Just found this story about Dempsey/Tunney...

[Eric the Viking]

It sounds to me like a case of a bunch of old-school fighters and boxing writers desperately coming up with conspiracy theories as to why their icon Dempsey lost in such humiliating fashion. In retrospect, Tunney's boxing skills were vastly underappreciated by the old-school-brawlers, and Dempsey's hard living and many fights had caught up with him at the age of 31. Interesting reading nonetheless.

Subj: The BAWLI Papers No. 33
Date: 99-01-14 23:17:17 EST
From: [email protected]
Sender: [email protected]
To: [email protected]


The BAWLI Papers
(Boxing As We Liked It)
By J Michael Kenyon

Issue Number 33
Friday, January 15, 1999
New York City, New York, US of A
__________________________________________

IN THIS ISSUE: WHY RING LARDNER THOUGHT FIRST DEMPSEY-TUNNEY FIGHT WAS FIXED
__________________________________________

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Readers are welcome to submit interesting and otherwise noteworthy articles
concerning professional boxing's long and storied past. The emphasis,
generally, should be on the foremost fighters, managers, trainers and
promoters, and events that otherwise were of some moment in the sport's
history. Either transmit the articles via e-mail or mail them to the editor at
the following addresses:

J Michael Kenyon ([email protected])
244 Madison Avenue, Suite 145
New York City, New York 10016
_________________________________________

(ED. NOTE -- One of the legendary sportswriters of the 20th century was Ring
Lardner. The following excerpts from "Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner," by
Jonathan Yardley, Random House, 1977, date from the time Lardner was writing a
national column for John Wheeler's Bell Syndicate, which he began in 1919.
Included here are vignettes from two famous fights, Dempsey-Firpo and the
first Dempsey-Tunney bout.)

(In 1923), special assignments took (Lardner) to two fights involving the Wild
Bull of the Pampas, the Argentine heavyweight Luis Firpo: in July, 1923,
against Jess Willard and in September against Jack Dempsey. The second bout
was held in Jersey City (sic) and won by Dempsey. It was a brilliantly fought
contest in which Firpo gave the champion as much as he could handle; this was
the bout in which he knocked Dempsey out of the ring, a moment frozen on a
great sporting canvas by the artist Edward Hopper. Ring's report on the bout
showed that even though his interest in the outcome of sports events was by
now minimal (unless he had a bet down), his admiration for skill and courage
was undiminished:

"They was a big question before the fight as to whether or no the Wild Bull
could take it. He took it and took it plenty and come back for more, and got
it. They aint nobody living that could take what he took before he finely took
that left and right in succession and became the tame cow of the pampas.
Anybody that said he quit ought to be writing jokes for the theater program.
In fact Luis didn't know when the fight was over and was still groggy when he
staggered down the steep stairs out of the ring, escorted by some of the same
policemens that had tried to keep me from seeing the fight.

"And they was another question settled to-night, namely can Dempsey take it.
Jack was on the receiving end of four or five of the most murderous blows ever
delivered in a prize ring, but he come back after each one and fought all the
harder. Even when he fell into Mr. Rice's lap, he picked himself up without
assistance and stepped right back to the place where all the shooting was
going on . . .

"He never lost sight of the main idear, that he must get this guy and get him
quick. He didn't get him one too quick and if the fight had went a round
longer they would of been wholesale deaths from heart disease with maybe some

of the victims in Dempsey's corner. All and all you won't hear no squawks to
the effect that those who paid to get in didn't their money's worth, even they
paid a hundred smacks for a seat. It was a FIGHT."


LARDNER THOUGHT DEMPSEY-TUNNEY A FIX

. . . the heavyweight championship fight of September 24 (1926) in which Gene
Tunney took the title away from Jack Dempsey (was) one of the last major
sports events Ring covered, and it left bitter taste in his mouth. For one
thing, he had come to admire Dempsey greatly, respecting his skill and
courage. For another, he plainly thought Tunney, who spouted Shakespeare and
ten-dollar words, was a P.R. man's creation. When Ring visited Tunney's
training camp at a small town west of Saratoga, he and Grant Rice encountered
the champion walking the countryside with a book under his arm. Ring asked him
what it was. "The Rubaiyat," Tunney replied proudly, and then waxed rhapsodic
on the beautiful scenery he had encountered during the day. To which Ring
retorted: "Then why the book?" Ring was similarly disdainful in a letter to
the Fitzgeralds.

"You ought to meet this guy Tunney. We had lunch with him a few weeks before
the fight and among a great many other things, he said he thought the New York
State boxing commission was 'imbecilic' and that he hoped Dempsey would not
think his (Tunney's) experience in pictures had 'cosmeticized' him.

Ring had no stated intention of attending the fight, much less covering it,
but Heywood Broun declined at the last moment to report it; Herbert Swope and
Jack Wheeler asked if he would fill in, and he reluctantly agreed. The fight
was held in Philadelphia, and Tunney, at twenty-nine two years younger than
Dempsey, won a shocking ten-round decision. Ring wrote just one story under
his own by-line, and his assessment in that was concise: "It was only this
morning that Dempsey told the appers he would fight like hell. He did. His
favorite tune seemed to be 'Oh How I Miss You Tonight.'"

