Originally posted by Mr.MojoRisin'
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You better not be lying, son, because other sources around the internet say that you are wrong about that. lol
So are you saying this isn't in his autobiography:
Originally posted by Mr.MojoRisin'
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In the end, Dempsey stated that he believed that "Wills had been gypped out of his crack at the title because people with a lot of money...thought that a fight against me, if it went wrong, would kill the business." (excerpts are from Dempsy: By the Man Himself)
A poster who typed it up from his version of the book. Being that he was defending Dempsey, why would he lie?
*Re: 1963 article by Jack Dempsey

*by*cmoyle on Mon 15 Aug 2011, 2:25 pm
Pages 182-183 of 'Dempsey' 1960 by Dempsey and Bill Slocum:
"One of the reasons Tex was against matching me with Wills was the criticism he had gotten years before for putting on the Johnson-Jeffries fight. He had been accused of humiliating the white race and things like that.
William Muldoon, a tough old geezer who ran the New York State*Athletic*Commission, was against the Wills fight for another reason: he thought it might end up in a race riot, no matter who won.
Rickard spoke mysteriously about "Washington" not wanting the fight. In New York, others demanded that it be held, and some of them could have been thinking of the Harlem vote in the next election. Fights had that much importance in those days.
Anyway, the men whose words or experience I trusted at that time said I couldn't fight Wills, and I never did.
Kearns and Rickard had made a big fellow out of me, where before I had been a hobo. Muldoon was a man I had a lot of respect for. He had trained John L. Sullivan with the help of a baseball bat, and he was the kind of guy who would reach up and snatch a cigar out of your mouth and grind it under his foot if he caught you smoking in his house or even in his presence. None of them had any doubt I could beat Wills. Nor did I. But I'm sorry now the fight never came off.
Wills was mostly a victim of bigotry. He was gypped out of his crack at the title because people with a lot of money tied up the in the boxing game thought that a fight against me, if it went wrong, might kill the business. People of importance still worried about "white supremacy," race riots, the Negro vote - which might swing somewhere else if I flattened Wills - and things like that.
Harry's dead now. He died without ever knowing how he would have come out. But he lived to see a day when the Negro fighter really came into his own in the heavyweight division and changed boxing history."

*by*cmoyle on Mon 15 Aug 2011, 2:25 pm
Pages 182-183 of 'Dempsey' 1960 by Dempsey and Bill Slocum:
"One of the reasons Tex was against matching me with Wills was the criticism he had gotten years before for putting on the Johnson-Jeffries fight. He had been accused of humiliating the white race and things like that.
William Muldoon, a tough old geezer who ran the New York State*Athletic*Commission, was against the Wills fight for another reason: he thought it might end up in a race riot, no matter who won.
Rickard spoke mysteriously about "Washington" not wanting the fight. In New York, others demanded that it be held, and some of them could have been thinking of the Harlem vote in the next election. Fights had that much importance in those days.
Anyway, the men whose words or experience I trusted at that time said I couldn't fight Wills, and I never did.
Kearns and Rickard had made a big fellow out of me, where before I had been a hobo. Muldoon was a man I had a lot of respect for. He had trained John L. Sullivan with the help of a baseball bat, and he was the kind of guy who would reach up and snatch a cigar out of your mouth and grind it under his foot if he caught you smoking in his house or even in his presence. None of them had any doubt I could beat Wills. Nor did I. But I'm sorry now the fight never came off.
Wills was mostly a victim of bigotry. He was gypped out of his crack at the title because people with a lot of money tied up the in the boxing game thought that a fight against me, if it went wrong, might kill the business. People of importance still worried about "white supremacy," race riots, the Negro vote - which might swing somewhere else if I flattened Wills - and things like that.
Harry's dead now. He died without ever knowing how he would have come out. But he lived to see a day when the Negro fighter really came into his own in the heavyweight division and changed boxing history."
It was even mentioned in a book about Tunney:
I'm going to take as big of a dump on you as you did on Dempsey. Matter of fact, after I finish shltting all over you, I'm going to dedicate it to Dempsey for you shltting on his name like that. How's that?
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