What if the colour line had been drawn the oppisite way.

Jackson would never have been allowed such a bold move.

 

Fun scenario. I'd guess that Hank Griffin, Denver Ed and Bob Armstrong compete for the titles until Jack Johnson comes along. Jeannette, McVea & Langford will get their shots and Wills will reign from the mid 1910s to the mid 1920s until George Godfrey and Larry Gains.

It's difficult to say who would be the champ by the time Joe Louis came along. You could argue that there would be a greater amount of coloured boxers competing in the heavyweight division had the "colour line" been drawn the other way.

 

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4553

 

Dempsey would have fought Greb 29 times

 

Jackson retires as champion because noone else was really at his level until he was fighting jeffries.

Johnson gets an earlier shot at james and beats him. He loses to the winner of langford v jeanette who loses to wills who reigns until the sharkey fight.

Maybe the second godfrey gets a shot earlier.

 

I dont see how Armstrong and Griffin can hold the title, when Jeffries actually knocked them both out. I think that his reign is unavoidable. (maybe he would be the Johnson of the time), making Johnson the great black hope, or actually, more likely Peter Jackson out of retirement to face a young Jeffries is more realistic, and we know how that finished. Assuming hate shows for Jeffries, Johnson is the best hope or maybe even McVey to stop him, as he gets older and trains more easily. Although to match up with Johnson's time frame, he would fight the deadly trio (or quado) early in their careers, when they were not ready and not rematch.

Realistically, I think that Wills probably sits as the best placed fighter to break the jeffries reign.

 

whooa, wait a sec...Jack Dempsey was a draft dodger?

 

Boxing would have seen its "first" golden era.

 

:happy

 

It would have been significantly more damaging than the way that the colour line was actualy drawn.

There was a derth of talent in the coloured heavyweight division, between the period where Peter Jackson started drinking himself to death and the rize of the black dynamite crew.

Whatever you think of Corbett, Fitzsimmons and Jeffries, they were two teirs better than the top black contenders of the time such as George Byers, Bob Armstrong, Frank Childs and Joe Butler. That could have been a truly terible era.

 

class!

This! Langford would no longer be considered the greatest boxer never to win a world title.