Greb and Tunney may argue with that Greb has an amazing resume, was P4P no1, beat Gibbons numerous times (including a year before he met Dempsey) who came close with Dempsey and of course went 50-50 with Tunney in there serious. He also beat Miske and Meehan. He beat every LHW worth talking about. He also gave Dempsey problems in sparring.
I got Dempsey at top 5, he was amazing in his day,the first high speed swarmer/slugger, who could hurt you with either hand, HARD as steel when he fought Willard but in the days of the first million dollar gate it was hard to stay active and fit once on top. Even an older Dempsey was still a tough and as mean as a LION when he KO'd Jack Sharkey. DEMPSEY was the first Modern Heavyweight Champion
Greb fought HW's, but wasn't a HW per se, thus my not including him. Tunney, to a lesser effect, is the same. That's the reason I excluded them.
If Wills was white and Dempsey was black, Dempsey would have been the footnote. If Holyfield never faced Bowe, Lennox Lewis, Moorer his reign would have looked more impressive than Dempseys. He did fight the top contenders where as Dempsey did not
Dempsey fought allot of LHWs outside of Greb though, it was very common in these times for LHWs and MWs to fight HWs, as can be seen from Dempsey/Johnsons comp. greb did call out Dempsey an awful lot but was ignored
I would point out myself that the issue of whether a fighter met the top contenders is not quite the same as simply dismissing him on the basis of your judgement on how he would fare in a head-to-head matchup.
Jack Sharkey is in my top 30, and Willard is borderline. This is very unfair. Langford, McVea, Jeanette, and Johnson were all completely washed up by the time Dempsey was on top, and Godfrey was extremely green. You can hardly reasonably expect him to fight them. And Dempsey himself was willing to fight Wills- he states in his autobiography that fighting Wills was "fine with me" and actually signed a contract to do so- but the powers that were didn't want a potential repeat of the Johnson-Jeffries debacle. Wills came up earlier than Dempsey did, when Langford, McVea and Jeanette were still viable opponents, although past their primes. In the 1918-1923 time period, Dempsey easily beat the better opposition in more dominant fashion. His first two recorded losses came when he was very, very green, the third was while he was still a hobo and was likely a dive, the fourth was a disputed four-round decision, and the last two were while he was well over-the-hill against an all-time great opponent.
If Holyfield didn't make a hobby out of guzzling horse steroids by the feedbag-full, he'd never have been allowed to fight Bowe or Lewis. He could have fought Moorer as a lightheavyweight, though.