Jersey Joe Walcoott vs Jack Dempsey

I'm sorry, I don't think you have a point,I think you are just arguing for the sake of it.

 

Stumps book was garbage and shown to be. Alexanders and the latest are excellent. You are wrong and I believe arguing for arguing sake.

 

Oh, I have a point even if you don't recognize it. Dempsey was fighting in wilderness western states with minimal populations. The flight distance from Reno, Nevada (on the western border of Nevada) to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado (on the eastern border of Colorado) is 935 miles. The flight distance from London to Warsaw is 900 miles. So these are big states in area. Yet they had small populations in the 1910 to 1920 era, a total between them of 1,254,024 in the 1910 census. Nevada had only 81,875. Utah 373,351. Hardly a hotbed of boxing or any other sport as there just wasn't enough of a population to sustain a major sport.

Walcott on the other hand was fighting in the boxing and sports centers of the US. His home town, Camden, had a population of 118,700, considerably more than the state of Nevada. There were stadiums in New York and Philadelphia in the 1920's which could hold more people than the entire 1910 population of Nevada.

So really comparing Dempsey and Walcott in their early years is apples to oranges. Walcott was facing from the get go far the tougher competition. In fairness to Dempsey, he managed to overcome his restricted background to eventually become champion. Walcott had different but no less difficult hurdles to overcome in his struggle to the top.

 

His brutal 12th round KO of Brennan ... coming off high inactivity to cleanly defat a very craft Gibbons over 15 ..

 

Here's my take .. Walcott a crafty, cutie fighter with a punch but inconsistent and over rated. Dempsey might get a surprise knockdown but I see him beating Walcott up pretty badly ..

 

What exactly am I supposed to be wrong about. I merely posted that the quote you quoted doesn't really sum up the man who had his good side, off the latest research, including the biog by Charles Leerhsen, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, which I have read.

In what areas does Alexander's old biography disagree with Leerhson?

As for Alexander, I looked him up and he is quite a prolific author. I noticed he wrote "Holding the Line: the Eisenhower Era, 1952-1961" which I checked out of the library and read many years ago. He is a noted historian.

The issue to me is am I wrong that Cobb in total was not such a bad guy?

 

Walcott was a LOT better than Willie Meehan who gave Jack fits, admittedly over four rounds and Bill Brennan is not my idea of a good heavyweight, he couldn’t beat Harry Greb who while a genius was a middleweight. Dempsey had already kayaked Brennan a year earlier, knocking him down five times so I don’t really understand why he was given a title shot.

Gibbons couldn’t handle the great Harry Greg either.

Unlike a lot of romantics I don’t rate these guys as A class contenders. Firpo simply couldn’t fight and Carpenter was a midget by historical heavyweight standards.

I will have to disagree with Macca and he grant who are both really knowledgeable posters. I just never rated Dempsey as highly as some, I believe he was more myth than reality.

Dempsey won the title from Willard who was old and inactive ( excuses Dempseys fans make for Jack’s own less than stellar performances in certain fights ) and he was nobody’s idea of a great fighter, Jack defended the crown sporadically against mediocre heavyweights like Firpo and Carpenter and also drew the colour line.

Tunney basically beat the tar out of him twice and I believe Gene would’ve stopped Dempsey if those fights had been held over the fifteen round distance instead of ten. Richard and Kearns were both geniuses at promotion and matchmaking, I will give them that.

Dempsey gets away with a lot of sins as far as how we rate the great fighters in my opinion. A ducker, a guy who preferred the good times and the high life to being a real fighting champion and regularly defending his title, a fighter who always struggled against scientific boxer types.

Cheers Guys.

 

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Hard to disagree with any of this!

 

Is it true that Ty Cobb was gay?

 

No

 

I certainly respect your points as well as the good faith method you use to express them .. regarding Dempsey, it is easy to criticize him because he deserves it .. he wasted his prime thru inactivity .. he ducked Wills and did not fight Greb .. that said he always gets an incomplete as a rating from me .. in my opinion he had the skills to be a cruiserweight version of. Duran or a Manny Paq if he maxed out his potential rather than underachieved .. that said, I have watched his fights many times over very carefully and I do see a tough as nails, very fast, very strong, wicked two handed puncher with a ton of heart and killer instinct. I see Dempsey matching up against Walcott much better than Rocky did .. I see Jack chasing him down and beating Walcott badly to the body, slowing him down and stopping him .. no doubt Joe could be dangerous but unless he caught and took Jack out early I see him stopped in seven or eight .. the Louis Walcott fought was a faded version, much slower than the prewar Louis .. Charles was tough but small at heavyweight and lacked the firepower .. I don't see Walcott being able to stay the course or take the punishment ..

 

Thanks for posting this.

with the Cubs and A's in the previous world series it means this interview must have been between 1929 and 1930.

 

Amazing clip on Cobb.

 

Leehrsen criticized Alexander for uncritically accepting certain myths about Cobb and including them in his book without adequately fact-checking them. Biggest criticism seems to involve the infamous Cleveland hotel fight. Alexander claims that Cobb attacked two black men and stabbed one to death; Leehrsen says that the guys were almost certainly white and that nobody sustained any serious injuries:


https://nypost.com/2015/05/31/how-ty-cobb-was-framed-as-a-racist/

"The most famous story cited as evidence of Cobb’s racism actually had nothing to do with race. In 1909, Cobb got into a fight in a Cleveland hotel that, according to legend, led to the stabbing death of a black man.

That isn’t true. No one was killed. Cobb fought with the (white) security guard, whom he claimed he lightly raked across the back of the wrist with a pen knife, though the guard later said Cobb stabbed him in the shoulder and the hand. Cobb may have also struck a bellhop.

Cobb enthusiastically supported the integration of major league baseball when he was asked about Jackie Robinson in 1952.

Race had nothing to do with this incident. Neither of the other men was ever described as black in the numerous newspaper reports at the time, though at the time reporters invariably and delightedly pointed out when someone was a “negro.” Leerhsen even dug up the census report that lists the watchman’s race as white.

Charles Alexander’s 1984 Cobb biography says both the watchman and the bellboy were black, but when asked by Leerhsen where he got that information, Alexander offered no specific source, offering vaguely that it was in news reports of the time. “It isn’t,” Leerhsen declares flatly.”