THE GREAT TRAINERS AND FIGHTERS ON DEMPSEY

[Sundance Kid]

The great trainers and fighters on Dempsey: Simply the best

By Mike Casey

I got into it big time the other night with a good and valued buddy of mine from White Plains, NY.
Despite a terrific knowledge of past and present fighters, a mighty collection of real time films, tapes, books and original transcripts – all of which he studies and analyses in incredible detail – Mike Hunnicut is the first to admit that he doesn’t know it all. Hallelujah to him for that honest admission, since the rest of us don’t know it all either.
But Mr H certainly knows quite a bit. Down through the years, he has known and talked to such legendary figures as Ray Arcel, Jack Kearns Jnr, Teddy Hayes and Lou Stillman, as well as a host of past and present fighters.
Mike has his favourites like we all do, but coldly assimilates and analyses his facts with an unprejudiced eye. It takes an awful lot of work and dedication to do this, as any truly dedicated historian will confirm. We are a serious lot, yes, and sometimes a little too intense when our passions run high. But we judge our fighters fairly and never cheaply demean or denigrate any of them.
Given Mike’s vast experience and his endless conversations with the great trainers of the great fighters, I was eager to get his opinions and impressions on the elite.
He dropped many illustrious names, including those of Benny Leonard, Billy Conn, Mickey Walker and the great ‘Cuban Bon Bon’, Kid Chocolate. But one man stands supreme on Mike’s list, and the lists of most others, as the fighter who had the most of everything: the incredible Jack Dempsey.
It is vitally important to this writer, as indeed it should be to others, that the fighting abilities of men such as Dempsey, Johnson, Louis and even Muhammad Ali are not devalued and degraded by the corrosion of the passing years; or, quite frankly, by the ignorance of dilettantes and present era junkies who are not prepared to do their homework in their blind allegiance to their small band of favourites. Already, as incredible as it seems to a man of fifty like myself, we are seeing Ali being knocked down the pecking order by a generation of well-meaning ignoramuses who believe that 360lbs of beef and muscle is everything a heavyweight fighter will ever need. Please, play me another song! A 500lb gorilla can be knocked out by a blow to the jaw by a man who has the presence of mind, the technique and the brass balls to try it. These are proven, biological facts of life. Why, then, are they apparently unknown to those who profess to know and understand boxing?
Not that an ordinary man would ever contemplate such an act. But then we are not here to talk about ordinary men.

Evidence

Fortunately, the evidence in Jack Dempsey’s favour continues to pile up, as old and new testimonials and transcripts come to the fore and re-introduce him to us as the exceptional natural born killer he was.
They come from men like legendary trainer Ray Arcel, who saw all the great champions through Mike Tyson
Did Arcel dwell in the past as an older man? Well, he trained modern fighters like Roberto Duran and saw the vastly underrated Argentine master, Nicolino Locche, and couldn’t speak highly enough of those greats. In the brilliant wizard Locche, Arcel saw a man he described as being even cleverer than Willie Pep.
So how did the great Ray assess Dempsey and the other heavyweights? Mike Hunnicut interviewed Arcel at length on different occasions and picks up the story. “You have to understand,” Mike explains, “that guys like Arcel are very measured and understated in their descriptions of fighters. It takes a lot to impress them, because they get to see and handle so many quality operators. If they tell you a guy was ‘pretty good’, they usually mean ‘excellent’. They may also take some time to warm to you and therefore warm to the subject.
“Arcel was a very quiet and polite man by nature, unbelievably knowledgeable about the fight game, yet never one to brag about how much he knew.
“But when we went deep on Jack Dempsey, Ray’s eyes lit up. For him, there was no other fighter past or present who could compare.”
Arcel’s verdict on the Manassa Mauler was thus: “Dempsey would have absolutely beaten any fighter who came after him – without a doubt. I know all about Joe Louis and how he knocked guys’ teeth out. I have every respect for Joe – I rate him number two. But Dempsey would have killed Louis, George Foreman, any of those guys. What Jack had was God-given – you can’t develop the kind of talent he had.
“Marciano? Same result. Dempsey would have murdered Rocky. I tell you, Jack would have chased everyone out of the ring. I trained Max Baer a couple of times and often got asked how good that booming right of his was and whether it was as good as anything Dempsey had. Are you kidding? It wasn’t even close.
“Mike Tyson might have got through a round with Dempsey, maybe two. People always asked me what Jack’s weaknesses were. That’s the point – he didn’t have any.”
Former heavyweight champ Jack Sharkey expressed similar sentiments in a 1986 interview. Mike Tyson had just surged to the head of the division and Sharkey said of Mike, “There is only one heavyweight that I can see who would fit into the old school and that’s Tyson. They’re all cream puff punchers today except Tyson, and his secret is that he doesn’t waste many punches.”
Then Sharkey turned his attention to Dempsey and others “Jack Dempsey was the best because he was a real fighter, and if he hit you in the shoulder he could dislocate it.
“Ali was a real good boxer but he took too many punches in his training, which he didn’t have to take.
“Joe Louis was nothing sensational, being a methodical fighter, but he was a great finisher when he had his man in trouble.
“Rocky Marciano was very good and I almost put him up there with Dempsey. It would be a tough fight between those two but Dempsey, I’d say, was a better puncher.”
One has to understand the savagely tough era that bred such a savagely tough fighting man as Dempsey. As a callow sixteen-year old, Jack was already knocking out giants of men in fights down the mines, in old-fashioned fight-to-the-finish street brawls and in bars. Not merely knocking them out, but pulverising them and almost killing them. A fight to Dempsey was a struggle to the death. That is how he saw it. That was the kind of special fire that burned in his blood.
Jack’s future manager, Jack Kearns, was quick to recognise this exceptional and almost unique quality. Cagey Kearns, along with trainer Teddy Hayes, knew that if that raw talent could be honed and polished correctly, the fighter of all fighters would come from it.

