Dempsey Overrated?

[kendom]

What happened when Tunney fought Dempsey? albeit he was past his prime he won 19 of the 20 rounds, plus its well known that he and Dempsey were great friends, so why shouldnt I take his opinion with a grain of salt? especially when he's saying ridiculous **** like how Dempsey's beating JJ Walcott, Marciano, Ezzard Charles etc in one round? PPL need to start taking these views with a grain of salt and start watching footage

[beez721]

don't think dempsey would rank in a top 5 now, maybe top 10 but most likely top 20. he was aggressive and hit damn hard but his title run was mediocre at best and he was as lazy a champion in terms of defenses as any I know. No doubting he was great for his era but he wouldn't be top 5 in my book.

so hard to gauge just how good demspey was considering how raw the fighters were back then. not trying to throw race into the works here but I don't recall him fighting any African americans of note back then. it very well may not have been his fault of course

[billeau2]

so hard to gauge just how good demspey was considering how raw the fighters were back then. not trying to throw race into the works here but I don't recall him fighting any African americans of note back then. it very well may not have been his fault of course

I personally think Dempsey bears at least some responsability. Although it should also be noted that not all fighters, for example, the "Black Panther" (harry Wills) probably were not necessarily going to be such a challenge to Dempsey.

Racial attitudes often can be dissapointing when we look backwards into father times subsequent: One of my favorite authors was Jack London. An Oakland California man who wrote beautifully, including such books as White Fang, Call Of The Wild, Martin Eden.....He was also a progressive thinker rallying for the rights of workers and for Union progress. A sensative man who wound up committing suicide because of the constant class struggles he endured as a working class guy with such a great education and talent for writing.

He wrote about boxing and had this to say about jack johnson...(I am paraphrasing) "this laughing Ethiopian needs to be beat soundly to put him and his race back where they belong, by a proper Anglo Saxon fighting man."
As a white guy I want to scream. Why couldn't such an intelligent man make the connection between his own need for suffrage and the needs of his Black brothers and sisters?

What can one say? Actually it should, in the interest of fairness, also be said that Dempsey did seem generally contrite about his previous stance. He may well have come around to understanding what a crime it was to segregate such fighters as Sam McVeigh, langford, etc. One can only hope because Dempsey was also quigte intelligent and....progressive.

[The Old LefHook]

Over the last couple of days I read Championship Fighting, by Jack Dempsey.

Warning: Please do not download the free Pdf versions offered on the internet, as I encountered all kinds of interruptions by my Virus shield alerting me to danger. It even changed my homepage. But I was so determined to read Dempsey that I forged on, and scoured the bad stuff off my computer later.

It is really surprising how concise Dempsey is about breaking down boxing techniques. He never was a dummy and he never was a thoughtless brawler. Dempsey is informed, baby, that is for sure. He knows about boxing and he has a philosophy of teaching it which he says is becoming fast lost (this was in 1950).

Dempsey's philosophy is that the knockout punch and those techniques needed to acquire it, should be taught first, along with stance. He gives a very good account of why.

If a boxing fan reads this book he will not be confounded that Dempsey was able to KO opponents with shots that didn't look that hard. Dempsey's technique (inherited from among others Joe Gans, whom he cites) gave the moving weight of the body along the correct line of force full employment where possible, using fall steps, inward springs, shoulder and waist rotation and upward surges. Dempsey practiced these techniques so assiduously that they became as natural as breathing to him. After he retired and wanted to teach boxing, he found it a difficult but not insurmountable task to work backwards to untangle the techniques that were now natural to him, so that he could teach them to others and remember some of the difficulty and discoveries he had made along the way.

Like Duran, Dempsey was highly skilled but not a fancy Dan. He just knew the techniques and used them instinctively and effectively. He was highly knowledgeable, and not just in offensive techniques. He breaks down every aspect of the game starting with how to make a proper fist and which knuckle to aim with.

I would recommend it to any boxing fan. Just do not read the free Pdf version on the internet, from my experience, at least. I did not try every site that offered it free, probably.