Jack Dempsey openly stated he would not fight black challengers

The fallout from Jack Johnson's victory over Jeffries was still recent at the time Dempsey was champion. Fallout being race riots, people dead, fight films made illegal to transport. Not excusing Dempsey but perhaps a reason he made the decisions he made.

 

Certainly the reason Rickard did not want to promote the fight,imo.

 

Yes Wills ko'd Fulton in a real fight did I imply he hadn't? Dempsey had taken Fulton out in 23 seconds including the count,I consider that a better performance than Wills' against the same opponent.
Where did I say Fulton was finished after Dempsey? I don't think he was the same fighter afterwards but that is a bit different.If you think my post was focusing on the negative aspects of Wills wins you are entirely correct I was making the point,[or trying to,]that results can be interpreted in the manner you want.

You've jumped on two remarks I never made, are you a keyboard ventriloquist? lol

 

Smith was a big puncher I guess he weighed about the same as Moore.Do you consider Moore a power puncher at heavyweight? Charles? Old Louis? Because I don't . Walcott was a good banger,big ? Around 190lbs six feet.

 

If boxrec is correct, Smith KO'd 38 men in 140 fights. That simply is not that impressive. Personally, I not only think Moore was a more dangerous puncher at heavyweight than Smith, (for example, the Embrell Davidson fight) but Lee Savold also clearly was. Savold KO'd 72 men in 143 fights, including 15 men who appeared in the NBA heavyweight ratings, for a total of 17 KO's.

"Walcott was a good banger, big?"

Smith was lighter than Walcott. But what is the issue? Willard and Carnera or Morris and Simon were much bigger than Dempsey and Louis. Who thinks they were more dangerous punchers? The fact is guys in the 180's or so, like Dempsey and Marciano and Satterfield, were historically able to knock out the biggest men who were capable of getting into the ratings in their eras.

I just disagree that men like Moore and old Louis, or Charles and Walcott, were somehow less dangerous punchers than a clumsy Morris or a long past it Smith.

 

"I consider that a better performance than Wills' against the same opponent."

I don't. Dempsey caught him cold. Okay. Wills broke three of his ribs and stopped him in three. Not much really to choose between those two results. Both dominated Fulton.

"Not the same fighter."

Nothing in Fulton's record to prove that concerning the Wills fight. Fulton seemed to hit the skids in 1922, not 1918.

As for Wills versus Dempsey. Langford and McVea definitely tip the scales to Wills as far as meeting dangerous punchers. He beat both in 1915, when McVea was 31 and Langford 32, and still top men.

Listing a whole slew of white guys Wills didn't fight raises the elephant in the room issue. Did these fights not come off because Wills wouldn't fight them or because they wouldn't fight Wills? Anyway, most of the men listed didn't fight Dempsey either.

 

Bill Paxtons book was trash IMO full of inaccurate info. I literally through my copy in the trash.

 

So, if you catch your opponent cold that doesn't count?
You may be correct ,maybe white fighters did not want to fight Wills,I don't know. Have you any proof this was the case?Would you agree that around half of Wills wins over Langford were over the diminished version of him?

Wills imo sat on his laurels hoping a title chance would come his way,feeding on what was described as ,
"well chewed meat".There is no argument that Wills deserved a title shot,but, with hindsight maybe he could have pressed his claim further by taking on one of the outstanding white challengers?

 

You've seen Morris,so you feel qualified to call him an oaf?
I didn't make the distinction big power punchers.I just tried to look at the examples provided by others.

 

Fulton in 1920 and Firpo in 1924 and Weinert in 1925 were not outstanding white challengers?

"well chewed meat"

You are ignoring that Wills kept fighting the same black fighters over and over because with a few exceptions, white fighters wouldn't fight him. In a left-handed way, you are using the effects of the color line against Wills.

Anyone who wants to can consider Dempsey better than Wills. I don't. And no one has any proof one way or another which man was better as Dempsey did not defend his title against Wills. I don't agree in any sense that any fault for this fight not coming off lies with Wills. He was a man in his late thirties with time running out. He wanted Dempsey not another dead end detour.

