Question to those who rank Dempsey high

I was joking. It was just such an odd post I wanted to send it up a bit.

 

Pretty interesting. What was the evidence?

 

after his title shot vs Dempsey Miske went on to win 22 fights with only one draw and this included wins over top conteders Charlie Weinert, Jack Renault, Brennan, a loss and win over Gibbons, and Fulton. Not "undeserving"

 

Well he hit light at heavyweight, and even dmt agree's :yikes

Like much of Dempsey's time, there's some evidence of a carry, but some against a carry, but some in between. To say it's a clouded era would be an understatement. It seems much can be interpreted to suit ourselves.

 

Only for your benefit

 

oh come on. All i am saying is that the fact that Miske did so well after losing in the title fight shows us that there was nothing wrong with him getting a title shot. He beat so many contenders afterwards including Renault.

 

Again you are failing to look through the fog and see what was hapening on the ground at the time.

While Dempsey had already beaten Miske twice both the fights had been close with Dempsey narrowly taking a newspaper decision. In the eyes of the public he owed Miske a title shot more than he owed Harry Wills one.

Now in a hundred years time people will look at wlad Klitschkos recent win over Lamon Brewster and say-

"What was the point"?

On the ground at the time we knew exactly what the point was.

In a hundred years time people might look at boxrec and ask why Lennox Lewis fought Michael Grant when there were more deserving contenders out there like Chris Byrd and John Ruiz. They will not see the climate that lead to those fights taking place or not taking place.

 

Brewster had lost just one of his previous ten, in a title defense where he forced the challenger to take the canvas. It's hardly akin to having just one win in your previous five over a guy walked over as often as a doormat.

When Grant fought Lewis he was 31-0 with more ko's than one can poke a stick at. He'd also beat Goltoa the fight before and was very hyped. Again, massive differences.

 

In that case he should have fought em AFTER he won the title. Wills.

 

There's no way anyone would have let a black person fight for the title at that point in history.

 

Probably because after living through the Jack Johnson era, the white community knew what black fighters were capable of acheiving at this point. Therefore, fearing that a black contender might just take the belt away from Dempsey. Although I'm forcing implications a bit here, one might conclude that Dempsey was being protected in this particular sense.

 

Dempsey nor anyone else had any idea what Miske was going to accomplish following the title fight. For all anyone knew, it could have just as easily been his last and final bout. What Miske did in hindsight did not justify giving a title shot to a man who had lost or drew in most of his recent fights, and had not beaten a good fighter in quite sometime. Think about this for a minute. If one of today's champions were to fight a guy who's most recent record in say his last 15 bouts was something like this 7-8-2-4, do you honestly think that we'd let him by without giving him a fair amount of criticism, even if that fighter went on to winning his next 20 bouts. In 1979, Mike Weaver was a nobody with a record of 19-8, yet he was at least coming off of like 5 straight wins. Still he Holmes gets criticized for giving him a shot, regardless of the fact that Weaver went on to being a world champion-something that Miske never even did by the way.

 

Well, I don't exactly have a source available so I stand to be corrected here, but I seem to remember someone saying that Dempsey only fought a total of some 4 black fighters in his career, and none of whom were ranked.

You can call me on that if I'm wrong.