Witness

The knowledgeable men of boxing all saw and recognised this spine-chilling side of Jack Dempsey’s nature. They saw something that they had never seen before. They saw something that they would never see again.
Before his 1923 title defence against Luis Angel Firpo, Dempsey and his brother Bernie were interviewed by Grantland Rice. The article that followed would be published just a few days before the fight. Rice said to Dempsey, “If you got knocked down, you feel the fight would just be starting?”
“Just that way,” Jack replied. Then brother Bernie stepped in and told Rice that very few people had ever seen his brother really fight. “And you never will until he gets knocked down. Then you will see a wildcat just beginning to get started. I know. I’ve seen it happen.”
Dempsey’s great trainer Teddy Hayes recalled, almost in awe, how Jack roared back against Firpo. “Then he was again the real Dempsey, the one I had seen take out a dozen men in ten minutes in the old days in the Salt Lake fleshpots. His energy surged back to him. He dropped Firpo twice more, the last time for the full count.
“This was part of Dempsey’s great appeal to everyone, this passion that swept him out of his corner to slug and flail until his opponents no longer remained before him. I called it battle lust. In the heat of the moment, the niceties of ring comportment went by the board.”
Max Schmeling, always a very astute observer and commentator on the game, was similarly fascinated by Dempsey’s almost mystical qualities. In his twilight years, Max was asked to name the boxers who had impressed him the most down through the decades. “Trying to name them all would be a little too much,” Max replied.
“But, in alphabetical order, my short list of those boxers who will never be forgotten includes Muhammad Ali, Henry Armstrong, Georges Carpentier, Julio Cesar Chavez, George Foreman, Harry Greb, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Jack Johnson, Ray Leonard, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Carlos Monzon, Archie Moore, Willie Pep, Ray Robinson and Mike Tyson.
“But now I want to add, all by myself, one more name: Jack Dempsey. Despite all the class shown by the others, Dempsey was not only my own idol, he remains for me to this day the greatest of them all. He was the big daddy. He embodied the complete perfection of a professional boxer.
“Jack, the ninth of eleven children of an impoverished family of Mormon itinerant workers in Colorado, welded brilliant technique and strategy with a stupendous punch like no other boxer. His punches came packed with the full power of his entire shoulder span. He was a nightmare of an opponent. He hated sharing the ring with anybody else. He appeared to be a fist fighter from another planet. It was no coincidence that they called him ‘the man killer’.
“Writer Joyce Carol Oates, in her famous essay, ‘On Boxing’, was right on target when she said that Dempsey’s style of fighting – fast, direct and merciless – has forever put its stamp on the sport of boxing in America, and not only there.
“She is also not wrong when she says that today’s boxing matches, compared with those of Dempsey’s, appear to be harmless minuets. By no means do I mean to over-glorify him or above all the first half of the twentieth century in boxing. But the fact is that our fights back then were definitely much tougher, much more brutal.
“I was still boxing with only four and five ounce gloves, and after two rounds they were mostly already torn apart, with only a few patches of tough leather covering my knuckles. The punches were extremely painful.
“Back then, there were also only eight weight categories, in which there was, logically, only a single world champion. It was extremely difficult to box your way to the top.”

