Boxing commission's today would not let that happen a MW vs a HW. My point was that a smaller guy does have the power to drop a bigger guy. Jack Johnson vs Stanley Ketchell. But that cant happen today not even in the MMA. It was a different ball game in those days. GGG vs Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Tyson Fury and they would be using 10oz gloves today. The reason I mentioned smaller gloves was cos that was what they were using in those days. Maybe there are people on the forum who might not have your knowledge of the damage a smaller glove can do. Harry Greb, was slicing up bigger guys with those gloves. You could do a lot more damage with smaller gloves, you also could find openings that wouldn't be there if you were using bigger gloves.
Hey, don't blame Dempsey, that's what was available at the time. Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, came yrs later. So comparing them is a matter of opinion You could make your own list of the 10 greatest HW's of all time, and rate Dempsey on the bottom of your list if it'll make you happy. There are countless top ten lists and each have there own version, cos it's just your opinion.
All true, but my point is I think the pool of talent in the heavyweight division is deeper than it was during the era of Jack Johnson and prior. Burns would never have been a legitimate heavyweight champion, today, in the 50's, in the 30's or even during Dempsey's time. So because of that, you could have middleweights beating heavyweights, but certainly there were no middleweights alive, that were going to beat Joe Louis.
Muhammad Ali defeated the likes of Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Ken Norton. Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling, Jersey Joe Walcott, Max Baer and Billy Conn. Lennox Lewis defeated Vitali Klitschko, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. Jack Dempsey defeated the great FRED FULTON, JESS WILLARD and LUIS FIRPO. Guess who the outlier is.
Ali Louis Marciano Dempsey Johnson Lewis Holmes Klitschko Tyson Jeffries Foreman Holyfield Frazier Liston Wills Patterson Schmeling Walcott Tunney Charles So 4. He's number 4.
Actually, he had other guys to fight. That's one of the points. Digging up corpses and retreads doesn't help his ranking.
How in the hell does Dempsey rank above Lewis, Tyson, Holyfield, Holmes, Liston... or even Waldo? I can't see any arguments for that. Dempsey and Tyson had comparable rises to some degree except the quality of fighter Tyson beat was leagues ahead of the scrubs Dempsey faced.
Surely the "why" of Dempsey-Wills not happening is irrelevant, in sporting terms? He didn't fight him, Wills was the other outstanding heavy of this era and the only thing that matters is how much this matters? If you're ranking h2h entirely (McVey, luf) it doesn't matter that much (though i'd suggest the fighter lacking a passed test at the very, very highest level, does matter a bit as far as that's concerned). But if you're ranking some other way, surely it affects his true dominance? He can be dominant against his competition, and he was, but he can't be dominant over an era in these circumstances, and surely, regardless of how you rate his abilities, if you're ranking primarily or partly on legacy, that's significant? What I think irritates the anti-Dempsey brigade where the hardcore Dempsey guys are concerned is that there's a tendency to "hand out" a win over Wills - to behave, in terms of ranking, that Dempsey was better, would, in their opinion, have beaten him, therefore it can just be behaved like he beat Wills. But legacy doesn't work like that. If you didn't prove it, it didn't happen. That's why threads pop up about how Lewis would have done against Ruiz and Byrd or how Louis would have done against Ray. But in none of these cases was the question of dominance so huge because there never was a fighter, at any weight, that I am aware of, who loomed so large during any great champion's reign. The colour line doesn't matter in sporting terms. Opinions about who would win don't matter in appraising the legacy of Dempsey, in sporting terms. In sporting terms all that matters is that Dempsey never proved himself the best fighter of his title reign - he really didn't. Having a #1 contender type for most of your reign isn't the same as Ruiz hanging around the top ten for some years of the Lewis reign and never proving himself #1. It leaves a massive question mark. Can Dempsey still be regarded great despite this question mark? Sure. Is it reasonable, in the light of that question mark, to rank him outside the top ten? Yes, it is. But hardcore Dempsey types seem unable to see this. Hence, three times a year, twenty page threads on the matter.
Your opinion not a fact Maybe you don't understand how things work, if there were other guys for Dempsey to fight, there wasn't much incentive or clamor to fight them, another straw.
This is how I see it. For some reason the prosecution seem to be the group most obsessed by the reasons why the fight didnt happen. I honestly wonder why they bother!
