Jess Willard - Heavyweight's most unloved fighter gets his "revenge" on Dempsey !!

Poor old Jess didn't have much luck with history.....Stuck between two Top ten heavies in an unremarkable reign.......His great victory over Johnson marred by the way Johnson fell and pretty much most historians believe Dempsey's gloves were loaded in probably the bravest title defeat in history.....But no one cares..

No doubts that Jack Johnson lost fairly.....Willard was always awkward with his long arms and mauling style and Johnson lacked the finishing power in 110 degree heat....Willard remarked later in life that "If it was a fix I wish he'd gone down sooner it was burning hot out there"..

As for Dempsey....Willard actually acquitted himself quite well for the first part of the round and the most durable Heavy in history was surprisingly decked easier than one would expect.....Willard would show interviewers in old age how Dempsey fixed his gloves......The Fight Doctor Ferdie Pacheco saw pictures of Willard's post fight fractures and said it almost seem certain a sharp instrument was involved.....Lou Duva said he knew people in Dempsey's team and they admitted as much.....(In Ferdie Pacheco's book, good read by the way)

Make no mistake I do think Dempsey beats him but not so easily...

Anyway not many people know that the great Yankee Stadium was opened by old Jess...Aged 41 past it and as one scribe noted "They are bringing Goliath back from the dead".....But promoter Tex Rickard (Dempsey's promoter) thought it was a shrewd move and Jess needed money anyway, bad investments etc........ Rickard was busy promoting Floyd Johnson for a big Dempsey fight and thought the exciting Johnson would benefit greatly smashing up a faded name (Benn v Manny anyone)....

Not only did they promote the fight, Team Dempsey wagered heavily that the old giant would get smashed in great style..

63,000 fans gathered to watch and when Willard's weight was announced at around 250 pounds the audience started laughing....

The laughter went quickly when the old Man kept catching the smaller fighter coming in with uppercuts for the first five rounds opening up a lead......But then he got tired and got beaten around until the end of the ninth when a desperate roundhouse put the youngster on the floor.........Willard had to be helped up from his stool in the 11th and though tottering close to defeat he landed a finisher and the fight was stopped....Floyd Johnson became an unknown footnote in history

"Youth take off your hat and bow low to old age" The New York American Boxing writer wrote...

Willard well he lost to Firpo in a title eleiminator soon after and rode off in to the good night........Nobody ever did bow to him and that is a shame in itself.....

Looking through the back pages of 606 as I do ( yes, I do need to get out more) there are two things that jump out vis a vis Jess Willard that perhaps alter the facts of his achievements to suggest he was more than the lamb to Dempsey’s slaughter.

Whilst it was rightly noted that he was 41 against Floyd Johnson, it was a mere four years prior to that when he fought The Menassa  Mauler, a few months shy of being 37  in the year of 1919.  No way was he ever going to win but he kept going until he was a shell of a fighter.

Did Jack use loaded gloves..? I think that the answer to this is no he didn’t

https://coxscorner.tripod.com/dempsey_gloves.html

However, If anyone hasn’t seen Dempsey  v Willard I can’t urge them strongly enough to view this as it remains a staggering fight, if only to witness Round one and also, the brutal lack of time given to stricken boxers before they were allowed to continue.

So yes, for Willard to rinse the the next big thing all that time later, ( I think that Chris said Floyd was number one contender) makes him doubly deserving of his place in boxing history.