Jack Dempsey vs Harold Johnson primes

Who wins this matchup?

 

Bump.

I genuinely don’t know how Dempsey is gonna be able to land clean very often here. Johnson was very defensively responsible, stayed tight, had an excellent jab, measured the distance very well, was very sharp on the counter and certainly had enough power to make opponents respect him, despite what his record suggests.

He also wasn’t weak physically, he wasn’t too much smaller than Dempsey in size.

Dempsey would often come wide with his punches and attacks, lunging, and I believe the tight defence and fundamentals of Johnson are well equipped to deal with this.

Obviously Dempsey has enough power to hurt him if he lands clean, but I don’t see how he’s gonna be able to land clean often enough. Sure he has a puncher’s chance, but who did Dempsey beat who was as fundamentally sound as Johnson? No one was even close.

People will point to his ‘Oakland’ Billy Smith loss, but firstly he had different leverages to Dempsey, Dempsey didn’t really set up punches in the way Smith was able to set up his right hand, which was actually really well set up, the subtle step to make it look like he was going left, used the left with no intention of landing only to generate more power and speed of delivery with that right.

Not to mention Johnson had an excellent career outside of that fight, and it’s unfair to judge him based on one fight when the rest of his career suggested that was simply a bad night at the office.

I feel like Johnson measures the range against Dempsey, controls the range, outjabs Dempsey, makes him look predictable, makes him walk onto the jab and because of this, is able to see the attacks coming from Dempsey and is able to stay tight, or step back and give himself enough distance to make Dempsey miss wildly.

And he will punish Dempsey when he misses, and Dempsey would indeed respect the counters of Johnson, and wouldn’t simply be able to ‘walk through the punches’, since Johnson did have more than enough power to drop guys if that didn’t respect him.