What if Gene Tunnney was un-defeated in 60+ fights?

[Dr Z]

The offer was insincere. He knew Wills wouldnt accept. Wills had won eliminator against Fulton, Norfolk and Firpo. At that point there was absolutely no need for him to fight yet another eliminator. He had to put his foot down and stand his ground at some point. Totally unfair and unjust for other fighters to keep making money off his name to not be given his rightful shot at the title.

Willis didn't accept becuse he would have likey been knocked out. He chose to save face, not fight Tunney.

[JAB5239]

Willis didn't accept becuse he would have likey been knocked out. He chose to save face, not fight Tunney.

No, Wills chose not to jump through hoops only to be passed over again. How many eliminators should he have fought? Wills was hoping the media would force the fight as they had been trying for some time. Even if he had fought Tunney there was no promise of a Dempsey fight. If he beat Tunney he would have been stonewalled again. Tunney knew he was going to get the Dempsey without any eliminators, and he didn't. His offer was a sham.

[billeau2]

Willis didn't accept becuse he would have likey been knocked out. He chose to save face, not fight Tunney.

Tell me how that goes... Your a professional fighter, you believe in yourself, maybe you lost a fight twice? And here comes this menace? weighing like 230 pounds of muscle, like Liston perhaps? So Willis.... Oh dear wait a minute! So this smaller heavyweight who manages to score a few wins in the division comes up and Willis freezes? The fear hits him like an icy sheet? Tunney was such a KO kind of guy... At light heavy at least... Willis just decides he can fight anyone else but not this juggernaught?

See how ****** and irrational this post is?

[Bronson66]

tell me how that goes... Your a professional fighter, you believe in yourself, maybe you lost a fight twice? And here comes this menace? Weighing like 230 pounds of muscle, like liston perhaps? So willis.... Oh dear wait a minute! So this smaller heavyweight who manages to score a few wins in the division comes up and willis freezes? The fear hits him like an icy sheet? Tunney was such a ko kind of guy... At light heavy at least... Willis just decides he can fight anyone else but not this juggernaught?

See how ****** and irrational this post is?

Edited

[JAB5239]

Tell me how that goes... Your a professional fighter, you believe in yourself, maybe you lost a fight twice? And here comes this menace? weighing like 230 pounds of muscle, like Liston perhaps? So Willis.... Oh dear wait a minute! So this smaller heavyweight who manages to score a few wins in the division comes up and Willis freezes? The fear hits him like an icy sheet? Tunney was such a KO kind of guy... At light heavy at least... Willis just decides he can fight anyone else but not this juggernaught?

See how ****** and irrational this post is?

I found that whole bit about "likely" being knocked out a bit humorous myself.

[billeau2]

Wills fought murderous hitting Langford multiple times, yet he was afraid of being ko'd by Tunney?
Yeah makes sense.

Maybe he had an irrational fear of Irish marines?

[billeau2]

It always makes me smile when Tunney is referred to as ,"The Fighting Marine",he never saw action and arrived in France after the Armistice was signed.

The Marines, while all training the same way had a real "division of labor" back when Tunney was in the corps. My dad, a Marine, told me how officers sent men out to do the real work... Often these tasks, as when my Dad was in the South pacific, were a death sentence...

[Willie Pep 229]

No, Wills chose not to jump through hoops only to be passed over again. How many eliminators should he have fought? Wills was hoping the media would force the fight as they had been trying for some time. Even if he had fought Tunney there was no promise of a Dempsey fight. If he beat Tunney he would have been stonewalled again. Tunney knew he was going to get the Dempsey without any eliminators, and he didn't. His offer was a sham.

Wills took Sharkey as an eliminator in 1926. How is that different?

How different. Wills finaly realized he was not getting a shot at Dempsey unless he gave Tex Rickard another fight, first. So in 1926 he finally stopped foolishly 'standing his ground.'

It was accepted that Dempsey would not fight again until after January 1926, once his ten year contract with Doc Kearns ended. Dempsey began to prepare himself in late 1925 for a 1926 comeback fight. Tex Rickard began to get the field ready.

In 1925 Rickard offered Wills a fight in May with Tommy Gibbons in Yankee Stadium with the winner gaining a shot at Dempsey in 1926. ***

Instead it's Tunney who fights Gibbons in June 1925 and then gets the Dempsey shot in '26. Why?