Nightmare

Gene Tunney, the great Fighting Marine, was as cool and calculated as any fighter that ever lived, the man who tamed the ferocious Harry Greb. When Tunney dethroned Dempsey in 1926, he beat an ageing warrior who had not boxed for three years and had been living the high life. Yet Dempsey still got into Tunney’s head and terrified him in the run-up to that first of their two memorable battles.
In later years, Tunney recalled, “One night, in a lonely cottage on Mount Pleasant, I had a nightmare. I was in the ring with Dempsey. He was battering me frightfully. I was bloody and only half conscious and he came at me snarling He knocked me down. I got up and he began pummelling me again. The referee stopped the fight. I woke up. The bed was shaking. I was practically out of it. After that, I stopped reading the newspapers and maintained a calm approach to the fight.”
Gene Tunney never did lose his admiration for the grim reaper who had come to claim him in the lonely darkness and who would later become a lifelong friend.
In a 1952 interview with ‘Look’ magazine, Gene spoke of Dempsey thus: “Jack Dempsey, I’m convinced, was our greatest heavyweight champion. In his prime, when he knocked out Jess Willard to win the title in 1919, he would have taken the four leading heavyweights of today – Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano, Harry (Kid) Matthews and Ezzard Charles – and flattened them all in one night.
“These four men are honest, earnest, capable professionals. If they are not touched with ring genius, neither are they stumblebums. So I do not mean to deprecate them when I say Dempsey would have levelled them all in the same evening as follows: Matthews, two rounds. Charles, two rounds. Walcott, five rounds. Marciano, one round.
“A total of ten rounds. Even then, I don’t consider I’m giving Dempsey any the best of it. He might have demolished each of the four in less than one round. He was eminently equipped to do it. He had many championship gifts, including a great fighting heart and the ability to absorb a tremendous punch and recuperate astonishingly fast.
“He learned his trade the hard way against fighters of all sizes, shape and brands from mining camp, deadfall and dance hall to huge arena and stadium.
“Jack was no wild slugger. He was an extremely clever fusion of fighter and boxer. He fought out of a peculiar weave and bob and was very difficult to hit with a solid punch. In the 20 rounds I fought him – 10 at Philadelphia in 1926 and 10 at Chicago the following year – I never did get a clean shot at his jaw. He was always weaving and bobbing away from the direct line of fire.
“Dempsey was criticised for not being able to knock out Tommy Gibbons – one of the all-time great boxers. Actually, that fight was one of Jack’s most impressive performances. Unable to reach his clever opponent with a knockout punch, he was still a fine enough combination of fighter and boxer to outscore Tommy all the way.
“But it was Dempsey the savage puncher, the scowling attacker, who thrilled the sports world. He was a great hitter. His right hand to body or jaw was explosive. Even more devastating was his left hook to liver and jaw. Weaving and bobbing, he feinted opponents into leads, slipped those leads and jolted home his short punches to body and head. He hurt and stunned opponents. He knocked them down and, eventually, kept them down.
“The most remarkable thing about Dempsey’s fighting make-up was the shortness of his punching. His blows seldom travelled more than six inches to a foot. He had a trick of hooking his left to the body and then to the head in practically the same movement.
“In his fight with Luis Firpo, Jack floored the huge Argentinian seven times in the first round and twice in the second before knocking him out. Yet, of all the punches he threw, only the last – a right to the jaw – was a long one.
“All the others were short, murderous jolts and digs to the heart and the kidney and the jaw. This ability of Dempsey to generate such punishing power over a few inches of swing, without seeming leverage, traced from a quick power inherent in his unusual shoulder conformation, with its high and bulging deltoid muscles.
“Beating Dempsey in his prime probably would have been something beyond them all, including Jack Johnson, Jim Jeffries and Joe Louis. My friend Harry Grayson, sports editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, may be right when he says that Louis would go in the first flurry of punches.”

