BoxRec

Just wondered what people here thought bout the Willard-Dempsey fight. Every time I see this fight I can't help but feel that Dempsey was using that iron bolt. Dempsey seems to be hitting him sideways, and the injuries Jess suffered were something like broken ribs amongst others things. How many boxers suffer broken ribs in fights? Dempsey was vicious and could destroy fighters easy without dirty games but everytime I see the fight it does seem strange. Jess covered in blood too!

How easy would it be to hold a bolt in a gloved fist and keep it in position during a fight without it being visable to people at ringside?

Dempsey was a big hitter and they used smaller gloves in those days (5oz?) and Willard was something of a sitting target for those vicious hooks.

This has been covered many many times and has never held any water as having a shred of truth.

Doc Kearns was very bitter towards Dempsey because of the way they parted company and also the Doc did love to get publicity with his excellent wild stories.

The bolt in the gloves would have broken Dempseys fingers before Willard`s face so that rules that out.

The sprinkling of plaster of paris on the bandages is even more absurd because by the time sweat would have moistened his hands the fight was over, long before the plaster could have set.

And lets not forget Dempsey got gloved up in the ring

A good discussion of this subject can be found here:
http://p068.ezboard.com/fcyberboxingzon ... 1106.topic

The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing
The Untold Stories
Ferdie Pacheco

Ferdie Pacheco, physician and cornerman for Ali and American television analyst known as the 'fight doctor', selects the twelve best rounds ever and reveals behind-the-scenes details. The fights include: Dempsey v. Willard, Louis v Schmelling, Sugar Ray Robinson v Jake Lamotta, Ali v Foreman and Hagler v Hearns

This book pretty much answers all the theorists about the bout.

The bell was tacked over after Kearns insisted on it being relayed after a Brass band performing before the fight ruffled it up.

Kearns telling Jack he had staked all the money on a 1st round KO seconds before the fight started.

The author meeting with Jack as a boy with his father, many questions answered about many boxing therories.

All the talk about iron bars and plaster is a nonsense after reading the book.

Because we all know that if something written, it must be true... Like Jonah and the Whale, or Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.

This goes for both sides of the story.

Tantum wrote:Because we all know that if something written, it must be true... Like Jonah and the Whale, or Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.

Was going to post something to similar effect: better off looking at the film of the fight, Stuart. I was looking for info on the PoP 'controversy' a few months back and found a site with a scan of the original LA Times article proposing these claims. I looked at the picture of the 'bolt' and went to spot it in the film. Surprisingly, I ended up seeing a bolt-shaped object flat bang in the middle of the ring! It was there during all 3 rounds, but the important thing to note is that everyone from Dempsey when fighting, to the mass of people who invaded the ring at the end of round 1, at some point stand over the allegedly spherical shape without moving it out of place, and without slipping themselves. I concluded it must have been a scuff from the black shoes of a band member in the pre-fight pageantry, though it also could have been a slight tear that was being exaggerated through shadow by the bright sun.

As for the other 'bolt', the one in the LA Times picture: I think this was a cigar. You could make a case it was also a tear, or scuff mark on the canvas, with it's geometry being manipulated by angles and camera lenses like in the case of the other 'bolt'. The thing that makes me think this one was a cigar, is if you look at the far left of the object it is visibly darker than the longer, lighter shaft area, which could mean this was the ash end of it. Plus the dark end does slightly bloom if you look closely - just like the end of a cigar. There is also a thin whitish area between the dark end and light end that could be a cigar label, the problem with this, obviously, is that I'm pretty sure cigar labels are at the opposite end where you light it up. Also, the fact it 'disappears' would point to it being a cigar rather than a tear... though maybe the guy who is alleged to have 'picked it up', instead stamped his foot over the torn flap and compressed it back to flatness.

Boy o Boy bolts and cigar stumps.

I dont believe everything i read, merely keep an open mind when controversy sets in, this like many past events are open for discussion, have been for decades and will remain so.

The book i was refering to answers a few, not all of the many theories that over the years have bee raised. The author also writes on the Dempsey Tunney long count and if you think im naive to think everything he says should be taken as verbatum you want to read his accounts of that one.

I have been researching boxing history and events for a number of years now, some of my findings often contradict what historians have been writing for years, one of these subjects is featured in boxrec as 'Jack Johnsons whereabouts and fights in Mexico in 1919' if you notice now any record found on him has added to it 'still under investigation'

This like the Dempsey saga is due to the fact that more and more evidence has been found to either back up or conflict with events written in the past.

Don't see how Pacheco can shed any new light on anything pre-60's (before he left medical school) unless it's rehashed secondary material: not the best of sources on anything to do with Dempsey. Cassius Clay or Terry Norris, or someone else he has actually been around, then yeah, maybe.

Never said any new light was shed, He met an ageing Dempsey as a boy, his father told him the stories surrounding the fight.

Where his research on the fights came from i'm unsure you'd have to get a copy of the book to find out.

stuarttempleton wrote:Never said any new light was shed, He met an ageing Dempsey as a boy, his father told him the stories surrounding the fight.

Where his research on the fights came from i'm unsure you'd have to get a copy of the book to find out.

