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I don't think old Langford would have beaten Dempsey. But he is certainly more accomplished than any fighter on Jack's ledger. As far as who would win prime for prime....who can really say? But if a guy like Brennen could trouble Dempsey I have no doubt Landlord would. Film doesn't do him justice. By all accounts he did everything well in the ring, especially punch.
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And guess who fought Langford 2 years before Dempsey was saying Langford was too good for him, and that he needs more experience.
That's right. Harry Wills.Comment
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Your wrong Rusty and for a number of reasons:
You could take Langford off Wills resume and he still has a better resume than Dempsey and... Wills fought Langford years apart, when he was still initially, very capable.
He also fought McVea and Jeanette two excellent fighters chronically underrated. And how could you say Firpo was a better fighter than Wills? Come on now...
If I am looking closely at this issue see that Wills fought a more narrow spectrum of fighters than Dempsey...he fought many of the same great fighters over and over again, as a consequence of race. I think Dempsey would have beaten Wills... Wills could use his large frame and boxing skills to create opportunities against men who were tough, but could be kept at bay by a fellow great fighter. I think Dempsey would have gotten to Wills with a more concentrated approach... the fight would IMO have looked like Tyson against Holmes.
But there is no way one can say Dempsey fought better competition. The best man he fought was perhaps the best light heavy ever to some (I might be one of those on any given day) and he did not win either of those fights.Comment
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Dempsey like quite a few great heavyweights, never fought against particularly great competition, Sharkey was not a great fighter by any stretch. Many guys like Gunboat Smith who were excellent were fought by both men. Jeanette and McVay as well as Langford were excellent fighters. Dempsey did lose to Tunney twice. I have all the respect for Dempsey in the world, but the truth is he did not fight great competition for whatever reason.
I agree that what was said should be taken with a grain of salt, that is not my point here.Comment
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IMO Dempsey was probably being honest in that he was speaking of when he was coming up and Langford was a (the) dominate fighter. Langford must have seemed a lesser-god to a young fighter in the 19-teens.
Dempsey, lets say in 1916 when he first started making his serious run to be a contender, would have smartly ducked Langford. (Possibly even did.)
But Langford (if I am not mistaken) had approached Kearns after Dempsey had won the title and had a couple of defenses. Everyone must have been looking at Dempsey and think , **** I wish I could get a shot. The amount of money available had changed so greatly so quickly.
It is too bad they couldn't have found a way to get Langford one big pay day. I feel confident that is what Dempsey did with Billy Miske.
Actually there is one (on resume), Gene Tunney, but Dempsey lost to him, twice. LOLComment
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- -Not really. Musta fergot the long count by a huge leap of irony plagued Dempsey stylist Mike Tyson.
Be clear, Jack grew up as a western fighter with a low population base, prob as many Indians as whites and precious few blacks. He KOed a black fighter before his NYC debut where he had his celebrated John Lester Johnson fight that left him with broken ribs. Sleeping on park benches and standing in soup lines, he was bilked by his conman new big city promoters and elected to ride the rails home. Even under ideal conditions, Langford a legend in full sway was too much for JJOHNSON much less Dempsey. There is also no evidence Sam would've worked with such a conman.
What we know comes from Jack, but ya know our resident 10 Dolla Teensy likes to over inflate any little nugget into the gold strike of the century.Comment
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Oh, I don'tknow... something about faulting him for something he did NOT do? I dunno.
Atthe same time, fighters who did EXACTLY what you fault Dempsey for doing get ranked above him. Jack Johnson, no less, is your number 3.
If that is not an agenda I don't know what is.
It's a silly thing to fault a fighter to begin with, but that you wouldapply it so unfairly speaks volumes.
Like I said, most of the list is fine. So it is super odd that Johnson gets slated at 3, and Dempsey outside of the top 10. What other conclusion could someone possibly arrive at!?
You rank Johnson 3#, correct?
Almost every fighter you rank above Dempsey definitively did what Jack might have done.