Lou Stillman’s verdict

Gruff, strict and taciturn, the legendary and brilliant Lou Stillman ran his famous New York boxing gym with a rod of iron. Like Ray Arcel, Lou could be shy and guarded in giving his opinion of different fighters. One has to remember that such special men – along with the likes of Angelo Dundee, Manny Steward, Buddy McGirt and Teddy Atlas today – are constantly quizzed on which fighter they think was the best. They are so wary of getting into endless arguments on the subject. Many fans don’t react kindly when a trainer’s verdict doesn’t happen to dovetail with their own.
Stillman saw thousands of fighters over a great span of years: champions, contenders, preliminary boys, ordinary men just working out. But one day Stillman saw one thing he never forgot. It was the angry punch with which the retired Dempsey knocked out Tony Galento in a sparring session. The sight and sound of that mighty blow being driven home was hard for even Stillman to believe. Right to the end, Lou maintained that it was the hardest shot he had ever seen and that Dempsey was the greatest heavyweight.
Ray Arcel was also a witness to the chilling incident and recalled that the punch nearly decapitated Galento.
Mike Hunnicut recently told me that the ‘real time’ film of the Dempsey-Willard fight (not the familiar, herky-jerky version by which Dempsey is so often misjudged) remains the most terrifying vision of a destructive fighter he has seen in all his years of studying motion pictures.
Says Mike, “When you watch the films of Joe Louis and zoom in, it’s incredible to behold what Joe could do – fantastic.
“But a real close-up view of Dempsey in real time has an almost surreal quality to it – his incredible animal-like moves and co-ordination, his terrific punch and all-round toughness. It absolutely floors the viewer. These are the qualities that the Lou Stillmans and the Ray Arcels were referring to.
“Jack’s many illustrious opponents were rightly proud of their own toughness and fighting abilities, yet look how many came in praise of him. They would talk of him as a man apart.
“Dempsey’s footwork, his overall boxing ability and his reflexes were genuinely exceptional. You can’t conveniently group that man with anyone else.”

Remarkable

This, then, was the remarkable and unique fighter that was Jack Dempsey. Was he the greatest of all the heavyweights? In this writer’s opinion, yes. But that gorgeous question is always gloriously open to interpretation. The eternal beauty of boxing is its subjectivity, and none of us ever know if we are right or wrong.
But please, if nothing else, let us sweep away once and for all the ridiculous and oh-so-trendy theories of the ‘current’ crowd that the heavyweights of the past would be too small and too lacking in power to compete with the erratic, occasional and often unwilling meat-laden plodders of the present era.
How many perpetrators of these patent falsehoods visit boxing gymnasiums on a regular basis? How many actually phone up trainers, managers and fighters and talk to them at length about boxing technique? How many bother to seek out the ‘real time’ films of the old fighters and study them for hours? I do all these things every day of my working life, because writing about boxing is my profession. My title of ‘boxing writer and historian’ wasn’t cheekily self-applied.
The great rush to embrace anyone and everyone as being ‘great’ is now reaching ludicrous proportions. Wladimir Klitschko was massively found out by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster, yet is already right back up there as an all-time ace (in the estimation of all the usual suspects) because he pummelled little ol’ Chris Byrd. Funny how size is never a factor when it’s the little guy who’s getting walloped.
The crashing evidence against these ill-researched theories is there by the bucket load for those who want to seek it out and not just look but SEE. Those who don’t are surely just passing through or simply do not want their cosy, pre-set little agendas to be blown out of the water.
The chilling term of ‘man killer’ wasn’t casually lumped on Jack Dempsey in the throwaway manner that nicknames are handed out today. It was thoroughly earned in the toughest schools the fight game has ever seen. It was earned thrillingly, violently and sometimes shockingly by a unique force of nature.
Dempsey was indeed a ring killer of men who could have killed anyone past or present on his best day.


* Mike Casey is a boxing journalist and historian and a staff writer with Boxing Scene. He is a member of the International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO) and founder and editor of the Grand Slam Premium Boxing Service for historians and fans (http://www.grandslampage.net).

[Ezzard]

Thanks for posting this. Jack's stock is in decline. The fight against Wills would have answered so many questions.

I still think his rise to champion was one of the greatest ever and that he responded to the changes in boxing quicker than his contemporaries. It was interesting to hear Arcel's thoughts on the great man.