The last big-time 'elimination fight' Wills had was with Firpo in 1924 who extended Wills the distance, not looking great, with only one illegal KD on break. Not a very exciting fight.

Wills other two 1925 fights were just ham & eggers, the one with Wienert being merely an undercard fight and Floyd Johnson being nothing more than a journeyman at best.

Do you really think that would satisfy Tex Rickard's pocketbook; enough to give away the big anticipated Dempsey comeback fight?

Wills was going to pony up another big payday for himself and more importantly for Rickard if he wanted a title shot. No matter what color he was.

(Digression: Rickard made Dempsey give him an interim fight with Sharkey before he let Dempsey get a rematch with Tunney. Rickard always wanted interim [multiple] fights he liked to call eliminators.)

Tex Rickard was not going to waste a 1926 Dempsey fight on anyone, whether it be Wills, Sharkey, Gibbons, or Tunney unless he got another big fight out of two of them in 1925. He made Wills the first offer, Gibbons in May. Wills turned it down.

(New York Times, February 21st, 1925) ***

Tunney stepped up and stopped Gibbons, Wills didn't.

Wills tried to use his Tammany Hall connections, (the 'Don King' of the era,) James Farley (NYSAC), to force the Dempsey fight based on his so-so 1924 Firpo performance. Not enough there to excite Rickard or the crowd. Wills needed a big 1925 fight, that fight was offered him, Tommy Gibbons.

(All Farley succeeded in doing was driving the Dempsey-Tunney fight to Philadelphia and with it all that New York revenue lost.)

The idea that (the Negro) Wills should plant his feet in 1925 and demand a title shot was a very bad plan. Farley was not as powerful as he thought, and other cities wanted the fight.

(The last time we spoke you called me comical, please don't do that again. I would like you to show me the same respect I always show you when we disagree.)

*** In regards to Rickard's sincerity we can only point out that this was the only time he didn't hedge. He said he would do it. That makes this offer different than the 1922 bogus offers.

Plus Tunney got the Dempsey fight because he stopped Gibbons, just as Rickard promised the winner would. Wills should have taken the Gibbons fight, and not listened to NYSAC. They were just using Wills to garner black votes out of Harlem.

[Mr Mitts]

Mailer IMO was a great writer. Never personally cared for Hemingway... Kidergarten sentences, machismo overboard... no real man who understands violence, suffering and the price one pays as a man would advocate bullfighting.

Cultural relativism be damned ... I do not have to have a positive thing to say about Spain and Mexico regarding this horrid tradition...But from the culture I come from? I was raised by a Je wish dad who lied about his age so he could fight in the Marines (he was 16), proved his worth to his brothers, many of whom were fighting the Japanese because of German family, or sympathy, watched his best friend from the Bronx get his head peeled from a sniper, and at about 135 boxed, by his own admission he was not very good, and did many incredible things...Things like risk his life to help a he man Marine overcome a fear of heights, my dad literally walked him down holding him up... He was a radioman, one of the first the japanese wanted to eliminate... My dad never was machismo in any way, no one would have known his background unless one looked at his face, permanently scared from Malaria from the jungle.

I raised my boys in a similar fashion, fought my own battles growing up a minority in a real hood... And I say all this to say: "Imagine what I see when I see men who measure their pluck bullfighting?" Pathetic to me lol and I just tend to associate Hemingway with this lost generation... sitting on bar stools and looking for a way to prove oneself...

Lol anomalocaris none of this is directed to you lol! Please pardon my rant.

I will pardon your rant, but direct mine at you, since it matters not that Hemingway offends anyone. Hemingway got the pardon from Time, as in my signature, sir..

Those kindergarten sentences were a unique stylistic shift. Even Camus followed Hemingway into these waters in his novel The Stranger. If The Old Man And The Sea is not one of the finest novellas ever written, I will do this, that and the other. It was a time of experimentation. Faulkner went quite the opposite direction with daringly long sentences.

Hemingway is not my favorite, either. I found Steinbeck, who was less experimental than the other two, more enjoyable than either, which is no claim that he was better. But......read my signature. Kipling's views were a whole lot worse, as were Pound's and others'. But their personal opinions matter squat now. They are a mere sidebar, a footnote, important to history and morbid curiosity, but not literature. Not necessarily great men, they all wrote great literature.

