BoxRec

Ambling Alp wrote:Not a great finisher?
This was like a textbook example of how to finish an opponent.
It wasn't like Dempsey was letting him off the hook. When Willard got knocked down and got up, Dempsey was all over him and sent him down again. He kept hammering Willard with devastating punches. Willard got a broken jaw, broken ribs, lost teeth, and had his cheekbone broke in 13 places. You also have to give Willard some credit for getting up.
In more modern times, the fight would have been stopped in the first round.

I don't know what more, exactly, Jaclem wants from Dempsey to qualify him as a great finisher.

tzyuforever wrote:Why so hard to believe that Willard suffered some form of facial injuries? Jack's fists spent quite a bit of time bouncing off of it.

It's not so hard to believe that he suffered some damage but the long and gruesome list of his injuries just never seemd very plausible to me. Then, when you start to look into it, there are so many eye witness accounts, interviews and news paper reports that tells a totally different story. By all accounts Willard suffered a briused cheek bone, a cut beneath his eye, a cut lip and that's it. He gave an interview the day after the fight and he drove home with his wife 3 days after the fight, not really what you'd expect from a man with facial fractures in the double digits.

There are conflicting reports about his injuries, yes.

I think it's an unimportant side issue, myself. He was clobbered. Dempsey was grand. Willard was courageous beyond belief.

Who cares about the minutia, in the context of the full picture? God is in the process, not the details

Goodnight, Irene wrote:There are conflicting reports about his injuries, yes.

I think it's an unimportant side issue, myself. He was clobbered. Dempsey was grand. Willard was courageous beyond belief.

Who cares about the minutia, in the context of the full picture? God is in the process, not the details

Sure it's not important in the grand scheme of things but it has fueled the moronic "loaded gloves" bs for more than 90 years.

...irene...well, for one thing it would have been if willard had stayed down ....and how good was he against the wild bull of the pampas who kept getting up?

okay, he was a good finisher to guys his own size..and smaller.....but try to imagine jess willard getting up that many times against joe louis....USING THE SAME RULES DEMPSEY DID.

jaclem2 wrote:...irene...well, for one thing it would have been if willard had stayed down ....and how good was he against the wild bull of the pampas who kept getting up?

okay, he was a good finisher to guys his own size..and smaller.....but try to imagine jess willard getting up that many times against joe louis....USING THE SAME RULES DEMPSEY DID.

My good friend, Jaclem...nobody finished like Joe Louis 8)

hhaehre wrote:

Goodnight, Irene wrote:There are conflicting reports about his injuries, yes.

I think it's an unimportant side issue, myself. He was clobbered. Dempsey was grand. Willard was courageous beyond belief.

Who cares about the minutia, in the context of the full picture? God is in the process, not the details

Sure it's not important in the grand scheme of things but it has fueled the moronic "loaded gloves" bs for more than 90 years.

True enough.

jaclem2 wrote:...irene...well, for one thing it would have been if willard had stayed down ....and how good was he against the wild bull of the pampas who kept getting up?

okay, he was a good finisher to guys his own size..and smaller.....but try to imagine jess willard getting up that many times against joe louis....USING THE SAME RULES DEMPSEY DID.

Look at how many flush shots the huge Abe Simon took from Louis in their fight and the times he got up, and he still wanted to continue when the ref jumped in . . .

Bad analogy there. Willard was a tough tough durable man who had never been stopped like that in his career.

skillz_that_killz wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3BTycNuY44

i just watched this fight and i am shocked and appalled at what i see, i know boxing was a different sport in 1919 and lets face it there wasn't many rules.

the parts of the fight that i find most sickening is when willard is getting up off the floor and dempsey charges into him throwing hooks to the back of his head and another time when willard is on the floor holding the ropes and dempsey starts throwing punches to his body even in a street fight most people wouldnt do this. Number 1 rule in a fight is dont hit a man when he is down.

What i would like to know is when did the rules that we know today first start getting introduced?

A lot of the terms of the fight were agreed upon in the contract. Like three points down, neutral corners, hitting in the clinches, clean breaks, etc. Dempsey was acting within the rules since Willard wasn't down under the agreed articles of the match.

,,,abe simon gave louis one hell of a fight in their first one, and was no patsy in the second, even though it went only half as long. i was expecting someone to bring this one up...and i think it's possible that if louis had fought simon under th dempsey rules he might have finished him more quickly.

interesting side note on simon. he was born without the ability to feel pain,,,a condition that does exist but i think is rare. it can be dangerous as kids can get burned easily without knowing it. simon himself said he was never sure if in his case it was an advantage or a liability as a fighter because he thought he took more punishment than he should have.

simon is an underrated fighter. he had a telephone pole long and hard left jab and busted louis' face up pretty good in the first fight.

Simon was also an massively built man, in any era. He was built
like a comic character.

You have to feel for some one like that, as nice a person as they
may be. Because of how they like, like something out of myth,
they are almost always billed as the bad guy.
But against Louis, I think near everyone slid into this role.

I doubt many of the claims about Willard's injuries. Things you
often read, or may have been said seem to have a chinese
whispers effect over time. It happens in near every social
circle, so I doubt boxing is oblivious to it.

Well, sure things can get exaggerrated or just plain didn't happen. We were not around at the time and so we don't know as much like we would if this happened today. However, I can tell you that Nat Fleischer who was around at the time, said that Willard did lose two teeth, and that his left eye was closed. He also said that Willard's handlers had to hold Willard up after the fight because he could not stand on his own two feet. This is backed up with a picture of Willard (who already had his gloves taken off after the fight) struggling to stand up even with people holding him up.
I had never previously never heard anyone doubt that Willard severe injuries from this fight. Sometimes things do happen that are hard to fathom.