So yeah, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you clearly have issues with consistency.
That's pretty much the flag of surrender around here. You guys don't know what opinion is. At least, you cannot differentiate opinion from fact, or really crystallize the meaning of either.
Ultimately, we're here to share opinions. We're not conducting experiments, right? We are discussing fighters from history, not completing algebraic equations.
And actually, facts mean little in life. Don't blow that statement out of proportion. But really, what do we really know? Enter opinion. And it is based off of opinion that most our lives persist. For example: Judges render an "opinion". Have you heard the statement "the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law"?
Here's a fact:
Foreman admits to dodging Jerry Quarry.
Here's another fact:
Foreman ranks above Dempsey on your list.
Here's an opinion:
Jack ranks below Dempsey because he didn't rank another elite Heavyweight and an elite Middleweight of his era.
Can you differentiate the two?
Can you see how the logic behind the opinion is faulty (possibly biased)?
I don't mean to be rude or hard on you. You've handled yourself well in these discussions. But you have to understand why you've discredited yourself to the rest of us on matters re: Dempsey.
Again, you don't know what opinion means. Anything can be interpreted. Even facts. Jack, as Willie said, was a real Mensch. Anyone with a functioning frontal lobe (that part of the brain that separates humans from other lifeforms, which are unable to interpret the world around them) can recognize where Jack was when he made a particular comment.
When I wasa sophmore in HS I met Lynn Swann at a banquet. He said I was a helluva Football player (obviously w/o having seen me or anyone on my team actually play). Guess how far that got me after High School.
"Uh, you should totally let me play on your team with guys twice my size. Lynn Swann complimented me".
How you wish to waste your time is your business.
I prefer for the evidence to do my talking.
Find me where Langford ever looks half as good as Tunney.
Where does he look as imposing as the mountain of a man that was Willard? (You know, the guy who could actually KO Johnson and uh... win a championship).
Really, I'll even take any footage that puts him on Sharkey's level.
My White Pole does, though. Slobber away!
Hahahahaha! It's such a shame you're too ******ed to understand irony. Because that comment was amazing!
You have me in stitches!
Knock-off Maxine Walters you may be, but dammit if you don't make me laugh until it hurts.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Even if that were true, what would it matter?
Macho Camacho beat Leonard and Duran - well above his ideal weight, no less. Even in his "win" over Rosario and beating from Chavez he looked better than he did against those men.
Where do you rank Camacho?
Calzaghe beat Hopkins and Jones. Does that make him better than Ward?
Berbick beat Ali, does that make him Holmes' best win? Does he do anything to boost Holmes' legacy?
Charles beat Louis(you #1). How come you don't rank Charles among the great HEavyweights?
You're lack of Boxingknowldege is glaring and embarassing.
Tunney beat Greb, Loughran, Gibbons, Delaney and Risko. Full disclosure: Tunney's record is easy to attack; if you compare him to a Greb or Loughran he looks like Floyd Mayweather. But Tunney almost overnight became the greatest fighter in the world P4P and transformed Boxing. He can be mentioned among names like Corbett and Pep for his influence on the sport. Langford the Cherry-picker fought for DECADES and never beat the quality of opponents that Tunney did. Only idiot would suggest otherwise.
I'm guessing you'd pick Kimbo SLice to beat Tyson Fury, too?
And guess who dismantled this sloppy argument already.
That's right. Your daddy.
Now change your weave. Everyone who knows you has already seen my dried and crusty cum stains on it. You're not showing off anymore. They've all told you I don't love you. (Though i do feel bad about that time i threw you out of my moving car for being gassy).
Yup. But how capable? No one really knows. He was fat, undersized, and had lots of mileage on the odometer. Without film we really can't make an honest assessment. What we do know: It was a primitive era, and both guys were sloppy. Neither was as good as the Willard who'd dethrone Johnson.
And really, even if Wills got the better of Langford more ofthen than not, fat old Sam still won more definitively: KO'ing Wills twice.
Says who? "Excellent"!?