I know you didn't, but you did imply an end to this 'controversy' - something I'm trying to prove only a new light could bring. All these theories and the regurgitated responses to them have been spewed over various media (print, internet, video) for decades. It usually ends with people bringing up books, like you did, which claim to hold a conclusion to the saga. Sometimes the book/source will be obscure and interesting, often from the time. "The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing: The Untold Stories" by Ferdie Pacheco sounds like something my granny would put in my Christmas stocking. Nevertheless, let's examine this source.

First thing to remember is that the Dempsey of the 10's was a dirty nameless vagabond - if Pacheco and his daddy went to meet him in the bar of some mining town at the time they would probably try to get away ASAP. This contrasts to the encounter of the book, where they meet a, perhaps senile, old man filled with nostalgia. To cut short, you're gonna hear different things from those 'two' people.

Add to this, according to what you say, it was his father who recounted what was said, and you have a secondary account of a secondary conversation.

Pacheco's personal research probably came from books like the one he was writing.

Think we have our wires crossed somewhere

Pacheco was a boy of 5 or 6 when his father took him into a cafe 1940's at a guess. The boy 'Pacheco' and his dad sat next to an ageing man and talked for a while.

On leaving the cafe Pacheco's father said to the old man "take care champ"

The old man in the cafe was Dempsey.

Very insulting towards a book you have not even looked at, all i say is if you come across it take a look you might be suprised and thank Santa or your Mum or Gran.

for sale on eBay

worth a read for a fiver


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 69180&rd=1

Jon_Gund wrote: How many boxers suffer broken ribs in fights?

Broken ribs are a rather common injury in fights. Nothing fishy about that.
I think Dempsey beat up Willard so bad simply because he was a superior fighter and a very hard puncher. Willard was an average fighter, one of the very weakest heavyweight champs. Even the fat, aging Johnson had the upperhand on him until he ran out of gas, and by the time Willard fought Dempsey, he himself was aging, rusty and probably not in very good shape.
Dempsey beat Willard, simple as that.

-KOKid-

-KOKid- wrote:

Jon_Gund wrote: How many boxers suffer broken ribs in fights?

Dempsey beat Willard, simple as that.

-KOKid-

Thanks for that another who firmly believes this fight was as
we saw, Dempsey was a dangerous, hungry fighter at the prime of his life and would stop at nothing to deck his opponents, it was also a fight in which a lot was staked on- money and future.

The controversy is not over whether Dempsey could defeat Willard but rather how his blows could inflict such horriffic damage. It sounded like Willard's injuries were far more severe than one would expect from Dempsey's punches.

Consider the following about the injuries sustained by Jess
Willard in his bout with Jack Dempsey:

1. There are eyewitnesses who say that Willard's injuries
weren't nearly as bad as reported in number of newspaper
reports.

2. If Willard sustained such severe injuries, why was he
able to fight in a number of bouts during the early 1920s?

- Chuck Johnston

I don't have any trouble believing that a puncher such as Dempsey could break ribs and a jaw with properly thrown punches by legally taped hands inside small gloves, but what I wonder is what shape were his hands in after the fight? Seems like his hands should have been pretty busted up after striking Willard's bones repeatedly with such ferocity. Any Dempsey historians have any info on this?

Chuck1052 wrote:2. If Willard sustained such severe injuries, why was he
able to fight in a number of bouts during the early 1920s?

He didn't fight for 4 years after the Dempsey bout.

If some of the reports are true in regards to the
injuries he sustained in the bout with Jack Dempsey,
I doubt if Jess Willard would have been able to fight
again, let alone four years later.

- Chuck Johnston

Tantum wrote:

Chuck1052 wrote:2. If Willard sustained such severe injuries, why was he
able to fight in a number of bouts during the early 1920s?

He didn't fight for 4 years after the Dempsey bout.

Willard was engaging in exhibition bouts in 1921/22, if not earlier.

stuarttempleton wrote:Boy o Boy bolts and cigar stumps.

I dont believe everything i read, merely keep an open mind when controversy sets in, this like many past events are open for discussion, have been for decades and will remain so.

The book i was refering to answers a few, not all of the many theories that over the years have bee raised. The author also writes on the Dempsey Tunney long count and if you think im naive to think everything he says should be taken as verbatum you want to read his accounts of that one.

I have been researching boxing history and events for a number of years now, some of my findings often contradict what historians have been writing for years, one of these subjects is featured in boxrec as 'Jack Johnsons whereabouts and fights in Mexico in 1919' if you notice now any record found on him has added to it 'still under investigation'

This like the Dempsey saga is due to the fact that more and more evidence has been found to either back up or conflict with events written in the past.

a bolt a cigar....I dread to think what else will be suggested

as for the plaster that also is so daft its beyond me how anyone can consider it....where all the thousands present looking to the sky contemplating on the meaning of life?

As for DOC he was after publicity and came up with that idea to stuff it to Dempsey - he got sued I believe.

My gut feeling about the Dempsey - Willard fight has always been that it was a case of a young, hungry, determined, vicious punching fighter beating up a slower, older and less talented fighter.

Simple as that.

In those days gloves were filled with horsehair I believe and a lot of fighters moulded them to allow practically no covering over the knuckle at all.

Add to this the fact that Dempsey scored 50 knockouts out of 62 wins with more than half coming in the first round (a record for heavyweight champs) I don't see what the controversy is about.

Dempsey badly beat up an aging, limited Willard.