I have seen what this forum is evolving to slowly but surely...No longer a boxing forum to discuss the merits and boxing careers of fighters of the past, but it has been taken over by some posters who are so damned obsessed over "racism" that it has changed this forum so drastically that I who have been on this site about six years can hardly recognize the intent of this ESB site anymore,,, To shame. To shame...
Burt if we treat such posts as commercials and fast forward them without stopping to even acknowledge them we can get back to talking boxing. People like blubberchin and shamus, are baiting and just looking to get a rise from people. I guess it's people like us who are to blame cos we keep answering them. For myself I enjoy exposing their BS and heavy reliance on articles.
I agree. If he didn't change the game he certainty propelled it to a whole other level. And certainly Dempsey was the main beneficiary of the new economics of the sport. And l agree that from his point if view there was no incentive to rock the boat considering he was once riding the rails, which is why l think labelling him anything other than just a boxer who was a product of his times is simply incorrect.
Sam Langford, when asked how Harry Wills (whom he fought 18 times in his career) would do against Jack Dempsey, said in the June 5, 1922, Atlanta Constitution "Well if he ever fights Dempsey my money will be on the present champion. Dempsey is the greatest fighter I have ever seen. Understand Langford is considered perhaps the greatest pfp fighter in boxing history.
Gene Tunney was 2nd only to Muhammad Ali in terms of scientific boxing and lost only one fight 66-1 in his entire career. Tunney sat ringside watching the fantastic fight between Larry Holmes vs Ken Norton in 1978 just months before he passed away and said,"Jack Dempsey would have licked both of them, Dempsey was the greatest fighter who ever lived". Ray Arcel, was one of the greatest trainers in boxing history, he worked with 18 world champions including Barney Ross, Tony Zale, Ezzard Charles, Roberto Duran, and Larry Holmes. He was in the opposite corner from Joe Louis in 14 of his fights, and he also personally knew and learned from the great Benny Leonard. Arcel has stated that he considered Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey to be the three greatest heavyweights in history and hedged on picking between them, but here is what he said about Dempsey, He should been the only heavyweight anybody ever thought of when they thought about the greatest heavyweight champion. I mean he had everything. He could punch, he could box. He was mean and determined he was the best.
Max Schmeling rated Dempsey as the best heavyweight of all time, and he had sparred with Dempsey twice, and beaten Joe Louis.
Good, but "championship of the world" was never what it says it is. It was more an invention of American sportwriters in the age of John L. Sullivan. Previously, in 1860, the illegal fight in Hampshire between Englishman Tom Sayers and American John C. Heenan was boosted by writers as "world championship" too, when prizefighting was in an awful state and the actual fight did little to satisfy the hype, ending in police intervention and declared a draw. The championship of the world existed mostly in the imagination of the predominantly white American male, closely followed by the white Englishman. And the truth is the white American men were on high wages and were happy to spend the money on prizefights, hence why the purses the promoters offered were invariably higher than in other countries. Things were just done bigger in America. Especially when it came to showbusiness. It's all about money at the end of the day.
Obviously Rickard's genius lives on. We should erect a monument to the man. He took a rough and scrabble hobo with nascent talent and made a legend out of him through grand manipulation of press and matchmaking, with some questionable set-ups, a pushover in an ancient champion and then a succession of less-than-deserving challengers and moments of prolonged quiescence ... and still dullards believe he was a Goliath who Bestrode this Earth. I know that Rickard's hero believed there was a fool born every minute, I just didn't know that they continued to be born of the same narrative a hundred years hence.
Yes, but Rickard wasn't much without Dempsey. Dempsey made Rickard as much as Rickard made Dempsey, at least. Rickard's was a huge showman before Dempsey came along, with some famous successes, but he was hit-and-miss too. To the point where he'd retired for a few years. Even the Dempsey-Willard fight was a relative financial failure, but after Dempsey won the title Rickard knew he had a star. Except he didn't quite. It was DOC KEARNS and Hollywood that owned Dempsey outright. Rickard was also a beneficiary of New York politics and the swing towards legalizing boxing in that state. He'd lobbied for that but he'd needed allies who saw the political and financial advantages. And when push came to shove, his first million dollar gate ended up over in New Jersey because NY politicians were shaky on the whole prizefight thing still. Rickard misjudged a lot of things. For example, what use was Gene Tunney as champion without Dempsey ? I'm sure Rickard would have loved to have seen the public flock to Tunney, the fighting marine, the clean cut All-American. But Rickard wasn't the genius you might assume he was. You can't always get it right. Dempsey was like Ali or Tyson in popular appeal. Yes, you can say the media created them, as did the promoters, true to a large extent, but they all had some sort of enduring mystique, image and charisma that was bigger than any promoter's "Grand Narrative". It was something that happened more organically and naturally.
Ali is my number 1 Heavyweight but the most scientific ever? Really? He was just about as unorthodox as they come :huh
The first world heavyweight champion was actually Jem Mace after he defeated Tom Allen. It is only fair to not that Mace was scrupulous in meeting the best challengers, regardless of their race.
Mace and Allen claimed to be fighting for the "world" championship perhaps. Which challengers did Mace meet ?
