Ron Lipton does a deep dive on Rocky Marciano Vs Jack Dempsey

The game plan made perfect sense. Pounce on him immediately and don't let it go to the later rounds. With Dempsey's speed, 2 fisted power, and athleticism he has the tools to do it. The benefit outweighs the risk of getting clobbered rushing at Rocky early, I'd tell him to do the same thing.

Interesting that they nick named Dempsey's right hand "iron mike". Mike Tyson was not being very subtle at all in showing his admiration for Dempsey.

 

Real life Marciano probably not.

As for this Revisionist ESB Rocky, if Dempsey's lucky, his punches might tickle Marciano. That's about it.

 

Plenty of guys survived Dempsey's onslaught. Rocky could turn up the heat early if required, also. And it's not like Dempsey didn't give openings when he got excited.

I want to give credit to fighters for the caliber of fighter they actually defeated. The best that Dempsey beat just weren't in the league with those that Marciano beat. Thus, Marciano proved more, no matter what you may think of Dempsey's ceiling.

 

At times. And frankly, if you give me Fighter A with a 13 year career, and the highest quality opponent he beat defeated was a fluke-ish win over a Jack Sharkey-level opponent, I will have my doubts. Sorry, fairy tales about dancer's legs and brine-soaking a face don't sway me.

 

"The siren call of Hollywood threatened to take Dempsey away from the spartan existence that made him great. "
This is exactly why he went so long between fights, and lost to the bicyclist Tunney.

"Big George Godfrey and 6-foot-5 Bill Tate. For speed, he used smaller and faster Jock Malone, Jamaica Kid and the legendary Joe Gans."
Dempsey regularly used Tate and the Jamaica Kid; wasn't Gans dead by now? And proves he didn't avoid blacks like Willard and Tunney.

"when DeForest found out that Goldman brought in Harry Greb to spar with Marciano in secret, he became livid." Ha ha that's great!

Really good stuff from Lipton. I don't recall Marciano ever getting KO'd....Dempsey certainly did.

I don't see Rocky losing to Dempsey. He'd take the big, early shots and wear him down.

 

This was a time machine scenario. The article mentions that they used George Chuvalo and David Tua as sparring partners and they were born decades later.

To his credit, Dempsey did fight some black fighters and employed them in his training camp as sparring partners. The reason he did not defend his title against blacks was because his promoter Tex Rickard was terrified of race riots since he had experience promoting the Johnson/Jefferies fight which led to all sorts of mayhem. He did try to fight Wills who was a worthy highly ranked contender but the bank and promoters could not come up with his guaranteed share of the purse. After reading about Dempsey's miserable impoverished upbringing and how often he got screwed over by his ex wife and management as a young fighter, I don't blame him for not budging and being immutable when it came to money.

 

It is what it is.

If you want to convince me that Dempsey would beat Marciano, please show me the best he beat and compare it to the best Rocky beat, and then tell me why I should leap to convince that Dempsey was so much better than his best results.

 

ESB Marciano doesn’t have arms long enough to climb through the ropes, let alone the coordination to make it to the ring.

 

Let’s try to run that algorithm:

Frazier beat the best opponent ever.
So Frazier beats Lewis, Klitschko, Fury, Wilder, Vitali, Holmes, Louis and Liston.

Hmm, let’s run it one more time:

Schmeling beat Louis.
Therefor Schmeling beats Lewis, Wlad, Fury, Foreman, Frazier, Holmes, Dempsey, and Marciano.

error: algorithm needs work.

 

Is this an attempt at a joke?

 

But if you had the correct argument, you could.

Firstly, I am not saying that Dempsey COULD not beat Marciano. That is silly. I am only saying that I would not favor him.

And to reword my poorly stated reasoning above... To convince my of that Dempsey needs to be favored, you would have to present a convincing argument to bridge the gap between the quality of their relative best victories. To that end, I usually am presented with silly mythmaking ballyhoo that was foisted on the press by Rickard and Crew....

 

There is not a single victory that separates Dempsey and Marciano's best performances in my mind. I would put victories over Walcott (twice), Charles (twice) and Moore above anyone Jack beat in the state that he beat them.