Tim Witherspoon vs Jack Dempsey

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33 ko's in 73 wins made him a hell of a puncher?

 

There is a bit more to it than a mans boxrec knockout percentage (which incidentaly is almost certainly not his actual KO%).

 

Then why don't you with your infinate resources tell Woddy and the rest of us what Miske's ACTUAL record was, rather than constantly presuming the unprovable, soley for the prupose of suiting your agenda. Boxrec says the guy had 33 ko's in 73 wins. I have no doubt that you would prefer to think that it was more like 63/73, but thats not what the available data tells us. Boxrec also gives a lot of fighters from that era the benefit of the doubt that ALL of their fights were actual bouts, and not necessarily exibitions. You never seem to protest that , unless of course there is a loss, draw or no contest in one of your fighter's columns. Wasn't it you who said that Dempsey's fights with Willie Meehan were exibitions? Of course, those fights absolutely HAD to be exibitions. No way does Dempsey go 1-2-2 against a fighter like Meehan in a regular sanctioned bout with ratings on the line. Right? Tommy Gibbons only had a career 48 ko's in 94 wins according to boxrec. I guess that was bull**** as well. Jim Darcy hardly stopped any of his opponents and in fact, entered the ring with Dempsey with a record of 43-33-33. That means he only won about 40% of his listed fights. But because boxrec said it, it must be all nonsense right? Well, If you tell us that boxrec is wrong and the info is irrelevant then I guess I'll just have to take your word for it. Apparently you have a library of sources and secrets that only you are privy to and no one else is. I don't blame you for not wanting to share them. It gives you a real edge in these debates.

 

Simple.

Because I dont know and probably never can know. Even if I found a contemporary article purporting to list his entire career there might well be some fights missing.

All I can tell you with any certainty is that what you read on boxrec probably dosnt tell the whole story.

 

I'm not too sure about that. Brennan barely has KO percentage of 50 as does Morris. Miske is far below that as is Smith (are they even over 30%?).

I won't call them feather fisted, but he faced an aweful small amount of big, good punchers.


The boxrec thing is stupid. The former mentioned fighters have 80+ fights on boxrec. Do you honestly think that all the spectacular KO's they scored in unknown fights have gone lost? The statistics are large enough to assume that the KO percentages give a good representation. For instance, Firpo has lesser recorded fights (and many obscure ones in Argentinia may have been lost), but his KO% is representive anyway. As is Dempsey's or Willard's.

 

KO % cannot be compared as any sort of indicator across eras.

It's a misleading statistic.

Larry Holmes has "KOs" credited to him in some fights that wouldn't even look close to being stopped in the 1950s nevermind the 1910s and 1920s.

Fights nowadays are stopped on cuts, or simply when a guy is getting beat up, and that result is included in "KO %".

Big difference in the days of Dempsey et al.
Willard-Dempsey was UNUSUAL that a man got stopped without a ten-count.
Of course, that fight would probably be stopped after 90 seconds (or the first KD) in later eras.

Greb would probably be credited with a quick (1st round ? 2nd ?) TKO of Tunney if they fought in later times.

By the late 20s and early 30s there was a shift beginning towards stopping fights, with professional boxing having gained unparrallel appeal among "civilized" society as it was then. Still, compared to nowadays it was still incredibly different, far more brutal, far less stoppages.

We can even watch fights from the 40s, 50s, 60s that seem brutally "old school" compared to now. But probably some of those would be considered premature stoppages to the guys from even earlier eras !

Most of the modern "KO artists" scored a lot of those wins on referee or cornerman stoppage.

Larry Holmes against Mike Tyson would have been dragged back to his corner and thrown with a bucket of water and maybe clinched his through rounds 5 to 12 - if that fight had been fought back in the day.

Even George Foreman may have had to punch himself to a standstill if Joe Frazier had a referee and corner from 1910. Foreman might have collapsed of exhaustion for a 10 count before he scores a REAL KO over Joe. Perhaps he'd run out of steam and slow down after 5 rounds and plod out a points win. Who knows ? Frazier would resemble a bloody mess either way, but he might keep getting up before "10".

Those two examples none of us would consider premature stoppages. But even those fights could possibly go the distance in 1910 or 1920, so think about how all the tame stoppages we see could play out back then.

 

Witherspoon was my favourite heavyweight fighter in the mid-80s.
Shame he showed up for so many big fights looking out-of-condition. At 220 pounds he was fit, and 235 he was a slob.