Would Willis get better of Dempsey

[billeau2]

Just saying... Hard to a gauge one's skills when all they do is fight white guys

I get what you meant to say...I just respect you too much as a fellow poster not to clear that one up.


the color divide in all sports was always dreadful. Forget about Jackie Robinson...when one considers how good Satchel Page was and that he wa probably in his 50's! when he got his chance to play major league white baseball...Its ridiculous. its also ironick. jack Johnson avoided black fighters as much as anyone! lol. But if memory serves correct the really good black middle weight and heavy weights that had been around in Jack Johnson's time had started to decline in Dempsey's time.

In one of those cruel things that show God has a sense of humor, its hard to make a case that Wills, near his prime at the time, was a fear for jack. I can't think of a prime, near prime black fighter who was a good match for Dempsey, I am sure there were some, I just can;t recall.

[ShoulderRoll]

its also ironick. jack Johnson avoided black fighters as much as anyone! lol.

Jack Johnson fought and beat all the major black fighters when he was coming up, including Sam Langford, Joe Jeanette, and Sam McVey.

He shouldn't be put in the same category as others who really did avoid black boxers by never fighting them. There is no equivalency.

[billeau2]

Jack Johnson fought and beat all the major black fighters when he was coming up, including Sam Langford, Joe Jeanette, and Sam McVey.

He shouldn't be put in the same category as others who really did avoid black boxers by never fighting them. There is no equivalency.

Actually HE DID fight all the major black fighters as you say, sometimes multiple times...he also avoided them at certain times when he was champ.

I don't think JJ was a dodger...I think he was faced with being typecast because the white establishment would have loved to label a guy like Burns, for example, "a hulking mensch of a man, the savoir of the anglo saxon institution of fisticuffs"...that is all 180 odd pounds of the talented but clearly lacking Canadian who was walloped by JJ.

So JJ knew the black fighters were better and he knew he could still be typecast as a "black fighter" who had crossed lines. Guys like the venerable jack London, bernie sanders like progressive, working man with a sympathy for the stevedors he worked with on occasion, also rascist who called Johnson a laughing Ethiopian among other things...

London, who called for a white man to beat Johnson no doubt would have loved a permanent tournament where all the black fighters walloped each other indiscreetly and then maybe, when a white champ came along who was very young and strong, and these guys were in their 50's...after having been in multiple battle royals, have a contest to show the superiority of the Anglo Saxon fighting man.

The proof is in the pudding regarding this because of the seminal way Johnson lost the championship. I imagine that if JJ had further fought guys like Jeanette, the Boston Tar Baby, etc another 5 times each...he would have been even more ready to fall to a guy who was little more than young, strong and capable of taking punishment.

[fitbill]

Who knows? This is a very good question !!!