Who do you rank higher: Johnson or Dempsey?

On topic, I think Johnson by a decent margin.

He cleared the division much better than Dempsey did. Neither have the best wins, but I think Johnson was more consistently dominant, and has the better wins overall.

 

1. Ali...
10. Johnson
11. Dempsey

 

Jack Johnson.
If his title reign wasn't what it could have been it wasn't of his doing. Being run out of your home country on some trumped up charges would probably affect anyone. The racism of the times didn't really add up to JJ fighting another black contender. What type of $ could he have drawn? Plus there were riots after he beat up Jefferies and a few people died. Fight films banned.
Two black contenders fighting for the belt? Jack didn't get as far as he did by being stupid.

 

I never saw Johnson have any problems with the crowd inside the ring. He did fight Jim Battling Johnson in France, a fellow African American and nearly lost! He was all but out in round ten, lucky for Jack that was the final round. The French wanted to see Johnson vs Langford or Jeannette. Johnson never made these fights, so they ( the French ) stripped him of his title.

Judging by the films, crowds were not the problem with McVey and Jim Battling Johnson, or Langford vs, Jeanette.

As champion Johnson had offers of 50k to 100k to fight Langford, Jeannette and Mcvey. One of them was in Australia with the same promoter from Johnson vs Burns These fights never happened, Johnson was content picking easier " white hope types ", but not Gunboat Smith who TKO'd' him in an exhibition match in 1909 when Johnson was Champion or Luther McCarty who died from an injury at age 21. These two were top contenders. By 1912, the young McCarthy was on the rise, and probably would have beaten Johnson by 1914 had he lived.

If you add in getting floored and hurt by Ketchel and outboxed by O'Brien according to some, who exactly did Johnson fight as champion? A washed up old and 6 years out of the ring Jeffries is the answer, and he got his stock from that fight , but he beat the shell of Jeffries, not the past champion years before.

 

Dempsey for the simple reason I think hes the better fighter

 

Johnson was terrific but dempsey was probably the best ever as far as anyone can tell....johnson might have been number two

 

1, 2 & 3 along with Joe Louis.