I agree. However, in head to head match-ups, you can't use that argument. It has to be judge on how you think the fight would go. I personally have two seperatetop 10 lists. One for the modern and another the classic era. This means that people like Roy Jones or Winky Wright come nowhere in one list, whilst Bob Fitzsimmons scrapes the top 80. Well, yeah. I would even it out and say that if it's under classic rules, the modern boxer has a disadvantage. In head to head match-ups, rules have got to e taken into account though. Neither as much as Briggs though. A Willard knocked Dempsey down, whereas I wouldn't say Morris came close to being as powerful as Briggs. Fair enough. Just out of interest, what other cases do you apply this to? Lewis/McCall, Lewis/Rahman, amongst others, I presume? Briggs' record isn't bad. Considering he has asthma, which granted, isn't an excuse, he has had a good career. Heavyweight champion, beaten some good fights and has had a good run recently.
You my friend are round the bend guys like tubbs and rahman were better then dempsey,what a silly thing to say.
Moorer and Tunney are different but on the same level. Moorer was bigger, faster and hit harder. Tunney had better defense, technique and timing. Both were skilled boxers A fight between the 2 would be a toss up.
Sure, but the reverse is also possible. Who knows? And since it's Dempsey (or Tex Rickard) who was unwilling to fight the best blacks of his era and not the other way around, those fights not happening are Dempsey's fault and can't be held against Wills and Langford.
Maybe they were not as good as people think then,maybe they were looked at and insted of dempsey being scared like ive read loads of times,he felt they had nothing and thus did not fight them,what footage is there of them?,how would you all rate them,and being honest,do you think they would have beat a prime dempsey?
Dempsey at his peak was deadly. He was past it in the Tunney fights. He was quick and had excellent punches. His left hook was great. He would get inside and demolish a lot of fighters. Read his scientific boxing book. He was an intelligent fighter. The best white Heavy of all time in my eyes.
:rofl Moorer? Everyone who knows me here knows that Moorer is one of my favourite fighters, but, c´mon, don´t be ridiculous, Dempsey beat better fighters and would be much better head-to-head. Toney, what did this fighter beside trash talking? At HW not much. Cooney, the overrated hyped up white hope, Jones Jr., a man with 1 HW fight, Golota, another "Could have, should have, would have, etc." but didn´t, Dokes, a coke addict with a best win over Weaver, etc., I could go on, you showed once again that you´re the most biased poster here on ESB...
Jack Dempsey was offered a fight with Sam Langford a few years before Jack won the heavyweight title.....'I think Sam Langford was the greatest fighter we ever had',' said Dempsey in 1970. When Langford's name was mentionned he turned him down flat. 'Not me! Goodbye!' he said. 'He was a great fighter and I didn't have the experience to fight a man like that. Even at my best I don't know whether I could have licked him or not.' Dempsey was willing to fight Wills, and in 1922 he signed to do so, but Tex Rickard kept finding ways of avoiding the fight. Once, Dempsey's lawyers even paid Wills $50.000 in compensation. I'm not saying that Dempsey himself was perse unwilling to fight these guys when he had the title, but it's clear that he didn't consider the result of a possible fight with either of these guys a foregone conclusion and the people around him clearly considered fighting these guys too big of a risk.
With all due respect I could name a thousand fighters and say that they were better than Jack Dempsey but justifying it would be another matter. So how exactly are they better than Dempsey? Obviously not in terms of resume because most of them were foot notes in their respective eras. So the only way that they could even theoreticaly be better than Dempsey is head to head. Of course head to head rankings suffer from the weakness that they are entirely speculative. Lets face it we can't all be right on these fantasy match ups.