Sugar says Lewis is alltime great yet only top 12

Right on. :good

 

Lennox Lewis's was one of the ALL TIME GREAT heavyweights.

Whether you rank him at number 1, number 6, number 12 or number 16, it reflects that he was great.

I mean, we are ranking him against every fighter since 1890s.
Every fighter in the top 20 has got to be great, surely.

Where you place the greats, in what order, boils down to opinion and taste.

As long has we remember they were all great and dont go off on silly tangents to denigrate them then all is good.

 

:nut :nut :nut Yeah John Lester Johnson was not black. Once again you fail to mention that Tunney beat an eroded Dempsey and Tunney weighed 190 lb when he met Dempsey. "Shitless" scared shows bias. He was not scared at all since he fought them, and most of the top black contenders during the time he was champ era were Dempsey's sparring partners. Please stop being so biased. Lewis avenged his losses but he also peaked late and was in his prime when he avenged the losses

Now it is completely reasonable to rank Lewis ahead but your criticisms of Dempsey are like Zakhmans critcisms of Lewis.According to your reasoning Dempsey did not have a good chin because he was dropped early in his carrier as a hobo, and that he was "a bit" past it vs Tunney. You criticise him for being nearly kayoed and being stunned by a light-heavy while failing to mention that it happened to some others as well

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/johnson-john-lester.htm

 

Chris Pontius,

Please could you attempt to back up your claim that Dempsey was "scared shitless of black fighters and never fought one".

I've read the same claim from you a few times now. "Scared to death", "scared shitless" of black fighters.

Please elaborate.

I've always figured Dempsey's drawing the color line was "race politics" rather than through a fear of black men.

How did Dempsey overcome this fear enough to spar with black fighters ?

Why did newspapermen describe some of his opponents as "negro" or "colored" if Dempsey never fought a black fighter ?

 

and despite this he signed two contracts to fight Wills, trying to arrange the fight but racial politics preventing it. This is getting funny and ridicolus.

 

he has nothing to elaborate. He has just lost ALL his credibility on talking about Dempsey by saying Dempsey never fought a black fighter. END of story. I mean he claims to have "studied" Dempsey, film and records, yet he does not even know Dempsey fought black fighters? But it does count when Dempsey was knocked down as a hobo against his chin? hey look we have a new revolver here

 

I have watched 11 of his fights (Layne, Louis, Savold, Matthews, Walcott (2), LaStarza, Charles (2), Cockell, Moore). On my films, he wins them all and knocks out every opponent. He obviously looks far more foolish than Lewis listening to the count against Rahman or Dempsey eating jabs from Tunney, or Liston rolling about the ring against Ali, etc.


*sorry--I think I misunderstood that your post was meant to be sarcastic.

 

Marciano was a little bit wild with his punches but a GREAT fighter. he beat alot of the top fighters and proved his guts. You can't ask for more then that

 

Sure, Sonny's Jab.

1. He avoided the leading black fighter (and HW contender) Harry Wills for 6 years as a champion, a record in the history of ducking in any weight division. You can come up with pictures of him and Wills signing all you want, but in the end they never fought. I'm not convinced they wanted a part of him. He was promised a title shot if i got past a certain fighter whose name i forgot, i think Fulton. Of course Wills got the shaft when he got past Fulton and never got his title shot. That picture is just smart management by them.

2. He never fought any of the declining black dynamite. While i can understand this, it is another piece of evidence that shows he didn't fancy fighting top black fighters even if they were on their way out.

3. Joe Jeannette was constantly calling out Dempsey because Dempsey was a rising name and Jeannette wanted to get back in the picture for the title. Dempsey declined of course. When Jeannette showed up as a substitute, Dempsey left the ring while the crowd booed him and according to an article, Dempsey "gave boxing a black eye" by doing that. Apparantly the color line that everyone uses to defend Dempsey was more a convenient excuse than reality, or why would they have wanted to see him fight a "negro?".

4. Dempsey did fight a black fighter, a journeyman called John Lester Johnson. The fight over 10 rounds was dead even. Despite the hatred for black people, they still weren't convinced the white man had won. Dempsey had his ribs broken by the negro. I think this is where Dempsey deceided to steer clear away from half of the fighters and use the color line to be champion, become famous and rich while not being able to get blame for ducking half the division.

5. Who he sparred against is irrelevant. Sparring is just sparring. When it came to fighting, Dempsey did not fight top black fighters, in fact he ducked them. Simple as that.

 

If i was like Zakman i'd say "Well, if a D-level middleweight Sudenberg can knock down Dempsey 9 times, then certainly [insert random fighter] can !!"

I simply said that the Sudenberg knockdowns, while not THAT important, still must be included if we look at the total picture. He was 20 or so fights into his career for christ sake! Ali was taking on Sonny Liston at that stage!

 

I did not know this history in depth other than of course, Dempsey not fighting Wills. If what you say is true though, then it certainly sounds as though Dempsey wanted no part of African American contenders.

I will also ad, that contrary to some historian's opinions, the white crowd that Dempsey actually fought, wasn't all that spectacular either. I know we've been through this, but Willard was a 38 year old crude fighter who was off for a few years before facing Dempsey. Billy Miske was coming off a rather weak string of performances, along with having health issues, and Dempsey openly admitted to givein Miske a shot out of pure sympathy. Jim Darcy had a record of 40-33-33, and had lost 9 out of his last 17 fights, including his most recent bout going in against Dempsey. Luis Firpo was ok, but hardly spectacular and he decked Dempsey. I suppose Brennan, Carpentier, Gibbons and Sharkey were decent fighters. Still, at least 3 of his 6 title defenses were against crap, and so was the man that he took the title from. Top it off with him sitting on the belt for 3 years doing nothing, and failing to meet Harry Wills, and I don't know how anyone on this earth can compare Dempsey to a champion like Lennox Lewis.

