Jack Dempsey v. Ike Ibeabuchi

The experts weren't really nearly as certain that Dempsey would beat Wills as they later were that Liston would defeat Ali. Nor do I buy that the Liston-Ali fights were some sort of upsets. Ali was simply the better fighter. But the experts on the whole didn't notice his speed and elusiveness. It was so bad that the only two "experts" (and one admitted he knew nothing much about boxing but didn't understand why the clearly better athlete was such a prohibitive underdog) who picked Ali appeared on I've Got a Secret. Talk show hosts made fun of Ali to his face prior to the fight for even thinking he belonged in the ring with Liston.

Relying on expert opinion (and don't forget this is "white" expert opinion on a mixed match and therefore could be biased beyond the usual biases) for fantasy fights is relying on what has been proven to be fallible opinion. So of course is my opinion or anyone else's but why should we default our opinions to guys who for the most part thought Dempsey would easily handle Tunney and favored old Willard over Dempsey?

 

To be fair, Clay (he was not Ali yet) hadn't shown anything much against Doug Jones and Henry Cooper to suggest he'd be able to avoid a bad fate against Liston.

Yes, opinion of contemporary "experts" is no measure of anything.
Perhaps with hindsight we have a better basis for forming opinion on fantasy fights, but I'm not sure we do either.

 

My take is that the general level of boxing skill has improved a great deal over the decades. For me the only fair way to rate historical fighters is how much they stood out from the other fighters of their own era. Asking them to deal with fighters from almost a century later is I think unrealistic. And don't forget, this evolutionary process isn't necessarily ending with the current era either. Jimmy Brown has been mentioned (for non-Americans, an exceptionally big and talented NFL running back of the late fifties and early sixties). Brown certainly represented a quantum leap in athleticism for an NFL running back. His time was also the time of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Muhammad Ali. One could judge this as the dawn of the modern sports era. However, I note Ali is about halfway between a Dempsey and a Joshua in size. Bigger and more skilled athletes is the way of things. Athletes who were once exceptional are caught eventually by this rising tide of talent.

To cut to the chase, I would take Ibeabuchi if these two as they existed were actually matched. He was more skilled in my judgment than anyone Dempsey fought (yes, and that includes Tunney) besides being really big. Sure, Dempsey has a punchers chance, but more likely he eats jabs from the get-go and when he gets inside finds himself bludgeoned by a guy 50 lbs. heavier with fairly quick hands. It is interesting to note that the then considered huge Fred Fulton actually weighed the same as Chris Byrd. Willard had to have a spare tire around his middle to weigh the same as the sculpted Ibeabuchi.

Having said this, Dempsey, for all the flaws in his resume, is by far the more proven fighter. Ibeabuchi looks great, but I would want to see him against a tall fellow with a good jab. There are way too many question marks to rate him highly in an historical sense.

 

Agree, he is clearly slower than holyfield for example, both hand and foot speed

I think his power is also overrated a little bit, in the tua fight his punches look kinda without snap, leverage.
Obviously that uppercut that caught byrd was a monster shot and probably the reason why his power is overrated

Don't get me wrong, the guy could punch, but probably not in the league of ruddock, lewis etc...

 

Excellent point on Jones and Cooper. Reminds me of the Firpo argument on this thread. Wills dominated Firpo but didn't stop him and so he would never (even when years younger) have had a chance against Dempsey.

On fantasy fights, I agree that anyone's opinion is just an opinion. That is why I don't include head-to-head as a factor on my historical rankings. There are facts and then there are guesses.

 

Good points. I was wondering about Ike's power also. But he was coming on and those punches which took out Byrd look like they could have taken out anyone. Punching power isn't necessarily there from the beginning, though. Dempsey would be an example of a guy who didn't show that much power in his early years. Another is Sonny Liston. Liston tended to go to decisions quite a bit in his learning fights.

 

No, they don't matter at all. The answers don't change the outcomes of the fights. In every Dempsey thread your goal is to make people believe he practically lost the Firpo, Gibbons, and Brennan fights (at the very least). You are just another biased ***** trying to make your generation seem like it was better than it really was and when anybody says anything about another generation you accuse them of the same thing. Its called projecting and you are a perfect example.

 

I think he was throwing a lot of relatively weak shots in the Tua fight too. Both fighters get a ton of deserved credit for throwing so many punches in that fight but as I noted before they weren't always picking their shots like solid professionals, they were fighting a bit uneducated/novice-like at times, just being busy without making every punch count. Which is fine considering the stage they were in their careers, especially in Ike's case.

He was probably getting better by the Byrd fight. But the flipside to that is Byrd probably was better boxer afterwards too. Byrd learned a lot from the defeat, like Ruiz learned from his loss to Tua.

 

Starting as a skinny middleweight Dempsey scored 19 inside the distance wins out of 33 fights up until 1917.
Ike started at 21 and weighed 231lbs for his debut.

 

Wills was only 32 when he beat Firpo. Had he regressed that much?

 

The 1910 census lists Wills as being 21 and so born in 1889 which means he was 35 in 1924. I consider the census the best source. His gravestone (can be found on the internet) also lists his birth year as 1889.

By the way, the old Ring Record Book lists his height as 6' 4"--boxrec has managed to make him shorter and younger. Cynical folks might see an agenda in all this.

I also agree with Seamus that I would question Dempsey doing "better" against Firpo. He got knocked out of the ring and almost lost. Wills, off what I've read, won almost every round. Sort of like arguing Foreman did better against Ron Lyle than Jimmy Young did.

 

Yes and he would have come back with something better than Tua did.

 

Again, I disagree because you're looking at things at things from only a well today's athletes run this time, Brown ran this time... thus many more guys would dominate back then like he did. The problem here is, ALL you can go by is what you do in YOUR era. THAT is how you separate yourself and what speaks volumes. For example, the players you reference that would "dominate" in Brown's era with their stats and metrics, don't even stand out in their own era. That is the crux of the argument. When they all have the same general knowledge, training techniques, equipment etc etc, and they don't dominate, that tells us they are transcendent athletes. The ones that dominate, are the ones that dominate, and that list is very small. It always is in any era. What this speaks to is, who separated themselves in their own respective era's AND also have the physical makeup to compete with today's athletes.

For example, Charles had a very good HW resume and did just fine in his era, but he lacked the physical dimensions to compete with today's Super HW's. I cited Bob Cousy as an example, who be an excellent passer in any era, but didn't have the physical dimensions and attributes to compete with today's PG from a physical perspective. We have the opposite with Brown, not only did he separate himself much more than Cousy and Charles from a domination standpoint, he also had the physical dimensions and attributes that stack up quite well with today's athletes. That is the huge difference here. This is the exact reason I give JJ so much credit. Sure on film at times he doesn't blow you away by modern technique standards, but again; that is how they fought and they techniques that were taught. Going by such techniques and knowledge, Johnson totally dominated and in many ways revolutionized the sport. That is all one can expect, and the biggest telling point about greatness. As mentioned previously, look at the top RB's of all time (or who's considered it), which one had the speed to be a track star in their time? Nobody. Yet, Jim Brown was, and still dominated his era more than anybody considered (besides him) the top RB of all time. That is transcendence. It seems we agree Brown would do fine, I just happen to think he'd do better than you seem to think I suppose.