Dempsey's performances must have been as electric as Tyson's were as he moved to the linela championship. Jack had none of the drawbacks of Mike though and posessed a sounder psychological foundation. Dempsey, IMO, was also a better boxer than Tyson.

[barry]

I really like read Mike Casey...he's probably one of the most prolific writers, who actually knows what he is talkling about, out there today!

[Ezzard]

I really like read Mike Casey...he's probably one of the most prolific writers, who actually knows what he is talkling about, out there today!

Barry, where do you place Dempsey amongst the greats?

[barry]

I have Dempsey number three...one ahead of Johnson at 4 and right behind Joe Louis ad 2...Ali number 1.

[Ezzard]

I have Dempsey number three...one ahead of Johnson at 4 and right behind Joe Louis ad 2...Ali number 1.

What's your reasoning for having him above Johnson and Holmes? I rank Ali, Louis, Johnson and Holmes as my big 4 of the division. I love reading about Johson and Dempsey because of their eras.

When I first folowed boxing in the 1980s Dempsey was in most top 5's. These days though many don't have him in their top 10.

[silkov]

I actually rate Dempsey behind Marcinano... at about 11th or 12th all time... I'd put Jeffries above him as well... great character no doubt but I think his fighting prowess is rather overrated by some imo...

[pound per pound]

That was an impressive post.

[pundit]

Interesting stuff. Especially the quotes from Gene Tunney. The trouble with Dempsey is that he didn't fight the best while he was in his prime -- Harry Wills, Harry Greb, Kid Norfolk -- and medicore fighters like Firpo could get him into trouble. When he finally stepped up to defend against an ATG heavyweight - Tunney - he lost pretty soundly, and the standard explanntion "well, he was over the hill then" sounds a bit too convenient. So it's hard to assess his standing properly, but the positive voices of so many experts weight in his favor, of course.

Btw, I liked especialy this assessment of Tunney:

I say Dempsey would have levelled them all in the same evening as follows: Matthews, two rounds. Charles, two rounds. Walcott, five rounds. Marciano, one round.

Step up to the plate, Brockton!

[Ezzard]

Like Johnson, Dempsey's opposition after winning the title was not great. The times were different back then.

Demspey cut a swathe through the division that was both exciting and devestating. In a head to head sense I think he does very well. His combination of speed, power, stamina and underrated boxing skill would be too much for many. His quick start would have the likes of Marciano, Jeffries and Frazier far too damaged to come back, and even if they did Dempsey often paced himself for a big finish.

I think the Wills thing is really significant today.

Lennox Lewis once spoke about the potential embarrassment of losing to a white HW. I think the early struggle with VK (please don't turn this into a VK thread) made his mind up about retiring. Sometimes I think that these days it's hard for people to believe that a white HW could be any good.

[barry]

>>>What's your reasoning for having him above Johnson and Holmes?<<<

Well I guess mainly because, in they're primes, I feel that Dempsey would beat both Johnson and Holmes.

>>>Tunney - he lost pretty soundly, and the standard explanntion "well, he was over the hill then" sounds a bit too convenient.<<<

There's nothing standard, or convenient about it...Dempsey was over the hill, in fact, he was way over the hill and the fact that he had only four fights in seven years and only two in five years prior to facing Tunney...it's pretty obvious that he was way past it by the time he stepped into the ring with Tunney and he still damn near beat Tunney.

A prime Dempsey puts a solid beating on a prime Tunney...probably in a very similar fashion to Gibbons, but then again, the Dempsey who fought Gibbons was not near prime...had he been it's likely that he would have scored a knockout over Gibbons...and it's a good probability that a prime Dempsey would have KO'd Tunney as well! No there is nothing convenient, or standard about it…it’s FACT!

[pundit]

No there is nothing convenient, or standard about it…it’s FACT!

Barry believes his opinions are facts.
THAT'S A FACT!

[BoxBuzz]

I really like read Mike Casey...he's probably one of the most prolific writers, who actually knows what he is talkling about, out there today!

barry I agree, and since we agree on this point, I'm thinking I can welcome you to the Monzon bandwagon on the basis of Mike's credibility and insight.