 

None of this illustrates Dempsey being scared to death of black fighters. That's just your little spin on it.

Dempsey did what Kearns told him to do.
Managers usually do the "ducking", the fighters do has they are told. Certainly circa 1918.

The color line was reality, not just a convenient excuse. Of course, certain sections, perhaps the whole of NYC fight crowd, did not go along with it as a rule.
But we cant really doubt the racism of the times, deep segragationist views and ideology, and certainly the idea among MANY powerful people that the world's heavyweight title should be a white man and that he should never risk the championship against a black one.

The rise of Joe Louis, and endless statements in print about his "good negro" character should suggest that the "race issue" was bigger than just white fighters ducking good black fighters.

By all means accuse Dempsey of being part of the problem. But it's silly to think the color line was just about him being scared of black fighters.
I seriously doubt a fighter as ferocious and revered as Dempsey would have such a lack of confidence that he'd believe all black fighters were too dangerous.

Dempsey is quoted as saying he feared Sam Langford, but reckoned Wills would've been easy because the big guys never bothered him. I follow his reasoning.

The John L. Johnson fight was a learning fight for Dempsey. This was during Dempsey's failed New York adventure, he was still very raw, immature, inexperienced, amd mismanaged.He hooked up with Kearns over a year later and that's when he started to blossom.

 

Valdes had lost two of his last three against Charley Powell and Alonzo Johnson when he fought Liston. I Don't believe he was still considered a contender.

 

Thank ye.

Those are what are called drummed-up, cheap excuses.
1. Old age does not apply, because Lewis was clearly still in his prime. His last four fights, over the last year-and-a-half before fighting Rahman, were probably the best run of consecutive performances Lewis ever put on. A big win over Holyfield, a total blow-out of a highly-regarded Grant who many picked to beat him, a bludgeoning of Botha, and then the clinic over Tua, which was considered by many, perhaps most, observers, to be Lewis' peak showing. All of the last three happened less than a year before the Rahman fight, and the last one happened only five months prior. Afterwards, Lewis followed up with another vintage performance in the Rahman rematch later that same year. This "old-age" thing is completely revisionist- you were all following boxing back then. No one thought Lewis was past his prime in 2000-2001. If anything, most thought 2000 was his absolute peak year.
2. Not taking your opponent seriously or failing to prepare for fighting at a given altitude do not qualify as legitimate excuses. A legitimate excuse is something beyond your control. When you are a young man who is a dirt poor hobo, has no management or training, and is fighting every two weeks just to keep eating, there is legitimate reason to expect that you will not perform at an elite level, and this is not something you have control of. Notice, when Dempsey and Johnson got themselves out of that situation, their careers both showed heavily pronounced upswings. Now, if, say, while he was champion, Dempsey just got distracted making movies and being lazy, that is not a legitimate reason for sitting on your title for three years without fighting, and so it carries full force against him. If he'd been in a plane crash and had both his legs broken and took three years to recover, it would be different, but since it was entirely by choice and within his control, he deserves any criticism he gets for it.

Um, you kind of answered your own objection there. Lewis was knocked down hard by his opponent's punch, rose up clearly in a bad state, and the referee stopped the fight. Heck, watch the film- Lewis gets up in a very shaky way, and his equilibrium is clearly not there. He can't walk in a straight line or stand steadily. He lurches backwards and then to his right after getting up. He can't take steady steps. When he goes up to the ref, he's obviously not standing on firm legs, and as the ref stops it, Lewis is taking more tiny little uneven steps and almost lurching into the ref himself. I don't see anything wrong with this stoppage. Had the ref allowed it to go on, I highly doubt the course of the fight would have taken it anywhere other than Lewis being brutally knocked out within the next 10 seconds.

Yes, I've acknowledged that many, many times now. It just doesn't erase the losses. The fact is that none of the fighters I've listed ahead of Lewis lost during their heydays- I REPEAT: during their career heydays, NOT at some early date when they were not even in the top 20 or while they were utterly-shot fighters who had already long since posted all their major wins- to any two opponents of Rahman/McCall caliber. I feel that some of them have superior resumes, title reigns, head-to-head ability, etc., as well.

I've explained my reasoning here over and over again, but people seem to just sort of keep sidestepping it. It is clear and demonstrable fact that guys like Johnson and Dempsey were not anywhere near their best in the formative years of their careers when they were struggling and losing against mediocre competition. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they were clearly not world-elite fighters or even close to being world-elite fighters at that time, like they were five or 10 years later. Lewis, however, was clearly in his prime when he lost to McCall and Rahman- both of these fights happened during his heyday, amidst his biggest and best wins and career peak peformances. If Jack Johnson had been knocked out by Joe Choynski in 1907, I would count that as an enormous strike against his legacy, but since, in reality, it happened six years earlier when he was a scrawny light heavyweight and was clearly and demonstrably not even close to being the fighter he would later become, I don't see why it is significant unless one is being a nitpicky historical revisionist who's looking to knock old legends down a peg.

 

ARGH. Still more of the incredibly frustrating reasoning which completely ignores pretty much anything other than what one can see on boxrec.com. Ali was an OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST with DOZENS of amateur fights, ARCHIE MOORE and ANGELO DUNDEE as trainers, and top-flight guidance, management and financial backing from the time he turned pro. It is UTTERLY UNFAIR to compare what he was doing after 20 pro fights to what a guy with NO amateur background AT ALL, NO trainer or management WHATSOEVER, and NO professional guidance, management OR financial backing, who was a hobo sleeping on park benches and fighting clubfights for food was doing after the same number of fights. It is beyond ridiculous.