Let's just agree to disagree.

"If you catch your opponent cold that doesn't count."

I didn't say that. My take is it doesn't count more than destroying the guy in three rounds. For me, Dempsey has no edge over Wills in regard to how they both handled Fulton.

 

Okay. But no one else on this board has seen him either to rate him a more dangerous puncher than any version of Louis, or Moore, or Walcott.

As for the word oaf--the primary definition in my dictionary is clumsy. A better way of writing it would have been for me to use the word "oafish" to describe Morris.

How do I dare use that term? Because some who did see him used it. In 1933 Jack Kofoed had an article in The Ring on Carnera and the other giants he had seen, going all the way back to Dunkhurst and Plaake. This was shortly after Carnera KO'd Sharkey. Kofoed's point was that the really big guys had not been good, and he didn't think Carnera was all that good either, and he had some things to say about their alleged in ring quality:

"Size, of course, is an index of neither stamina nor resistance to punishment."

"What good did their size do them? Not a thing. Almost stationary on their pedals . . . lacking in defensive skill. They took what came until they passed out."

Kofoed names Jeff as the exception, and Willard as a partial exception, and Firpo as a dangerous puncher, "although he couldn't box and was certainly not a smart ringman"

"These three . . . and the Negroes, Harry Wills and George Godfrey, were the only giants who amounted to anything."

Among the twenty or more giants discussed is Morris, who is lumped with this dismissal:

"the big fellows were slow of foot and clumsy in action."

I concede that oaf is perhaps too vivid a term. I will edit it to clumsy.

*I don't want to strike a debate, but this is what he has to say about Carnera, while also mentioning that he didn't think Primo's jaw had really been tested:

"The Italian's rise to the heavyweight championship of the world was due not to size alone . . . but to his vast improvement in boxing and hitting."

 

Your points are well taken,I have no animosity towards you or your opinions ,we can always agree to disagree.
Do we know for sure that those white challengers wouldn't fight Harry?

The term well chewed meat isn't mine its a contemporary reporters,I don't blame Harry for sitting on his laurels he had done more than enough to earn a title shot, and I really wish he would have gotten it because I think Dempsey would have stopped him,and,by doing so dramatically enhanced his own legacy,which will always have the spectre of Wills hanging over it.

 

How many times has this topic been argued? It really wasn’t Dempsey’s choice to make at the time. He was under contract to Rickard and Kearns. There was a lot of push back from boxing commissions, mayors, judges, etc who wouldn’t allow it in their cities. The riots from the Johnson/Jeffries fiasco also prevented the fight in many cities.

 

Dempsey was still green and inexperienced when he fought Johnson. Something he also acknowledged in his biographies and interviews.

 

This tired excuse to brush away Dempsey's cowardice has been beaten to death long ago. Dempsey was only under contract with Rickard for the individual fights in which he performed. He had no problem boxing for other promoters as champion such as Mike Collins (Tommy Gibbons) and Floyd Fitzsimmons (Billy Miske). And Dempsey only abided by his contract with Kearns while it suited him. In 1925, before his contract was up with Kearns, he fired him and went his own way. He could have done this any time and had done it with several other managers in the past. Furthermore, Dempsey was the champion he wasnt some slave. He could have easily demanded that he be allowed to face the best. It was DEMPSEY'S services people were paying for and Dempsey could have simply said "Im not fighting anyone but Wills, make the match" and it would have happened. All this horse**** defending Dempsey like he was some rube that was being led around by the nose by others is bull****. The fact is that it benefitted Dempsey to fight guys he knew he could beat because as long as he was champion he could continue to cash in on the title inside and outside of the ring. He wasnt going to fight someone like Wills who had at least a 50/50 chance of beating him when was getting paid a fortune to fight no hopers like Miske and Carpentier. The proof is in the pudding that when Dempsey fired Kearns in 1925 he continued using the same tactics that everyone blames on Kearns for another year and a half to dodge Wills.