Prime Tunney Replaces Corbett vs. Jeffries

His legs were gone and he looked relatively slow. His movement was cruder than it had been too. The combo that downed Tunney was a brief flash of something resembling his prime, but he certainly didn't have the legs left to corner Tunney again and capitalize on it.
Yes, he lacked the fire of old, and easy living and inactivity had taken away a lot of the sheer viciousness he had in his prime, and his body wasn't up to the task of beating good fighters.

I dont know. He outboxed Gibbons, and was already past his best and rusty then. Gibbons always stressed was a great and underrated boxer Dempsey was.

 

His legs may not have been the same, they rarely are post-30 years of age, but his bobbing & weaving still looked good, as good as it ever did in fact aside from the early part of the Jess Willard fight. Tunney was better technically than any of Dempsey's past opponents and his constant moving and punching kept him from getting set, but Dempsey was bringing pressure all the way. I don't think even a prime Dempsey could match Tunney's boxing, but he might have a better chance of finishing him off when/if he catches him.

I'm not so sure he outboxed Gibbons as much as he intimidated him from throwing anything with his speed and power. Gibbons was on survival mode the whole fight. I believe Gibbons went onto say that he would have beaten Dempsey years ealier, and that he was past his prime.

 

It might be good to look at on the grainy old film but that doesn't make it good. It clearly wasn't effective, and Jack "Doc" Kearns (a biased observer for sure, but the leading expert on the matter too) had this to say :

"He spent a lot of time bobbing his head up and down, like a horse with a nose bag on, and nobody ever got anywhere that way. That bobbing business never meant anything : what Dempsey used to do was to feint his man, weaving from side to side until his was ready to set himself for a punch. He might have made his punch mean something that way."

September 27, 1926 Telegraph-Herald

I agree, Tunney was brilliant. Yes, he might well have beaten any version of Dempsey, and other great fighters too.

He was in there with a shadow of Dempsey though.

Dempsey was a wiley, cagey clever fighter. Sure, he had speed and power and was an intimidator, but he had plenty of skills and tricks too. Gibbons knew it.

Possibly to the first, and very probably to the second.