Most Competitive Top-10 For Any Division (All-Time)?

[Barn]

Why? In Unforgivable Blackness it says Johnson - Jeffries was a gold mine after promoting it as Black vs White?

[StarshipTrooper]

Why? In Unforgivable Blackness it says Johnson - Jeffries was a gold mine after promoting it as Black vs White?

Because in spite of being a gold mine financially it was also a public relations disaster.

Poet

[Barn]

Oh yeah, forgot about the crazyness afterwards lol, but from reading Tex Rickard struck me as the guy who wouldn't care as long as he was getting money.

[StarshipTrooper]

Oh yeah, forgot about the crazyness afterwards lol, but from reading Tex Rickard struck me as the guy who wouldn't care as long as he was getting money.

Think long-term though.....in this case, he would have regarded the long-term damage to potential profits as out-weighing any momentary financial windfall. It was a different age then and people were less about immediate gratification and more about weighing the cost-benefit ratio over extended periods of time.

Poet

[Barn]

I'm sure if Jeffries had won this wouldn't be the case though

[StarshipTrooper]

I'm sure if Jeffries had won this wouldn't be the case though

I doubt there would have been riots in cities across the country, along with a plethoria of bad press.

Poet

[Kid McCoy]

Although none were up to the standard of Wills.

I have my douts how much Dempsey did actually push for the fight to be honest.

Only occasionally defending his title against fighters that Harry Greb had all ready beaten. Another fighter (Greb) he didn't have much interest in fighting.

He wasn't very interested in fighting at all after winning the title and espcially not against the best fighters that were avaible.

Dempsey's team/management may have made attempts to seem as if they were interested in fighting Wills.

But was this just a act to make the public belive they wanted the fight? Do you honestly belive Dempsey and his team went all out to make the Wills fight happen?

For Dempsey to be the Heavyweight Champion & not fight his number #1 contender for 8 long years, and choose to fight lesser fighters, is pretty terrible and I find it hard to defend him here.

Which is a fair criticism of Dempsey. Going his whole title reign not fighting the man who was regarded as the top contender for most of it obviously can't be overlooked. I would rate Dempsey higher if he'd fought and beaten Wills but if he'd lost, how would Wills be regarded now?

You can question how serious Dempsey was, but he did nonetheless sign to meet Wills and made an effort to put the fight together. On both occasions it wasn't him who killed the fight but money and politics. Even Wills himself said he didn't blame Dempsey for the fight not happening.

There was plenty of demand for the fight, the main stumbling block was finding somewhere willing to stage it. New York demanded Dempsey face Wills but didn't want it held in New York. Various other states also refused to host it, out of fear of a repeat of the race riots which followed Johnson-Jeffries.

As for Greb, I think that was purely a case of risk vs reward. Beating a middleweight would do nothing for Dempsey but if he lost it would be catastrophic. Not that that justifies the fight not being made. These are legitimate gripes with Dempsey's career, but I don't blame him for Wills.

[BennyST]

I reckon it's LW as well. It's probably the division with the largest pool of fighters all-time and the top is truely awesome.

Yeah, I agree. I think Lightweight, Welterweight and Middleweight are the top divisions all time.

These divisions are generally always stacked full of the top talent in boxing every era.

Lately of course it seems as though these divisions are the weakest along with heavy. I think it's because there are probably more smaller sized guys going into boxing still compared to the slightly larger guys.

The smaller divisions from 147 down seem to be by far the most full of talent today with nearly all the divisions above 147 quite poor historically. 168 is the best division above 147 today and the rest suck to be honest. Lightweight is at its worst level for a long time right now too, as is 147. With 160, at least there was Jones, Hopkins and Toney a while ago and even Trinidad, Joppy, Holmes etc when Hopkins was at the top in a comparatively weak era.

It's all about FW, BW etc now. Boxing really is at an all time low for talent across the board. It's why guys are able to win three titles in three divisions so easily, so often and you have someone like Pac winning titles in eight. Not long ago, he wouldn't have had the slightest chance to win titles at 140, 147 and 154. He would have had more than enough to keep him busy winning and losing at the lower weights like 122, 126, 130 or whatever.