Nonpareil Dempsey's resume

If we assume his resume is reasonably accurate,and that of his opponents, a good 75% of his adversaries were tyros and nobodies.You need some one much more informed than the likes of me to properly evaluate his competition,and his standing in the middleweight ranks.

 

I think we need @Greg Price99 for this?

The only guys I recognised are the ones who beat him, Fitzsimmons and Ryan.

 

Sorry mate, when I did my top 20 MW rankings I excluded NP Jack Dempsey, not because im confident he doesn't belong, but because I don't know enough about his opposition to confidently appraise his greatness.

 

To me it can be tough to judge these early pugilists, who aren't necessarily heavyweight (because heavyweights had afaik the best record keeping as they were perceived as the greatest ofc...) and are therefore not well documented. I agree with @mcvey that most of his opposition that is recorded is a list of nobodies who mean nothing (to us) and make up the large extent of his record.

On the same hand I will never discount the fact that many fighters came from a broke and unknown background, as such i dont want to judge any pugilists competition by the fact that they were 'unknown', i rank the non-pareil very highly in historic context but not modern. There is no easiness in fighting a random man, you open yourself up to a lot of opposition in the sense, that you aren't aware or acquainted with.

of course fighting the local drunk and boxer might be an easy challenge as a champion moves from town-to-town, but in the end, taking on opposition that is fresh and in their home town is not easy. we can all infer that if the middle-weight champion of the world walked into our town or city, and offered us to fight, we'd give it everything we had. Not just The Non-Pareil but Sullivan and Gans, etc. had to face unknown opposition and adjust their style and strategy on the fly. These guys didn't get to watch film and prepare, the best they had was written word, which may be biased, about their opponents skills and ability

There are many ATG we have never, and will never hear of. People who dominated an entire state because they were not perceived as important enough to document. Perhaps some of the men the Non-Pareil fought, were part of this group of forgotten, so while they may be nobodies to us, they could also be some of the greatest MW of all time, and have never been documented because of various circumstance.

 

Let's say some of his opponents were regarded pretty highly by contemporary writers, such as Capt. Cooke of Boston Police News or Peter Donohue of New York World, but I'm not ready to comment on them right now, as I didn't retype that many write-ups for my Dempsey scrapbook, and rereading every article I reference in the scrapbook would take too much time, I'm not ready to switch, as I'm more into George Dixon right now.

 

Assuming you rate Fitz as the greatest p4p fighter of the 1890's Senya, who would you have 2nd? Dixon? Ryan?

 

Just for fun, the write-ups of Capt. Cooke and Peter Donohue (P. Jay) prior to the second Dempsey-Le Blanche bout.

1889-08-25 The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) (page 2)
New York, Aug. 24.--[Special.]--
DEMPSEY VS. LA BLANCHE.
Tuesday night next will witness the settlement of the question at issue between Dempsey and La Blanche. A letter from Billy Dacey, who is now on the coast, declares that Dempsey is the same Jack as of old. This is astonishing, for equally as good judges of men and condition have written that Jack was not himself. Still, that was three weeks ago, and three weeks' strict training in California's glorious climate will work wonders on even Jack Dempsey, who, by the way, rarely looks to be in as good fix as he is. His rather cadaverous face and not at all perfect skin make him appear ill at times when he is really well, and it may be that people have been thrown off by these appearances. But if Jack is well so is La Blanche, and the "Nonpareil" and "Marine" will make a battle that will live long in the memories of those who witness it. The winner, too, will know he has been in the fight. Dempsey is at somewhat of a disadvantage in fighting La Blanche this time.
In March, 1886, when last they met, he had the advantage. They then fought with skintight gloves, which is Dempsey's "best hold," while Tuesday night they will wear four ounce gloves. La Blanche is essentially a glove fighter, and can do almost any man his weight with pillows on his hands. He can swing his great right without danger of breaking it when he has them on, and he is a dangerous customer when he swings "Darby Kelly." That he will win if Dempsey is Dempsey is much to be doubted, but that he will win if Jack is not real well and strong goes without the saying. This will be a fight in which condition will tell, and betting men would do well to learn the condition of the scrappers before blowing in their bank rolls.
P. Jay.