As for Dempsey as a finisher, what more could he possibly have done? He jumped on Willard at every chance and hit him with some devastating punches. That is obvious from the film. No, he did not stop him in the first round. However, actually stopping an opponent back then was far different than it is today. You usually had to have the referee count 10 over your opponent.
There was no three knockdown rule. Referees stop fights far sooner now than they did back then. You could also be saved by the bell. Nowadays, what % of fights actually end with a fighter being counted out? 10%? Probably 20% at the most.

Ambling Alp wrote:Well, sure things can get exaggerrated or just plain didn't happen. We were not around at the time and so we don't know as much like we would if this happened today. However, I can tell you that Nat Fleischer who was around at the time, said that Willard did lose two teeth, and that his left eye was closed. He also said that Willard's handlers had to hold Willard up after the fight because he could not stand on his own two feet. This is backed up with a picture of Willard (who already had his gloves taken off after the fight) struggling to stand up even with people holding him up.
I had never previously never heard anyone doubt that Willard severe injuries from this fight. Sometimes things do happen that are hard to fathom.

As for Dempsey as a finisher, what more could he possibly have done? He jumped on Willard at every chance and hit him with some devastating punches. That is obvious from the film. No, he did not stop him in the first round. However, actually stopping an opponent back then was far different than it is today. You usually had to have the referee count 10 over your opponent.
There was no three knockdown rule. Referees stop fights far sooner now than they did back then. You could also be saved by the bell. Nowadays, what % of fights actually end with a fighter being counted out? 10%? Probably 20% at the most.

Not just nowadays, either. As far back as the 40's, it was getting progressively easier to invoke a stoppage from a ref, a doctor, or a corner, than it was in Dempsey's day.

Willard's heekbone doesn't look too good here.

jaclem2 wrote:interesting side note on simon. he was born without the ability to feel pain

That diagnosis was probably made by his manager, not a doctor.

I read somewhere Abe Simon said of Joe Louis,

"God bless that man. He enabled me to retire with some money."

Simon was in the movie 'On the Waterfront' along with Tony Galento and Tami Mauriello. The three former Joe Louis opponents all played union goons.

And all did very well.

Abe Simon is the one who throws the can down into the pit that hits the priest in the face as he is speaking after giving the last rites to the worker who was just killed in an 'accident.'

whats disgusting about it???it's funny.

skillz its like watching football 30 years ago you'd be shouting free kick red card every tackle :!:

...re:abe simon and pain.....saying his manager might have been the one who said simon didn't feel pain may have been an ironic comment about how "brave" his manager won, but just in case it was meant seriously, simon was born without the ability to feel pain.

i liked simon...he was so honest...on an interview show some time in the 50s he said he thought louis probably took him lightly in their first fight and that's why abe put up such a good battle. the interviewer was taken aback and said usually fighters gave excuses for losing...for THEM not being in shape...and simon said, "well, joe was in shape for the rematch because it took him only half as long to stop me." Simon also said the hardest single punch he ever got was from walcott.

jaclem2 wrote:...re:abe simon and pain.....saying his manager might have been the one who said simon didn't feel pain may have been an ironic comment about how "brave" his manager won, but just in case it was meant seriously, simon was born without the ability to feel pain.

What I meant was that Simon's supposed imperviousness to pain was probably just a marketing ploy. I've read the same claim about Tony Galento.

welcome to the shallow end of boxrec

just for the record any old footage of boxing from long ago is precious. Personally i find it tough going. Dempsey was young, strong and tanned but he just brawls away at Willard , who was very much the Valuev of his day---big slow and stoopid. Its place in history is crucial as it shows a great champ and one thing great champs have in common is they explode onto the scene and change everything.

just think yourself lucky theres no footage of Jem Belcher v Joe Berks now that would be queasy viewing indeed.

...i don't know about galento, but simon's was legit...had been documented in an a medical journal and there were follow up stories. oddly enough i never heard about this when he was fighting but i was just a kid and could have missed it. i read the article in the medical journal well after that in a story about the condition. it was about the condition in general and simon's story was just a part of it. it is, of course, an affliction and far from a blessing. kids have to be carefully watched and taught....the most common injury being burns.

jaclem2 wrote:...i don't know about galento, but simon's was legit...had been documented in an a medical journal and there were follow up stories. oddly enough i never heard about this when he was fighting but i was just a kid and could have missed it. i read the article in the medical journal well after that in a story about the condition. it was about the condition in general and simon's story was just a part of it. it is, of course, an affliction and far from a blessing. kids have to be carefully watched and taught....the most common injury being burns.

Abe Simon certainly appeared to have had a pained expression on his face when the ref stopped the second fight with Joe Louis.

Wasn't it about 100,000.00 that Dempsey bet on a first round KO? Did you see how they had to coax him back into the ring after he bolted for the dressing room under the impression he'd scored a 1st round KO? I really see more evidence supporting the "Margarito" gloves than i do that dispels it. And I don't see that conversation as being moronic, but maybe not PC.

Norm wrote:Wasn't it about 100,000.00 that Dempsey bet on a first round KO? Did you see how they had to coax him back into the ring after he bolted for the dressing room under the impression he'd scored a 1st round KO? I really see more evidence supporting the "Margarito" gloves than i do that dispels it. And I don't see that conversation as being moronic, but maybe not PC.

You don't, "have" or, "see" any evidence at all. You mean to say you have a suspicion.

Goodnight, Irene wrote:
You don't, "have" or, "see" any evidence at all. You mean to say you have a suspicion.

Well, you're right. I only read and watch flickering images. I was not there.

And to correct myself, Dempsey bet his entire purse on a 1st round KO. He was a 5-4 underdog, so quite sporting of him.