maybe it has but it seems like a baseless assumption to me, unless you can back it up?

 

And make no mistake.... Dempsey today would be a dangerous guy for anyone. Against big dudes, he went all out, high risk/high reward type blitzkrieg. Someone you would otherwise expect to handle him would get KTFO sooner or later, not only in this era but any era. The problem is that approach doesn't yield consistent results.

 

The two biggest guys he fought were Firpo and Willard. He faced the two completely dfferently.

Against Willard he was patient but took his cancel when it was given to him.

Against Firpo he fell in love with his own hype and just went ***** to the wall in a bid to impress.

The former strategy could yield consistent results. The latter would see him sparked at some point.

 

Sorry, my point is that there's really no way to know how much a 210-lb Dempsey would resemble the finely-tuned fighting machine he was at 185/190. Difficult enough figuring out how the fighters that we see on film and read about would fare in other eras without conjuring up hypothetical, transformed versions of those fighters, imo. But to each his own.

 

Of course there's no way of knowing. Holyfield didn't know whether it would benefit him to bulk up, neither did Haye, neither did any of the others. They just knew to compete at HW it was necessary.

 

Willard gave Dempsey nothing but chances. Jack waited a minute and then cashed in his chips. Wisely. He had a full blown stiff in front of him. Once Jack started he wasn't going to stop going full bore until the job was done.

I would definitely say that both fights were front loaded offensively for Jack. You take away the ability to punch upon a downed fighter rising and add an opponent with a scant bit of defense and the effectiveness of that approach dwindles.

 

1) I'm glad you spotted I meant chance rather than cancel. Autospell is a pain!

2) full bore when an opponent is hurt is different to full bore when an opponent isn't. Against Willard he waited till he hurt him, against Firpo he was like a face first brawler, a bit like Ketchel actually.

If he has a measured approach I think he can certainly succeed in the modern era, obviously with a bit more muscle on him.

 

HerolGee seems to think that Sanders was a "failure" and therefore W.Klitschko's reign was soiled. Since we are comparing the fighters that Wlad and Jack faced, I think it's fair to say that if Sanders was a "failure" then Meehan was abysmal.

Sanders had 46 fights, with 42 wins and 4 losses. A KO% of 67%. Two of those losses were to world champions, one was when he was completely over the hill and shot, the worst one was to Nate Tubbs. Tubbs was a guy who was 6'4 and weighed around 250lb.

So. Onto Meehan.

Meehan had 154 bouts with 84 wins, 28 losses and 38 draws. A KO percentage of 11%. For just about every fight he won, he would lose or draw another. But, I hear you say, the boxers Willie faced were probably all savage brutes.

Alas.

Brutes like Manuel Torres who had a record of 4 wins, 10 losses, and who KO'd Meehan where the murderous Dempsey could not. Or (lol) the mighty Dave ****rell, who managed a draw with Meehan in his debut, his one and only fight. Or, or ... hang on, the scary Ray Campbell, who whipped Meehan on points and sports a record of 22-22-15 with a lousy 4 KO's. Wow. He managed to knockout 4 guys in 60 matches. Featherfist doesn't begin to describe the man. Or, wait, how about the ATG monster puncher Walter Coffey? 16-21-3 was his record, and he had 8 KO's (of his own - he'd been knocked out 12 times by others) ... one of which was, wait for it, Willie "fat boy" Meehan. A guy with a losing record managed to KO Willie where Dempsey could not.

If you scrutinize Meehan's record even further, he was matched with many, many fighters that WERE FIGHTING THEIR FIRST PRO FIGHT. And he lost to some of them. How sad is that? How more padded can a record get?

As some have pointed out, a monster savage like Dempsey was most effective in the early rounds. So I don't see how a 4 round format in any way detracts from his performance against Meehan. The 4 round format should FAVOUR Dempsey. Unless you feel a 4 round specialist would be favoured over Jack in which case I'd hate to see what Butterbean or heaven forbid, the Sanders that Wlad fought, would do to Dempsey.

You asked me to learn more about Meehan ... and I have. He's far worse than I feared.

The same Meehan that Dempsey has a losing record to, one of the losses being in his prime :-(

This line of reasoning is doing you no good, Burt.

 

if I meant that, why haven't you quoted me making that correlation?

because I didn't make it. Once again you FLOP mate. Why you enjoy serial flopping?

 

^ Herol needs to learn to write and understand English, because that is exactly what the implication of his words is.