1889-08-31 The Illustrated Police News, Law Courts and Weekly Record (Boston, MA) (page 14)
AROUND THE RING;
Or, Strolls Among Scrappers.
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BY "A CRANK ON FIGHTERS."
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Unless there is some unforeseen slip at the California Athletic Club next Tuesday night, the 27th, one man or another will be $5000 richer and read his title clear to the middle-weight championship of America. John E. Dempsey is the present champion. He became so by beating the man who now meets him again. Their meeting March 14, 1886, at Larchmont, N. Y., was with skin gloves for a purse of $1500 and an outside wager of $1000 a side, winner take all. They meet now under conditions more favorable to Le Blanche. Dempsey has never faced such a hitter as he found in Le Blanche. Dempsey did not on that occasion let him hit squarely, however, more than twice in the thirteen rounds. When Le Blanche rushed to slam, Dempsey sprinted to his left out of harm's way and caught him on cheek, mouth and eye with his jabbing left. Le Blanche made the pace, but was eluded, out-generaled and beaten down by being hit repeatedly on the same spots without being hit at all heavily. Le Blanche's dream of ambition has been to fight Dempsey again either in a sixteen-foot ring or in a twenty-four-foot ring with big gloves. Le Blanche believed himself whipped at Larchmont much the same as Joe Goss did in his first meeting with Jem Mace. Joe thought Mace had too much room to get away from him in a twenty-four-foot ring. The sequel proved, it will be remembered, that the trouble was not in the ring but in the man. Joe was worse whipped in the small ring than he had been in the larger one. Will Le Blanche's second effort prove equally futile? Jack Dempsey is a shifty man to whip in a bull-rush fight. The Marine, with the big gloves in use in the California Athletic Club, cannot suffer in head or face punishment from Dempsey's left hand as he did in their skin glove battle. I think that it will not be a long story. Le Blanche will be carried to victory by his cracking body smashes, or Dempsey will have him in hand speedily by exhausting, if not disheartening him, in not letting him land. The confidence that Le Blanche cannot be beaten with four to five ounce gloves is quite firm even in Dempsey's old strongholds. Something can truthfully be said as to the lack of prudence and wisdom, of late, in the habits of life of both men. Dempsey has constitutional tendencies to lung difficulties, and it has been a good deal of question, of late, in and about New York whether he can again be the man of yore. His chances if at all out of condition in going with the cushioned hands against the Marine, would not attract money from many close followers of the two men. All that can now be said at this distance, with no inside knowledge of how the two men have trained, seems to be that this time the conditions of fighting are not lop-sided in Dempsey's favor. Dempsey may have all the best of the early fighting as Mike Lucie did, and then, if Le Blanche catches him with one of the old-timers on stomach or jaw, it will be "Good day, Mr. Dempsey." Le Blanche owned up man-fashion before that he didn't get there because he "met too good a man." His arms were not long enough, nor his legs nimble enough, nor his tactics sufficiently scientific. He did well, and in San Francisco, he should in fighting the way he usually has, do better. And, perhaps, he will find that he isn't in it at that. This is a year, though, for the "unexpected to happen" in pugilism. The climax of unexpectedness certainly would be a reverse for the American "Nonpareil" at the hands of a man whom he has once whipped. That would be a turning of the tables such as hasn't been seen since Tom King knocked out Jem Mace after taking a defeat in their first fight.

 

Post-fight write-up by Capt. Cooke.

