Wills Firpo Report States Wills Has No Chance With Dempsey

I don't need to imagine. When the fight was on the table he signed a contract.

 

I'm not saying it was the same.
But a group of non-fighting men (managers, promoters) did exist in boxing as a very powerful and controlling interest group.
Ordinary fighters were treated like dirt (as Dempsey himself was, by 'John The Barber', who tried to use him as fodder for Langford). The promoters and managers controlled the industry.

Champions got a better deal, sometimes.
But they weren't stepping out into the promotional side of the game. That was left in the control of others.

I doubt it.
Dempsey's finances were messed up. If he was ever a millionaire during his reign, I doubt it was for long. He had limited business skills at the time, Kearns took 50%. He probably gave away a lot of whatever money was left, like most the champions did. Then there were lawyers, wives, and the rest of it.
The most power Dempsey had was to demand a hefty fee, which he did.


(Though we are probably going off on a tangent here already.)

 

I agree ... Dempsey was not afraid but he could and was persuaded ... how many times did you need to hear "why risk this when you can make x amount of money for that ?" Dempsey did leave Kearns. He ultimately did what he wanted ... he was also quoted as questioning "Why Greb gave the title shot to the colored Flowers ?" ... he was no fool .. Anyone who writes Wills off as just another big, slow guy made for Dempsey is revising history and justifying the racism of the age ...

 

Dempsey asked (Rickard) to fight Wills, and signed to fight him (with other promoters). And they didn't deliver him the agreed money on time.

You can list the guys that it didn't happen to, but I doubt Dempsey's the only champion to have missed career fights they had wanted because of promotional mismanagement. It seems a bit simplistic to say one group "must have wanted it more", and the other "did not really want it".

He did work to get the fight. He signed with promoters to fight Wills.
Unfortunately, the promoters failed to honor the contracts, and the proposed fight fell through. He wasn't a slave, but he relied on promoters and businessmen to get fights made.

Of course, you can always say "he could have done more" but that's kind of vague.

 

Dempsey tried to make it happen in the normal ways. He signed with known promoters who promised to make the fight. They failed to come up with the money. This happened at least twice, two different promoters.

He ended up defending against Gene Tunney for actual money in an actual fight.

He could have taken the risk of not being paid for fighting Harry Wills, and turned up to fight him for nothing.
Just to prove he's the best or whatever.

 

Legend X, you can't win....Dempsey did sign for an out of town promoter...

The promoter couldn't come up with the dough.
The fight was banned in New York, the mecca of boxing
Harry Wills pocketed $25,000 deposit
Dempsey would have been a prohibitive favorite in that bout
Sam Langford himself said after the signing, " my money is on Jack, for he is the GREATEST heavyweight I have ever seen ". Unquote...
Harry Wills refused a bout with Gene Tunney...
THERE was a MORTAL fear during those days to match a white HW champ and a black challenger, following the terrible race riots after the Jeffries/Johnson fight in Reno...This is a terrible FACT, whether some posters like it or not....
Harry Wills deserved a title shot most assuredly, but was a victim of his times...I have him along the lines of an Ernie Terrell...
Jack Dempsey had no solo say , but was guided by the doctor Jack Kearns and Tex Rickard....
Whether this prime Jack Dempsey[[1920-23], could have beaten the taller slower Harry Wills is open food for thought, but the vitriol from some posters today 85 years later, who refuse to acknowledge the SIGNING,
REFUSE to understand the valid fears sweeping the nation those days
following many deaths after the riots in RENO, prove to me that their
hatred for Jack Dempsey , knows no bounds, lo these many years...
Jack Dempsey and Harry Wills were products of their times, and were
affected by events BEFORE their times, as sadly all of us are...Take care...

 

I would consider that real fears of racial unrest may have contributed to the failure of these promoters to finance the venture. Usually these promoters need to go around getting loans to underwrite the project.

It was potentially a "$2,000,000 gate" fight.
But I'm sure the potential for racial trouble made the risks for investors unusually high.

Sadly, race riots were a FACT of the times. As you rightly say.
The Johnson-Jeffries fight had sparked nation-wide riots that killed at least 25, and injured hundreds. And these issues had only got worse since then ...

The summer of 1919, when Dempsey won the title, witnessed the worst race riots in American history, around 500 people were killed, thousands injured, in 25 different locations.
Chicago's riots lasted 13 days.

In 1921, the prosperous black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma was massacred or driven out, hundreds killed, by a mob of thousands of whites.

I mean, these days, these events would be considered more than just "riots".

Of course these issues DID come in to consideration and discussion among influential business people and politicians when talk of hosting such an event was mooted.
Dempsey v Wills is almost a sure bet to spark race riots in the climate of the times. Regardless of who won, people would have died, almost certainly.

So, yeah, it was a factor.

 

Hey Mr.DJ, MCgrain, i fixed yo post. :smoke

 

LX. We are on the same page...The page of truth and facts...Some posters
of today DENY HISTORY, so great is there hatred for Jack Dempsey...
LX, for the life of me, I don't truly understand the paranoid revulsion these posters have for Jack Dempsey,who by all standards, was respected and admired by generations after his retirement.? These "noble" posters of today, were they in Dempsey's shoes, would have ignored the terrible atmosphere of those bygone days, somehow would find a promotor to
come up with great amounts of money and take the terrible and most likely risks of riots following a Dempsey/Wills bout...Of course LX, these posters in the real world in the 1920s, couldn't and wouldn't have defied the harsh facts of those days...As we know ONE promotor from Michigan tried ,and DID sign Dempsey and Harry Wills, but COULD NOT RAISE the money from wary investors and had to abandon the match, losing a good sum of money
in his foolish venture...So LX nice to hear from you...