Was Demspey's duck of Greb even more blatant than his duck of Wills?

Why ?

 

I dont assume Rickard was the only one lying or that he was always lying, but I do assume he lied and lied often. And I put just as much credence in the anecdotal accounts that say Rickard was apprehensive about having a black champion post-Jack Johnson, than in any other theory. He DID lose money with Johnson and lost a lot of backing from influential people. The fact that the Wills fight didn't happen and the Firpo and Tunney fights did - under Rickard's banner and with MASSIVE financial reward for Tex - seem to suggest the loss of the Wills fight was not a loss to him. He was breaking box office records regardless of the absecnce of the number 1 challenger, arguably with challengers who were far more marketable than the number guy (who may have represented the true challenge for Dempsey but had the wrong skin color to be a safe bankable champion). Talk is cheap - that's the standard we apply to Dempsey and Kearns, why not Rickard ?

There was a lot of politics involved. These things aren't straightforward. It's naive, to put it mildly, to believe all the announcements of boxing promoters represent intentions. All you have is supposition too. You suppose Rickard was wanting the Wills fight simply because he said so. I dont see why Rickard word would count more than any of the other parties. In fact, Rickard seems to have done equally well by NOT having Dempsey fight Wills.

 

Well, I've said that Rickard might have wanted not to be cut out of the deal if it was absolutely the only fight out there to be made. Yes, he would have known it was a seller. But as a long-term investment he possibly thought it an awful and unnecessary risk, and the last resort for a big championship promotion. I dont know for sure, but it makes sense.
1922 Dempsey didn't fight at all.
1923 Rickard promoted Luis Firpo versus Jess Willard and then matched Jack Dempsey against Firpo. And made mega bucks on both fights.
If he had any apprehension about Dempsey v. Wills, it certainly wasn't a fight he needed.

My suspicion is that Rickard prefered the Tunneys and Firpos for Dempsey rather than Wills, though I dont put the whole responsibility on Rickard.

I think such speculation about Rickard is valid because he was a businessman, the racism of the times and the trouble he'd had financially and politically with the ONLY black man to hold the title, and his demonstrable genius in building up guys like Carpentier and Firpo v.Dempsey as MASSIVE draws, makes that a very valid speculation. To speculate that he probably wasn't keen on promoting another black champion and that he didn't need that fight much seems very reasonable. IMO.

 

This thread is a jewel of information, thanks everyone. :good

 

Muldoon publicly supported a Dempsey Wills fight ,but in private vetoed it,I think Rickard was the same,he had a horror of a repeat of the Jeffries Johnson aftermath.Plus he claimed "powerful forces did not want the fight to take place."

 

I think William Muldoon voted to allow Dempsey to fight Tunney in New York in 1926.
Dempsey named Muldoon in his autobiograpy as someone who influenced him against the Wills fight.
I think the NYSAC decisions were actually made by a commision of about three people. In Jack Cavanaugh's Tunney bio it says that the final vote was two-to-one in favour of Dempsey to fight Tunney in New York, but another committee that granted boxing licenses refused to grant one to Dempsey. The New York State Attorney advised that Dempsey was entitled to be licensed to box in New York, but the licensing committee didn't change their decision and Dempsey and Rickard never pushed the case in the courts.

There was speculation that Jimmy Walker, the politician who had legalized boxing in New York, had an interest in Harry Wills.

I gather there was multi-layered webs of political shennanigans surrounding this fight, with several persons involved saying one thing and doing another. Announcements and statements of intent aren't to be taken at face value when boxing promotional skulduggery meets big city politics, any more so than we'd take the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact as a sign of imminent world peace.

 

Tex Rickard was told by representatives of the US government
"Do not match Dempsey and Wills"
Its in this book,
Author Name: Gene Brown

Title: THE NEW YORK TIMES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SPORTS Boxing



Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good with no dust jacket; No dust jacket.
Publisher: New York Arno Press 1979
ISBN Number: 0405126336 / 9780405126338