1889-09-07 The Illustrated Police News, Law Courts and Weekly Record (Boston, MA) (page 14)
AROUND THE RING;
Or, Strolls Among the Scrappers.
--------
BY "A CRANK ON FIGHTERS."
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A good many men have had George Le Blanche, the Marine, "all but licked." Mike Lucie had him in that happy condition of "nearly finished" two months ago. Denny Kelliher had him there at the Criterion Club in Boston four years ago, and Jimmy Hurst "just lacked a little" of landing the Canadian when the two men for the first time. The Marine-Hurst fight was a clipping ideal club-room go, full of "blooming busy business," as my friend Mr. James Connelly of Chicago would say, from start to finish. The men who have had George Le Blanche, the Marine, "all but licked" are quite a little legion. One man has licked him, just one man--John E. Dempsey, the "Nonpareil" of America, winner of forty-two battles, the "science pugilist of the time." With skin-gloves he defeated the Marine handily, and, with mittened hands, Le Blanche has reversed the verdict of Larchmont. The man who was mastered now masters his master. George Le Blanche--right name George Blais, native of South Quebec, otherwise Point Levi, Canada, fully forty years old, as I believe from the data given by his old garrison-mates in Quebec castle--is, in virtue of a triumph over the unquestioned champion, at the leading American sparring club, for the biggest money ever fought for by men of the middle-weight class, the successor of Dempsey in the middle weight championship. I anticipate the disparaging criticism: "Dempsey almost had him done. Jack was licking him, and the Marine just happened to catch him in the right spot by a back blow with his right hand. The Marine won by a fluke." And to this, I think, the best answer is: "No, my friend. The Marine is a fighter with no 'almost licking' to him. He is dangerous till you lay him there flat on the floor. He fights uphill with the superbest pluck, and when many a time he has looked to be losing, he has put in a smasher that changed the outlook of things very speedily." After the Marine's defeat at Larchmont, I recorded my belief that "Dempsey's tactics would not have succeeded except for one condition upon which the battle was fought, viz., skin-tight gloves. With mittened hands fighting to a finish, with both men acting upon the same understanding of the Queensberry rules as to clinches and breaks, Jack Dempsey may yet find the Marine his master." Without being at all prophets or sons of prophets, a few of us in the East who brought about the Dempsey-Marine match three years and a half ago, cannot regard the Marine's victory in San Francisco in any other light than as a vindication of our estimate of Le Blanche as a "get there" fighter. Without four or five-ounce gloves, nobody has been found to hammer him or "bunch hits" on him so as to make him weaken or to prevent his landing the decisive winning blow at the finish. Dempsey, apparently, worked his sweet will upon Le Blanche's upper rigging in the early rounds of the fight, but it is the last rounds and not the early ones where finish battles are won. The Marine directed his guns at the last with decisive effect, and the colors that were never lowered before were hauled down in defeat. Dempsey, with unquestionable pith and courage, ran a hazard in meeting Le Blanche with cushioned hands. Jack has been flinging the gauntlet down to the world, and, after a gallant contest, has found in the man whom he vanquished, his conqueror. In 1886, Le Blanche was beaten in a contest in which two blows struck by Dempsey were sharply debated as questionable. Whether they were foul or fair turned wholly upon the question whether, after one contestant has complied with the order of the referee to "break," the other contestant has a right to rush and hit him, although he may be standing "off guard" and "hands down." Dempsey's tactics at Larchmont were characterized somewhat sharply, but, I think, wrongfully--by some of the Marine's friends--as "coming the sneak." A wide discussion of that very vague and indefinite code which bears the Marquis of Queensberry's name, followed. There was a general and just agreement, I believe, that the Queensberry code recognizes no such command as "break," although it forbids clinching. A blow with the fist above the belt is, it came to be understood, to be accounted fair any time during the three minutes of fighting time allowed for a round. Le Blanche in San Francisco seems to have put to good use the lesson Dempsey taught him at Larchmont, viz., that the man who strikes first after breaking from a clinch is the best fellow, and so much the worse for the other man if he hasn't got his hands up. No man can affirm that there is the least disgrace attached to the loser of the American middle-weight championship battle from the fact of his defeat. Dempsey, a true middle-weight, has been throwing down the gauntlet to "any man in America, bar John L. Sullivan." He has repeatedly challenged Charles Mitchell and has met Jack Burke and Dominick McCaffrey, both heavy-weights, and has earned laurels with both. His career of triumph suffers eclipse at the hands of the loser of the Larchmont battle, and the French gentleman rides at the front on the middle weight championship nag while the redoubtable gentleman from the Curragh of Kildare loses his seat in the saddle. The man he mastered in thirteen rounds, the harder hitter whom he conquered by superior generalship, defeats him squarely in thirty-two rounds with big gloves. Dempsey, I doubt not, looked a winner in the early rounds, but he was outlasted and outfought. Jack is a stabber and a jabber. He operates a systematic siege of artistically and gradually reducing an enemy's physical and fistic strength. The man who has beaten him wins by hurling himself at his enemy and smashing him with awful thumps. "I never succeeded," Le Blanche said after the Larchmont battle, "in landing my right properly at any stage of the game. I cannot tell what might have happened had I done so." At the California Athletic Club the Marine, fighting up hill from the word, but sustained by a game heart, succeeds in landing his right hand properly in Round 32. After that there was no contending. The Marine at Larchmont fell powerless at the finish into Dempsey's arms and was assisted mercifully by the Nonpareil to his chair in his corner. It is Dempsey this time who is carried to his corner and who realizes keenly the bitterness of his vanquishing, the loss of his championship and of the $5000 end of a $5500 purse. Verily, it has been beyond all men's memories a year of fistic surprises. The high-flyers have come low and the lowly are exalted. I trust that, in the hour of adversity, Dempsey may find Le Blanche both magnanimous and liberal. Dempsey's retraction of his pledge to conduct a benefit for Le Blanche or a joint benefit with him after the Larchmont fight, was not creditable to either his magnanimity, his regard for his word, or his sense of professional chivalry. Le Blanche has turned the tables as completely as Tom King did on Jem Mace. Once beaten, he occupies the rarest of all positions in pugilism, i. e., a victor over the man who defeated him. The measure of Le Blanche's ambition ought to be well filled. Failing in his first attempt at the middle-weight championship, he gets there on the second trial, and to the carpers who say "lucky hit," "chance blow," "he couldn't do it again," Le Blanche can make answer: "I am satisfied to have done it this time. I don't want to do it again. The hit may have been lucky. It seemed, though, to have the steam in it to do the work of unmaking a great champion, and putting me in his place."

 

NOOOOO, if you don't know then we will never know! I thought you knew everything

 

Most definitely not mate. My pre 1890 boxing knowledge is extremely limited, there are multiple posters on this site far more knowledgeable than me.