But that was not the only store he wrote.After the fight, he repaired to his
hotel with Rice and Benny Leonard, who had held the lightweight title for
eight years and was widely respected for his knowledge of the game. The rain,
a sore throat and a hangover had done Rice in, but he was under obligation to
file a story to the Herald-Tribune. Ring told him, "Take a slug of bourbon and
lie down. I'll file your overnight." He did, in a story that bore scarcely a
syllable's resemblance to the florid Rice style:

"Gene Tunney, the fighting marine, is the new heavyweight champion of the
world. In the presence of 135,000 persons, who sat through a driving rainstorm
in Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Stadium, Gene Tunney gave Dempsey one of
the worst beatings any champion ever took. He not only outpointed Dempsey in
every one of the ten rounds, but the challenger hammered the champion's face
almost out of shape. It was like nothing human when the tenth round ended . .
.

"Tunney fought a great fight, but it was quite evident that when it came to a
matter of pressure Dempsey had blown completely up . . .

"Tunney took the best that Dempsey had to give without any sign of breaking
down for leaving his feet. It might have been slightly different if Dempsey
had been able to keep up his few head-long assaults, but after twenty or
thirty seconds of hard rushing he tired quickly and was forced to slow down
and take a lot of punishment."

The story portrayed a champion who was fighting listlessly and a challenger
who could not finish him off, and it made neither fighter happy; since both
thought Rice had written it, they refused to speak to him for some time. What
presumably angered them was the story's between-the-lines implication that, at
best, something was odd about a fight in which a fighter of Tunney's checkered
puglistic background could so completely dominate the champion, who was
himself the most dominating fighter of his time. The implication was not
accidental. Benny Leonard thought the fight was a fix; he said so, and Ring --
who seems to have needed no persuading -- agreed. He said so emphatically to
Scott and Zelda: "I get $500 on Dempsey, giving 2 to 1. The odds ought to have
been 7 to 1. Tunney couldn't lick David (Lardner) if David was trying. The
thing was a very well done fake, which lots of us would like to say in print,
but you know what newspapers are where possible libel suits are concerned. As
usual I did my heavy thinking too late; otherwise I would have bet the other
way. The championship wasn't worth a dime to Jack; there was nobody else for
him to fight and he had made all there was to be made (by him) out of
vaudeville and pictures. The average odds were 3 to 1 and the money he made by
losing was money that the income tax collectors will know nothing about." Ring
added that he thought the entire chain of bouts leading to the championship
fight was rigged "to give the public a popular war hero for champion." His
comment on that was: "Well, he's about as popular as my plays."

Whatever the actual facts in the case, Ring firmly believed his interpretation
of the fight was correct; it was salt in whatever remained of the wound
inflicted by the Black Sox seven years earlier.

[delisa]

The BAWLI papers archives are housed at the Cyber Boxing Zonbe --

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/bawli/index.html


We are missing a few issues, so if anyone kept those, please contact me at the CBZ.

[Eric the Viking]

The BAWLI papers archives are housed at the Cyber Boxing Zonbe --

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/bawli/index.html

Thanks Mike - hope it's OK if I reprint an occasional issue or excerpt here.

[delisa]

No problem at all! Just let folks know where you got 'em.

[Eric the Viking]

No problem at all! Just let folks know where you got 'em.

I actually found the above via Google search (rather than via the CBZ), but made sure to reprint the BAWLI header.

[ThirdPartyView]

No problem at all! Just let folks know where you got 'em.

I actually found the above via Google search (rather than via the CBZ), but made sure to reprint the BAWLI header.

If you continue to search for stuff by J. Michael Kenyon, you may slip upon more BAWLI stuff, as well as WAWLI (Wrestling As We Liked It) stuff. JMK is both a researcher/historian of Boxing history and Pro Wrestling history who has been doing research in both for at least 35 years, and has in recent years put up most of both of his collections onto the internet on various sites, as before then, it was all in written/typewritten format (he's only recently become 'computer smart', so he's transferred most of his research online as a result to allow for archival purposes since paper deteriorates over time, etc.).

[Eric the Viking]

Interestingly, the BoxRecord of the Dempsey/Firpo fight doesn;t mention any of the knockdowns. Might be nice to add some of the newspaper article quoted by Kenyon to the fight record.

[Jaclem]

article is too long for me to read, and the premise too specious. as for accuracy, the demspey/firpo painting is not by edward hopper. anybody want to make this a trivia question and come up with the answer?

[Eric the Viking]

article is too long for me to read, and the premise too specious. as for accuracy, the demspey/firpo painting is not by edward hopper. anybody want to make this a trivia question and come up with the answer?

I don't much feel like doing all the hard work of making it a trivia question, but I'll be happy to come up with the answer. ;)

George Bellows

[Eric the Viking]

...But my point was, the knockdowns in Dempsey/Firpo should be listed on the fight record.

[Jaclem]

..thanks for the picture. i have a color print of it , and it's in a few books, but it's nice to be able to click it on here. years ago, back when they were making those plastic monster kits there was a kit of this fight, based on this picture and my son gave it to me. alas, lost in many moves.

the original of his stag night at sharkeys is in the cleveland art museum, and when i lived for a few years in that ghastly town i'd go look at it just to take my mind of the miserable metropolitan (!) area.

[Eric the Viking]

the original of his stag night at sharkeys is in the cleveland art museum, and when i lived for a few years in that ghastly town i'd go look at it just to take my mind of the miserable metropolitan (!) area.

I lived in Cleveland from '93-'99, and since I grew up in NE Ohio I can vouch for the fact that while it's still no lovely metropolis, it's infinitely better than it was in the 70s and early 80s. I was on the faculty of Case Western Reserve U. while in Cleveland, right up the street from Severance Hall and a half-mile from the Art Museum. At least that part of town (University Circle) was always a nice place, unless perhaps you had a day with an unusual wind direction that blew smoke from the steel mills to the south right over the area. My reason for leaving and heading to California wasn't so much the city per se as it was the crappy midwest weather, which I presume you get in Chicago, too.