My full signature would read.....

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honors at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

* * * * *

It appears you do not pardon Hemingway's peccadilloes? But I may doubt you can consider him with a clean eye. Maybe you can agree that Time will pardon him for a larger reason overshadowing his machismo.

There are exceptions, however, to Auden..... Mein Kamph is disgustingly immortal for very different reasons than writing well.

No offense intended, good sir, but I do sometimes feel the need to defend literature separately from its creators, since only one matters to Time. Sorry if I have overreacted or gone off course, I just do not want anyone to get their first taste of Hemingway from you, but from Hemingway himself.

P.S. Hemingway served in WW1 as an ambulance driver and was seriously wounded by shrapnel.

[JAB5239]

Wills took Sharkey as an eliminator in 1926. How is that different?

How different. Wills finaly realized he was not getting a shot at Dempsey unless he gave Tex Rickard another fight, first. So in 1926 he finally stopped foolishly 'standing his ground.'

It was accepted that Dempsey would not fight again until after January 1926, once his ten year contract with Doc Kearns ended. Dempsey began to prepare himself in late 1925 for a 1926 comeback fight. Tex Rickard began to get the field ready.

In 1925 Rickard offered Wills a fight in May with Tommy Gibbons in Yankee Stadium with the winner gaining a shot at Dempsey in 1926. ***

Instead it's Tunney who fights Gibbons in June 1925 and then gets the Dempsey shot in '26. Why?

The last big-time 'elimination fight' Wills had was with Firpo in 1924 who extended Wills the distance, not looking great, with only one illegal KD on break. Not a very exciting fight.

Wills other two 1925 fights were just ham & eggers, the one with Wienert being merely an undercard fight and Floyd Johnson being nothing more than a journeyman at best.

Do you really think that would satisfy Tex Rickard's pocketbook; enough to give away the big anticipated Dempsey comeback fight?

Wills was going to pony up another big payday for himself and more importantly for Rickard if he wanted a title shot. No matter what color he was.

(Digression: Rickard made Dempsey give him an interim fight with Sharkey before he let Dempsey get a rematch with Tunney. Rickard always wanted interim [multiple] fights he liked to call eliminators.)

Tex Rickard was not going to waste a 1926 Dempsey fight on anyone, whether it be Wills, Sharkey, Gibbons, or Tunney unless he got another big fight out of two of them in 1925. He made Wills the first offer, Gibbons in May. Wills turned it down.

(New York Times, February 21st, 1925) ***

Tunney stepped up and stopped Gibbons, Wills didn't.

Wills tried to use his Tammany Hall connections, (the 'Don King' of the era,) James Farley (NYSAC), to force the Dempsey fight based on his so-so 1924 Firpo performance. Not enough there to excite Rickard or the crowd. Wills needed a big 1925 fight, that fight was offered him, Tommy Gibbons.

(All Farley succeeded in doing was driving the Dempsey-Tunney fight to Philadelphia and with it all that New York revenue lost.)

The idea that (the Negro) Wills should plant his feet in 1925 and demand a title shot was a very bad plan. Farley was not as powerful as he thought, and other cities wanted the fight.

(The last time we spoke you called me comical, please don't do that again. I would like you to show me the same respect I always show you when we disagree.)

*** In regards to Rickard's sincerity we can only point out that this was the only time he didn't hedge. He said he would do it. That makes this offer different than the 1922 bogus offers.

Plus Tunney got the Dempsey fight because he stopped Gibbons, just as Rickard promised the winner would. Wills should have taken the Gibbons fight, and not listened to NYSAC. They were just using Wills to garner black votes out of Harlem.

Rickard had made promises before. No way should Wills have had to fight ANYONE else after already fighting three eliminators, winning all. You really think Rickard would have kept his word? I don't. History shows he hadn't previously. Just another hoop to jump thru to unjustly deny Wills his deserved shot at the title.

From what I've read, and I could be wrong, Wills vs Sharkey was not an official title eliminator. The powers that be were just trying to line their pockets with no intention of ever letting Wills fight for the title. When he lost to Sharkey I can just imagine the big sigh of relief.