Prime Dempsey vs peak post prison Tyson

I'm going to make a lot of you mad with this, and I'm not trying to get under posters skin or saying something false just because..... But theirs nothing Dempsey or any fighter from that era(from the 1900 thru the 1920's that includes J.Johnson) could do anything with a prime Tyson. Or any great fighters from the mid 30's until now. Even though theirs no world class fighters today I'd even consider close to great. Dempsey would lose. Again, what are we basing Dempsey's greatness on? Grainy old film? Sports writers from that era? Think about this. Their are no people alive today who could've actually seen Dempsey fight. Even a 10 yr old in that time(the 20's) Is probably long dead today. Think about that. A prime Tyson or any prime fighter from the last 70 yrs would beat, and probably destroy Dempsey. Sorry.

 

The film is actually pretty clear. It doesn't take a camera from 2017 to see that Dempsey could put 220 lb guys down with an uppercut. We don't rely on just sports writers. There are atg fighters and trainers who all corroborate. Ray Arcel himself said that Dempsey would have killed any heavyweight that came after him. This is a guy who saw everyone from the 10s to the 90s. He had a mental profile on pretty much every great heavyweight that ever lived in the 20th century.

What really "sells" me on Dempsey isn't his punching power, speed, etc. but his will to win. Think about it, this was a kid who would starve for days at a time and commonly knocked out guys bigger than him just to earn some scraps to survive. That takes a certain savagery. Honestly I don't think we have film on the best version of Dempsey aside from maybe the Willard fight but for some reason I don't think Jack tapped into that inner savageness that he commonly did prior to winning the title except on two occasions after the Willard fight. The first during the Firpo fight and the second during the second Tunney fight. I think he went full beast mode there to the best of his abilities being past prime and all.

This man fought 21 times in 1918, won 20 and fought a total of 56 rds. Thats like 3 rds for each opponent. Nearly all top contenders and good quality opposition.

 

Post prison Tyson ... it's gotta be Dempsey.

 

Dempsey was helped by his fans to get back into the ring and should have been disqualified.

 

Bro why do you even watch boxing if you just want to see fights get stopped prematurely? The newspapermen were trying to get the big goof off of their typewriters!

 

Tyson was never knocked out of the ring, let alone knocked down in the 1st round. He took an accumulation of punishment over the course of a fight to go down. Nor was he ever wobbled by small heavyweights aka light heavyweights.

Would you prefer Tyson getting a flash knockdown against someone like, say, Razor Ruddock, only to come back later in the fight to win by KO? My bad...I like perfection instead of the imperfect world of being knocked down and coming back to win. The fact that Tyson absorbed the bombs Ruddock planted on him throughout 19 rounds without going down is more telling to me.

Tyson aint going down from single shots, not even from 6'4" 240 lbs. super heavyweight power murderers.

 

Prematurely? LOL! If you can't get back into the ring without help you lost bro! If you read the account, Dempsey asked them for help to get back in the ring because he couldn't do it himself. . If you read the rules-you will see that that's an automatic disqualification. Why should Dempsey be an excerption the rule? That isn't fair to the other fighter. Why do you want to see unfair fights is the real question.

 

Exactly. We've been through this in another post and I say Tyson is by far the more proven commodity against heavyweights, both in giving and taking punishment. No small guy ever hurt him (I am discounting Holyfield as a small guy. He had weighed 210lbs or over for years by the time he beat Tyson) and no smaller fighter would take him the distance.

All this praise for Dempsey for getting back in the ring against Firpo staggers me. Look at the film. Watch Firpo try to throw a straight right. With respect, no decent fighter had any business being knocked out of the ring by him. Tyson, imo, would have kayoed him very early and said 'How dare he challenge me with his primitive skills?'

I've noticed there's a lot of ill feeling towards Tyson and anyone who sticks up for him is accused of being blinkered. It all gets a bit youtube. I am neither here nor there on him but it's a shame he doesn't get debated rationally because he was an absolute phenomenon for over three years.

