Willard vs. Wills. 1916 25 rounds

I would pick Wills, because I think he was a better technician, and a more versatile fighter.

Its not a given though.

 

Wills pretty easily, he was already winning shut out decisions against Langford at this stage, had won 20 round decisions so is proven over the distance for those particularly bothered by that.

 

Yes but Wills had huge size advantage on Langford. This is different type of Matchup. I still think Wills would win over distance.

 

Wills easily.

 

I agree with this

 

Well Langford got him twice an ATG puncher, the brawling Uzcudun finished a past it Wills and Sharkey had him out on his feet but outside of that is a long stretch of domination by Wills and he faced some good hitters in there. I'm more concerned with how many of his wins were on the level. Just a cursory peek on boxrec at some of his ND and NC bouts shows he seems to have been involved in many pre-arranged affairs. If that many were caught, how many if any went under the radar. Matches with Langford, Thompson, Tate etc all seem to have been mutual tank jobs. You don't hurt me I won't hurt you. I know some of these could be a reflection of a poor gate to not risk themselves in minor s****s but it makes me wonder if perhaps more went unnoticed.

 

I like Harry Wills on the basis of being more proven against a longer list of quality men and quite possibly being the more skilled. What I don't like however is that in the little bit of footage I've seen of Wills, he tends to jut his head forward with his guard down, which could be potentially dangerous against a huge puncher like Willard. Not a given either way, but I suppose I'd still favor Harry.

 

The films available of Harry Wills do him no favors IMO.

 

There were a lot of people who favored Dempsey heavily to beat Wills back in the day from what some people have said. It makes you wonder why.

 

Absolutely. To be fair Wills is old in all the available film of him. It really is a disservice to judge him off those snippets of footage. However if you do so, he looks tailor made for Dempsey. Not only that but he doesn't possess the "it" factor Dempsey had. That spark of fire.
Seeing that footage I would heavily favor Dempsey myself at any point for 1925 onwards.

 

Yeah I don't think I can favor him based on what "little" I've seen, which admittedly isn't very much. Though as you say, he was past his prime by the time any of that footage was made. There are a few people who have Harry Wills in their top 10 heavyweight list, even above Dempsey. Weather or not this is warranted I'm not sure.

 

Well Wills fought all the top black contenders of the previous era and Dempsey didn't fight any. However Dempsey fought a variety of different opponents where Wills was stuck fighting the same opponents over and over again. It really is a great debate on who possesses the better resume. H2H however i feel rather strongly the Dempsey gets the job done.

 

True on all accounts and a fair assessment.