I know you're not one to let facts get in the way of a good story. But you really make these discussions more about people falling in line with your opinion than anything else. No offense, but you have a bad track record of it. Remember when you tried to tell me that Liston was better than Cooney? I listed countless facts, but I was wrong because - you didn't like them.
Show me the footage. Where can I see how "excellent" McVea and Jeanette were?
I dunno. Maybe you should ask the person who said it.
But on the subject of Firpo, as I have said many times: Wills struggled with a steer in Firpo, while Dempsey absolutely slaughtered the raging Bull of the Pampas.
What could be more damming of Wills? After confronting that fact, it seems damn near impossible to believe this discussion has been drawn out for so long. We have footage of both men. We have the results of their shared competition.
Yeah, I think it looks a lot like the Willard and Firpo fights, though Wills' experience and preparedness means he puts up a slightly better resistance.
Jack was still crude. He did a lot of things magnicently and hasn't been replicated. But he had limitations that more modern fighters just wouldn't have. To beat him, one had to be evasive. Trying to bring the fight to him, or impose size was NOT that.
Even if Jack had lost in his prime, he absolutely showed the potential to overcome that. Just like Louis, Ali and the Klitchkos did.A loss might have done jack well, but again that almost certainly wasn't goingto come from Wills.
Everyone agreed that Tunney was an improving fighter. Tunney the pure-boxer was a consequence of Dempsey. Before that he'd been more of a slugger. That being said, his punch was also improving.
But none of that changes the fact that he fought a faded Dempsey. And again, besides maybe Holyfield, I cannot imagine anyone at that weight, or thereabouts, doing any better than Dempsey did. Usyk, Louis, Liston, Quarry, Marciano, Ingo, Spinks, they'd all have gotten worked. Not one of them has the means for putting Gene on his ass, like Dempsey did.
Film is a wonderful tool, my friend. It cuts straight through fantasy.
Hahahahaha!
Champion, what!?
He pelted Wills - whom you're so fond of.
Oh, where are their belts at?
Show me the footage.
Too bad you didn't tell that to everyone alive then. All those poor blokes died believing that Gibbons was a great fighter - after, ya know, actually having watched him.
Better collection of scalps than Langford.
Craftier fighter than Langford.
Better KO% than Langford.
Only dropped once.
Only stopped once.
Didn't have to fight the same 6 guys 600 times over DECADES to accomplish all that.
Didn't have to fight guys half his size to accomplish that.
He did, though, accomplish getting a title shot.
I am not saying Greb wouldn't have been a better choice of an opponent, but saying Grandpa Kimbo was better than one of the first MODERN fighters is ******.
Would you say Toney and Holyfield are better fighters than Hagler?
Hagler only fought in one division. Often his opponents, certainly the most famous/best, were smaller men. He didn't have as long a career. He got off to a much rougher start.
But being an adult and informed Boxing fan, you know that those are only superficial arguments for Toney and Holyfield. And while not denying their greatness, you can appreciate that their accomplishments don't match Hagler's ability. It's the same here. Or, if you prefer a reference to art, Langford's career is a Monet: best appreciated from afar.
No offense, but in the time it took you to write your reply to me, you could have watched enough footage of the fighters involved to have actually come to an accurate conclusion, thus avoiding my (admittedly, scathing) corrections. I am not trying to pick on you or JAB, but some of the things you guys have said are ridiculous. It's little more than repeating ridiculous fables that should have died, not flourished, with the advent of the internet.
just remember, it's FREE entertainment.
But you LOVE when I finger your snatch.
So it's a wash.Last edited by Rusty Tromboni; 03-28-2020, 10:56 AM.Comment
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Faulting Dempsey for not fighting Langford is like faulting Conn for losing to Zivic and not fighting Burley. Or for faulting Robinson for losing his Ammy bout to Graham or HEarns for losing that Ammy bout to Pryor.
If anything the fact that such young fighters were being considered to fight such mature opponents speaks more to their greatness than to any fault.Comment
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