Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey

If by modern you mean the last 15 years or so, I'm sure we'd well agree.

 

If I'm doing that you're wiping out the possibility of technical development which seems sillier

 

But I havent. Ive simply argued it happened sooner than you contend --- at least in some.

Unless I mentioned anything about Corbett, Sullivan and even Johnson.

 

Well again, post 25 is (the start of) why I disagree and I'd guess we'd just have to agree to do that.

 

Wait a sec

You'd pick Dempsey to beat Lewis?

.. Lennox Lewis?

 

ointlaugh:

 

The most pathetic thing in all this is that Ramonza fail to acknowlege that those guys were fighting in a white boys only club . They were not real world champions, they were duckers. It's a shame that you praise them as much as you do.

 

This is very true.

 

Tommy Burns was amazing. Ramonza is right this guy could beat any light heavyweight in the history, even some great heavyweights and not to mention the straw weights.

 

Not entirely true. Jeffries fought black heavyweights, and beat them too. Jack Johnson went on a Whiteboys Tour of America and Cuba after he beat Jeffries, and then lost to a whiteboy who was annihilated in 4 rounds by Dempsey.

 

Those Irish, Italian & Jew boys grew up tough too, back then.

 

Johnson's time was before the color barrier went up.. By the time Dempsey was champ, he wasn't fighting anyone black for any reason.. Wills being the best example of this.

 

I never liked Dempsey either.

 

completely irrevelant

 

Ooh there's no play in you

 

You say that as though Dempsey were afraid of Wills.

 

Tunney's sister was my mother's elementary school principal

 

THIS!!!!!!!!^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ezzard Charles would have beaten Tunney into into an early grave

 

BINGO

 

Indeed. If Tunney is fighting in the 1940s, he's getting blasted. Billy Conn would have danced circles around him, Tunney couldn't hit him in the ass

 

agree

while there were definitely some good black fighters shut out of the title picture... this isn't "white boys" the way the term would later come to mean

The lion's share of these jews/italians/irish/polaks were street kids, dirt poor kids who fought in the streets, from the poorest classes, they weren't WASPs from the Hampton's the way that idiot Jesus Of Montreal is making it sound

 

bullshit

it's very fucking relevant

the talent pool was made up of poor kids from all over america, all colors... This wasn't 100 white guys fighting for titles while 5000 black guys were on the outside looking in... there were FAR MORE "white" fighters in the first half of the century because there were far more immigrants, far more more whites who lived in the worst slums in the country... Tunney and Dempsey ducked black fighters, no question and they both deserve to be diminished because of it, but you are acting like boxing was Major League Baseball, it wasn't

 

Would Lennox Lewis's legacy have been enhanced if he had beaten Riddick Bowe? And visa versa? I'd say so... Dempsey's being afraid or not being afraid is not really the point... the point is that a guy seen as the best threat to him was never fought and Dempsey did nothing to change that fact.

 

Wills had a great run and certainly would have added to Dempsey's legacy, no dispute there, but Dempsey did attempt the bout, never ducked the man, and for anyone to behave as though there werent enormous external factors is just plain wrong.

We all know Wills was garbage, anyway. He fought in an age where everyone was.

 

compared to just 20 years later, for sure

Archie Moore at 175 pounds goes in there against either Dempsey or Wills at their most comfortable heavyweight level and he's coming out with a W each time... my god, the things he did, would look like a magical wizard to them. Forget about what he'd do to slow-motion fencers like Johnson and Jeffries... carve them up like a turkey

 

Nah.

 

Yup

He'd school Dempsey/Wills/Tunney

He'd land at will on the likes of Johnson and company

Dempsey would fucking kill Jack Johnson

 

Agreed on the last line.

 

He'd beat Jeffries even more decisively

 

No one who saw both men in the flesh agreed with that.