There's also a lot of good feeling on this board towards Dempsey. Again, I'm neither here nor there but I look at his record and wonder why a reign which consisted largely of light heavies, and not many of them to boot, warrants such extravagant praise (yes, I now know that he took the title on the road and appeared in movies. That's fine. Good for him that he made a good living without getting punched in the face. But bear that in mind when evaluating his standing as a heavyweight champion.). And, while it may not have been his fault that he faced no black men, it does mean that he wasn't able to clean the division out leaving no questions unanswered in the way Tyson did. Let's face it. When black athletes were interested in boxing before NFL and NBA, they dominated the division as soon as the powers that be allowed them to compete in it. As I say, not Dempsey's fault but it made for a much less challenging reign.

In this fight, only one fighter would be getting hit harder than he has ever been hit before and that's Dempsey. And if Jim Flynn can turn the trick, I think Tyson does too.

 

Great post.

 

Looks like Firpo kinda pushed Dempsey out of the ring to me.
The punch landed then he just stuck his hand there and leaned Demspey through the ropes.
I saw Matt Skelton do that a couple of times to Danny Williams (or was it the other way round?) and no one suggested referee should have called it a knockdown.

 

I'll give Firpo credit though, those punches really shook Dempsey.

 

There were only three ropes and I'm not sure they were even tied vertical. They were loose and the spaces were large.
It was far easier to get knocked out of the ring in those days. Benny Leonard was knocked through the ropes in 1920 by Charley White.
The modern rings are better at containing fighters, although when Rahman fought Maskaev he ended up outside the ring both times !

 

I'm glad to finally hear someone else say this. I've watched that punch in real time and slow motion more times than I can count, and it has always looked to me like Firpo landed the punch crook-armed then straightened his arm with a good shove, and that was what sent Dempsey out of the ring.

It's always been such accepted truth that Firpo "knocked" Dempsey out of the ring, however, that I quit arguing the point a couple of decades ago.

As you say, though, there is no doubt that Firpo had Dempsey hurt in that fight, as long as it lasted.

 

I agree with a good deal of this but have a different take. There is no doubting Dempsey's ferocity and savagery, That's what makes him an ATG and it is a great story; hobo travels the rails of the midwest fighting to survive. In terms of being a great in his own era, Dempsey's stature is far greater than Tyson's.

But boxing was in its formative years. I have said before that without easy means of travel, little film, not many experienced trainers, it was almost a different sport. Once fighters went on to become trainers, when they could travel and fight or spar with a broader range of opponents rather than the usual suspects of men who were more or less in the same weight category, look at films, eat well then it really took off and the standard improved dramatically. But that didn't happen until after Dempsey.

As for the savagery that Jack's lifestyle instilled in him, I don't doubt that created a mental fortitude. But an alternate view is that he was probably frequently malnourished. Riding trains and going hungry while you look for fights is great for developing intestinal fortitude. But in terms of creating a fighting machine, give me the man who is having nutritious food and training two or three hours a day with a man who had developed world champions, entering tournaments, sparring with other top fighters from around the country and beyond and studying film of what other great fighters of the last 60 odd years.

I know this thread is about 1996 Tyson and that alters a lot but I still think he was enough of a boxer to prevail. I just cannot see any version of Dempsey doing what Tyson did to Bruno wth 10oz gloves. I don't mean to demean Dempsey; he was what he was in his own time. I'm just of the school of thought that sees that time as not being developed enough to really compete with what boxing had become once it had matured.

Dempsey the greater figure in the sport? Yes. H2H against Tyson? Can't see it at any point in either's careers, I'm afraid.

 

You said that Dempsey should have lost by DQ. Most people on here would agree that the actual version of the Dempsey-Firpo fight was much more entertaining than a first round DQ.

What account is this that says Dempsey asked for help? If he wasn't in his right mind to get back in the ring by himself then how is he supposed to form a coherent question? If it was an automatic DQ then why wasn't Dempsey DQ'd by the referee who was right there observing the entire ordeal?

You seem to be a stickler for the rules. I'd much rather see a fight with all the fixens. I mean, of course I don't like seeing fighters blatantly foul over and over but a couple low blows are fine as long as they aren't crazy low. **** happens man.