I put him solidly in the middle of the top 10. Entirely on his impact on the sport historically, though. His record was really quite bad, when you look at it closely. Everything negative that is said about the K's can be applied with much more truth to Dempsey; no ATG's on his resume, lost to the best fighter he faced, bad losses etc before he became champ. Add into that the he mostly fought Americans, and "drew the color line", fought when the American and world population was a fraction of today, and he really had a small talent pool against which to compete. All that said, his career helped take boxing up a whole other level. His stories were legendary, and low level title contenders wrote best selling books about their experiences. His impact on making boxing the sport it is today can't be denied. Despite all the negative, you go on Classic, and you have a whole legion of devoted fans who swear he'd still beat anyone outside of Ali and Louis.
He was the greatest HW boxer in the 1920s, so he is pretty high in the list. I'd say between 5-10. My ATG top 10 list: 1. Muhammad Ali 2. Joe Louis 3. Rocky Marciano 4. George Foreman 5. Mike Tyson 6. Joe Frazier 7. Jack Dempsey 8. Lennox Lewis 9. Wladimir Klitschko 10. Jack Johnson
Realistically, by resume alone, one would struggle to include him in the top 20 or even 30. He makes my top 15 on historical impact at best.
I am really going to ge some **** for this but without the wins over Wills, Langford, Greb, Siki, and the others possible, I rank him in the top 25 only.
Probably right ^ His resume suffered from a rocky start Historically he's got to be top 10 though. And H2H he has a chance against most of the lineal champs.
I've never really been about defending Dempsey and I do agree his resume could be considered weak, but he did win pretty emphatically over the majority of his opponents and was regarded as one of the best fighters period by contemporary writers. Also, considering I rate Lewis so highly, as I'm sure some of you do, it seems a bit harsh to hold the loss against Flynn against him, especially considering he avenged it. Flynn, despite being remembered more for his losses and was far from a big puncher, faced a who's who of solid fighters from the early 00s. Tommy Burns, Jack Sullivan, Jack Johnson, Jack Root, George Gardener, Tiger Flowers, Sam Langford, Al Kaufman (slightly out of place I know), Billy Papke & Miske might be missing a few more. He was certainly a gate keeper at worst, so in that sense I don't see it as that much of an issue
