Jack Dempsey vs Joe Louis

Double post. To distract you from my boobery, here's a photograph of Harry Wills from the Library of Congress.

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WHAT THE HECK?

Moderator, please clean up my mess.

edit: Thank you, Mr. Moderator

 

I have a tape of Fleischer giving his opinions on the Woroner all-time tournament in the 1960's and Fleischer picks Louis over Dempsey.

 

Well, coincidence wants that there is currently a thread about "the best fighter to have not had the championship" in the general forum. Guess what, it was flooded with names like Quarry, Langford, Burley, even Shavers and Carl Williams. Wills was only mentioned once at the end of a list, by McGrain who has also spent a lot of time in the classic forum.

You can be pretty sure that they all know Dempsey and rank him pretty high. No mention of Wills though.

 

He changed his mind after the second Godoy fight and other classic Louis performences.

And that is fair enough to me. Louis had to earn being picked over Dempsey and eventualy he did.

 

You have a point--maybe I can give a better analogy. In 1969 Joe DiMaggio was selected as baseball's 'baseball's greatest living player' when baseball was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Mickey Mantle retired in 1968 and was obviously beaten by DiMaggio. I have seen polls since which rate Mantle ahead of DiMaggio, although I have no idea what the general consensus would be. In his Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James argues that Mantle was better than DiMaggio. Now is the 1969 vote definitive, or can new generations, reevaluating the worth of criteria such as batting average and on-base percentage, reverse the judgement of men who saw both play?

On Cobb and Ruth--I know of very few experts who rate Cobb over Ruth today, Many did back in the 1950's and 1960's and I assume earlier. Batting average was considered the definitive measure of a batter's ability back then. Now I think slugging percentage and/or on-base percentage would be considered better markers. My point here is that the criteria of one generation need not be the criteria of succeeding generations, and perhaps should not be, or else we have learned nothing.

 

I lost count of the number of times "common" opponents of fighters in an upcoming match picked the wrong winner. Just goes to show.

 

I'll say it again, my points simply are that:

a) Dempsey wanted no part of Jeannette.
b) The crowd had no trouble seeing black vs white, i.e. there didn't appear to be a color bar that night.

 

Present your evidence, I've yet to see any in support of such a claim.

...for a charity exhibition. Yes, I agree.

Many fans paid good money to watch Jim Jeffries spar with Bob Armstrong too, but I wouldn't be so foolish as to claim that a 1900 crowd's willingness (or, indeed, fervor) to watch an exhibition between a black fighter and a white fighter should stand as "proof" that no color line existed.

 

With Dempsey being the absolute perfect example of what you speak

:good

 

I've seen several newspaper articles over the years stating on how Jeannette campaigned to fight Dempsey as an attempt to get into contention. Unfortunately i haven't saved any of these articles (including the one of Dempsey walking out of the ring). Supposedly, Jeannette being a "substitute" was the icing on the cake of his Dempsey-challenging.

As i've said, unfortunately i haven't saved the articles on it, but from what i remember, it was a real fight. But i'll take your word on it.

So you're telling me now that Dempsey was afraid of an exhibition fight with Jeannette??

It's a pity i don't have access to those newspapers, i would like to research this color line more. There were several black vs white fights around that period, even black champions as Battling Siki and Tiger Flowers.

 

I'm not sure about better but have no problems with him being mentioned on the same level. The thing is Marciano won his fights regardless of layoff.

Well with the first fight and the Sharkey fight ring rust was gone and he didn't pull the second fight out. By comparison a Holmes pulled out the rematch vs Spinks even if he didn't get the nod. He was at least as badly off as Dempsey and Spinks was a stylistic drama at that advanced stage of his career. Jack had his chance to make amends. He gave it a good shot tho.

After having 6 fights in the previous 9 months Tunney had not fought for another 9 coming into the Dempsey fight. Tho not as bad as Dempsey he too was a bit rusty. It's not one way traffic here and we must remember there were two people in the ring, not just Jack.

