Lewis, Tyson,Holyfield Dont make my TOP 10 HWs of ALL TIME

At Heavyweight?

Remember, heavyweight being the key word.

 

Dempsey at 3? When he was afraid to fight a 40-plus Johnson (his reasons was he "never fights negroes") :huh

 

Thats not true mate, Johnson wasn't a realistic contender while Dempsey was champion. He's drop Dempseys name every now and again for a bit of publicity but I don't think the fight was really a goer.

Harry Wills was the black fighter that Dempsey is often charged with ducking but even that has more to do with the problems of selling a heavyweight title fight involving a black fighter after all waves Johnson had made for white America during his reign. They'd just got rid of one PITA black heavyweight champ and they wern't in any hurry to get another.

 

Remove Tunney Foreman and Liston from your list and you can fit them in, simple

 

Typical condescending post from a romanticist.

 

You're right, I'm being biased because I've just read Johnson's biography "Unforgiveable Blackness" and Johnson's now my fave heavy ever! Having read over it again, Dempsey's win over Willard was 4 years after Willard became champion.
Still, it seems Dempsey and his manager had already made up their minds not to fight blacks. Though Johnson was well diminished there was still some currency that he threw the Willard fight and his sparring sessions with Angel Firpo indicated he would have been a bad style match up for Dempsey. One of the interesting things that came out of the book was despite the racism of the time from the general populace, the boxing writers were not shy about suggesting that white champions were merely drawing the "color line" as a convenient cover to avoiding fighting men who could probably beat them handily. While Dempsey (and Tunney for that matter) could argue they were prisoners to circumstance, that shouldn't be migitiating factors in assessing their greatness.

 

atsch

:happy:happy

 

Its a great read isn't it? The one thing that doesn't read true to me about the Willard fight being a fix is why a 37 year old boxer, fighting in the blazing sun of Havana, would wait until the 26th round to take a dive?


Although neither Dempsey or Tunney defended against black fighters , with the expection of Wills, there wasn't a great deal of black talent in the heavweight division around that time. Johnson, Jeanette, Mcvea and Langford were all well past their best while Dempsey and Tunney were world class heavyweights (although i think I read somewhere that Dempsey turned down a fight with Langford when he was a prospect) and the rest were nothing really exceptional.

I'm sure a couple of the "old guard" were in the "who needs him club" where Dempseys manager was concerned and the colour line was an easy way to avoid the fights but I don't think at that stage in their careers they would have troubled Dempsey or Tunney too much.

 

Hilariously bad list. Dempsey is laughably high, Foreman is way too high aswell. Tunney shouldn't be in the top 10.