[barry]

>>>Barry believes his opinions are facts. THAT'S A FACT!<<<

Most of what I post is FACT...and when I do presenmt my opinion it is strongly backed by FACT...such as the issue about Vitali Quitschko...I state that he quit in his biggest fight...which is FACT...though whether, or not it was his biggest fight is opinion, but it was one, of his two biggest figthts in which he QUIT....FACT!

[pound per pound]

>>>Barry believes his opinions are facts. THAT'S A FACT!<<<

Most of what I post is FACT...and when I do presenmt my opinion it is strongly backed by FACT...such as the issue about Vitali Quitschko...I state that he quit in his biggest fight...which is FACT...though whether, or not it was his biggest fight is opinion, but it was one, of his two biggest figthts in which he QUIT....FACT!

Byrd was not one of Vitali's two biggest fights unless your “opinion “ is that the WBO belt that Vitlai was defending vs Chris Byrd is greater then vacant WBC and the Ring Magazine belts he was fighting for vs Sanders. Who did Byrd beat that was so great before facing Vitali that made this a big fight? Byrd was a late sub in. That’s how big of a name he was back then. Those are the FACTS.

This topic is tiresome. The sad FACTS are constant trolling is damaging the forum. I see ludicrous polls and venom amongst the posters. Is this what you wanted Barry? If not then QUIT talking about it, or at the very least keep it out of a fine thread like this one.

[HomicideHenry]

I don't think we will ever see another fighter like Jack Dempsey ever again. The ONLY two instances I have seen in the history of the ring where someone almost matched Dempsey's meteoric rise to greatness was with Marciano and Tyson.

Here is a man who left home and rode the rails going from town to town fighting people for sandwiches or just mere pennies. I even heard stories where he would let people hit him in the head with a hammer for a dollar or two, just to be able to eat.

He went from THE bottom to THE top in just five years going an impressive 57-4-11. Mind you, he also fought a number of bare knuckle fights and participated in wrestling matches in those early years. For being no bigger than a LHW many a man who fought him said he was the hardest hitting man, and the most ferocious, that they had ever fought.

Before facing off against the imposing Willard he was 7-0 in his last 7 fights, 6 of which in the first round. Those men were Gunboat Smith and Carl Morris to name a few. He had also met against the likes of Fred Fulton and other giant sized HW's and other men of skill and ability.

Nobody had ever seen a man fight with that kind of style before, being so ferocious and daring, a blood and guts affair every time out. As a champion, he beat guys like George Carpentier, Luis Angel Firpo, Miske, Brennan, Jimmy Darcy, Tommy Gibbons before losing to Tunney after a 3 year hiatus.

He could have faced off with more deserving challengers, could have had more fights, but by that time Dempsey was THE highest paid athlete in the world and was mainly going for pay-days, and Tunney was more money than a tougher test against a Harry Wills or a George Godfrey.

I rank Dempsey inside the top 10 myself, but I don't rank him in the top 5. Only because he could have did more, but chose not to, and Dempsey was more an icon and a celebrity than he was a fighter in ways...and when someone becomes that huge a figure in the public eye, usually their abilities become exaggerated.

I do think he was a hard puncher, but not as hard a puncher as Marciano or Liston or even Foreman. I do think, though, with his hand speed, ferocity, and bobbing and weaving prowess he was much more dangerous, at least in that aspect, than Marciano, Liston and Foreman.

Dempsey himself rated Jefferies over himself, and was quoted that he believed Marciano was the hardest punching man in the HW ring, because when Dempsey and Louis hit someone, alot of times men picked themselves off the canvas and they had to knock them down again, with Marciano it was one shot and it was over.

But I do like Dempsey, and I do think he could have beaten alot of champions past and present, but in ways...I think he was a better fighter before he was champion. He wanted it more then, he was more viscous and he wanted to prove his worth and he swept through the division from the bottom up, from fighting for a beer and a sandwich at some bar to knocking about Willard and eventually generating the first million dollar gate.

[Jaclem]

.... i remember that look magazine article by tunney..and his many interviews afterward in which he said pretty much the same thing....and i think it's informative to consider by claimng dempsey was so great, tunney therefore is speaking well of himself....after all, he beat dempsey twice...and he never indicated that he thought the dempsey in those fights was past his prime.

dempsey was good...maybe the most exciting of the heavyweight champions....and he might have even got as far as the fifth round before louis kayoed him....but as someone here pointed out, these are opinions and not facts...