Again i must remind there are two people in this fight. Tunney had 83 fights going into Dempsey, Jack had 80. Tunney was only 2 years younger, no big difference there.
Tunney had 5 BRUTAL fights against the great Harry Greb. All we ever see from Dempsey fans are allowances made for Jack concerning this fight and i have never ever seen any of them make allowances for poor Gene Tunney.

Tunney also only had one more fight ever post Dempsey - they were both at the same career stage!

When all the facts are gathered and presented this fight becomes a much different proposition. In the race to salvage Dempsey all regard for Tunney and his own difficult set of circumstances go flying out the door.

Holmes showed steady easy to see signs of decline over a long period of time. Dempsey didn't show the same.

No arguement there, even the 40's etc were just brutal when we look at the schedules of SRR, Charles, Hank, Moore et al. Scary times.

My post showing the difficulties Tunney faced as well in the face of you not even mentioning any of the relevent points i made in this debate show that Dempsey is the alibi'ed one. No regard whatsoever for Gene Tunney, none, nada, zilch. Holmes don't need no excuse as we all know he come back to beat Spinks regardless of Don King and his merry men.

I do, but we then have the Sharkey fight then the rematch. Ain't no 3 year layoff in the rematch sorry to say.

Oh definitely, the rest didn't overly impress me. Considering my seldom if ever mentioned pertinent points for poor Genes side i have to say Tunney is every chance of matching him peak, EVERY chance.

REMATCH

Inactivity can also be a godsend for a fighter as proven numerous times throughout history Sonny, it has been shown to extend and revitalise many careers. Jack had the rematch and Tunney as i have shown wasn't in a much different situation.

Chris has since shot this down as absolute BS so no need for further comment from me.

I bet they were nothing like Moore's fantastic run. Last time i looked Miske had just one win from his previous 5 going into his title shot vs Dempsey - a disgrace.

 

Dempsey had 80 officially recorded fights. I don't want to get bogged down in another Dempsey thread, but I think it's patently unfair to compare on this basis. Gene Tunney was a New York-based, well-groomed and trained fighter whose early fights were all in established and regulated venues. Jack Dempsey was fighting in boxing backwoods out West in towns that are still in the middle of nowhere today.

In a 1930s interview Dempsey estimated his "real" career record as approximately 120 wins, 15 losses, and 20 draws. I think this is a more accurate estimation of his actual number of prizefights than the currently-acknowledged "official" record.

In fact, now that I give the matter some consideration, Gene Tunney may be the first gloved heavyweight champion for whom we can state with some confidence that all his professional bouts are known and credited officially. Surely the same could not be said of Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Jeffries, Burns, or Johnson. Willard might break the streak given the relatively small number of fights in his late-starting career. Record-keeping in the early days really was a crapshoot.

 

JohnThomas,

Tunney was a great fighter in his absolute peak in both the Dempsey fights.

Dempsey was a great fighter who NEVER recovered his peak form after the 3-year layoff (the 2nd extended layoff of his career).

This is simple stuff to understand.

They were both great fighters. One of them was at his best, the other had slipped considerably (noticeably).

Layoffs generally damage the capabilities of a fighter, in most cases. Telling me otherwise wont change that. It's basic stuff.

I dont understand the bit about "making allowances for poor Gene Tunney". I think the man was at his peak in 1925-28. Dont you ?
I'd "make allowances" for him losing to Greb when he was young, but no one's doubting Tunney.

Tunney retired at his peak, so telling me they were at the "same career stage" is silly, it means nothing, it's a misleading statement. But only a fool would be misled by it. I expect better arguments from you, JT.

 

It is true that Dempsey took three years off, but is it relevent? I don't see why he gets dibs for being totally inactive. If he had gone way down hill, it was not because of age but because he chose not to fight for years on end. I see no reason to give him some sort of edge when comparing him to later champions. The best that can be said is that he POTENTIALLY could have been a top five heavyweight if he had put all his efforts into it from 1922 to 1925. But he didn't, and so he isn't.