BoxRec

When we talk about pound for pound "who's the best?",Gene Tunney is rarely mentioned. Here's a guy who only lost one official fight in 77 bouts,and that was to the great Harry Greb who Gene beat twice in return bouts. He K.O'd Tommy Gibbons(the only time Gibbons was stopped),halted Carpantier,and won 19 of twenty rounds from Dempsey. He retired undefeated,but his smug,arrogant personality did not allure him to fight fans. He may have been the best fighter at 175 pounds.

I agree with the sentiment he's undersold. As you mentioned, he was aloof & more interested in hob-knobbing than entertaining the fans. Upper-class, & painfully proud of it.

As a fighter, though, man was he brilliant. It's the combination of that arrogance & the fact he is, in relative terms, & old-time fighter (always a deterrent to appearing high on all-time lists, if for no other reason than lack of poster knowledge about these older fighters) that leave him with an understated legacy.

He was an impressively determined man, absolute in his self-belief. Very smart in the ring, replete with guile that most fighters can't dream of. Didn't stay at Heavyweight long enough to get mass recognition in the division but as a Light-Heavy, he almost had it all. Speed of hand & foot, ring intelligence, boxing savvy, a great chin to boot.

Put it all together & you've got one of the best (not #1 IMO, but close) 175lbers in history.

I could agree with you more. Tunney was an ATG who seldom seems to get his due.

It's funny that he gets criticized for his title defenses. He lost one fight in 11 years before he ever got a title shot himself.

He gets criticized ofor not fighting black fighters. However, the vast majority of fighters in Tunney's era were white. Had he had beaten Wills it would be dismissed as beating a washed up figher. Had he fought Godfrey, people would have just said that Godfrey threw the fight anyway, since that is what is said to excuse Godfrey's losses.

Yes Dempsey had been off for 3 years when Tunney beat him. However, tunney still fought a great and won every round. Not many fighters would have been able to that.
In the 2nd fight, Dempsey had the Sharkey fight just three months before fighting Tunney. He was 32 years old, past his prime but certainly not ancient. Tunney didn't beat a prime Demspey, but it was still a pretty good win. (I hope this doesn't start up the Long Count Debate which has been discussed at nausem.)

For some reason, people keep saying that he didn't fight enough at heavyweight to be considered one of the best. Howeverm, he had a tleast 14 fights against heavyweights. If say a welterweight moved up and had 14 fights against a middleweights, most people wouldn't have trouble rating him as a middleweight as well as welterweight.

Tunney beat 5 Hall of Famers and only lost one fight in a long career. He was truly a great fighter.

Ambling Alp wrote:I could agree with you more. Tunney was an ATG who seldom seems to get his due.

It's funny that he gets criticized for his title defenses. He lost one fight in 11 years before he ever got a title shot himself.

He gets criticized ofor not fighting black fighters. However, the vast majority of fighters in Tunney's era were white. Had he had beaten Wills it would be dismissed as beating a washed up figher. Had he fought Godfrey, people would have just said that Godfrey threw the fight anyway, since that is what is said to excuse Godfrey's losses.

Yes Dempsey had been off for 3 years when Tunney beat him. However, tunney still fought a great and won every round. Not many fighters would have been able to that.
In the 2nd fight, Dempsey had the Sharkey fight just three months before fighting Tunney. He was 32 years old, past his prime but certainly not ancient. Tunney didn't beat a prime Demspey, but it was still a pretty good win. (I hope this doesn't start up the Long Count Debate which has been discussed at nausem.)

For some reason, people keep saying that he didn't fight enough at heavyweight to be considered one of the best. Howeverm, he had a tleast 14 fights against heavyweights. If say a welterweight moved up and had 14 fights against a middleweights, most people wouldn't have trouble rating him as a middleweight as well as welterweight.

Tunney beat 5 Hall of Famers and only lost one fight in a long career. He was truly a great fighter.

I'll second all of this.

Ezzard wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote:I could agree with you more. Tunney was an ATG who seldom seems to get his due.

It's funny that he gets criticized for his title defenses. He lost one fight in 11 years before he ever got a title shot himself.

He gets criticized ofor not fighting black fighters. However, the vast majority of fighters in Tunney's era were white. Had he had beaten Wills it would be dismissed as beating a washed up figher. Had he fought Godfrey, people would have just said that Godfrey threw the fight anyway, since that is what is said to excuse Godfrey's losses.

Yes Dempsey had been off for 3 years when Tunney beat him. However, tunney still fought a great and won every round. Not many fighters would have been able to that.
In the 2nd fight, Dempsey had the Sharkey fight just three months before fighting Tunney. He was 32 years old, past his prime but certainly not ancient. Tunney didn't beat a prime Demspey, but it was still a pretty good win. (I hope this doesn't start up the Long Count Debate which has been discussed at nausem.)

For some reason, people keep saying that he didn't fight enough at heavyweight to be considered one of the best. Howeverm, he had a tleast 14 fights against heavyweights. If say a welterweight moved up and had 14 fights against a middleweights, most people wouldn't have trouble rating him as a middleweight as well as welterweight.

Tunney beat 5 Hall of Famers and only lost one fight in a long career. He was truly a great fighter.

I'll second all of this.

Decagon wrote:When Tunney was a top light heavyweight, there was no reason for him not to fight Kid Norfolk.

That is a a legitimate criticism. He could have fought Norfolk. However, you could say that about almost any great fighter. There is almost always a good fighter that they could have fought.
It's not like Tunney was only fighting tomato cans instead of Norfolk. He was fighting Greb several times,Carpentier,Gibbons, and Levinsky. It's doubtful that Tunney would get much more respect had he beat Norfolk anyway.

Decagon wrote:

dagosd2000 wrote:He retired undefeated

No, he didn't. Gene Tunney was a good fighter, but he never fought black fighters. I do rank him pretty high on my all-time light heavyweight list (#4 or so), but there are simply too many questions he left unanswered. What would've happened if he'd fought Wills or Godfrey?

You could say the same thing about Dempsey. The point is that you cant fault his opposition, he beat fighters that fought and beat the likes of Godfrey and Norfolk... the fact remains that Tunney is very underrated both as a heavy and Lightheavy, his record his a very impessive one which matches up well against all the greats, especially at 175....

Well, silkov, I guess we agree on this topic!

The fact that there have been so few comments on this thread is yet another indication that Tunney is underrated. For whatever reason, most people don't seem to have much interest in him.

Yeah, amazing really when you think of the fuss made of Marciano being undefeated in his very well managed career and Tunney was only beaten once despite fighting just about everyone, yet his name barely raises a sneeze!.... :x 8)

To me I find Tunney an interesting personality. I am more interested in reading about him as opposed to actually watching him inside of the ropes.

He has achieved alot in his carer and is always going to be one of the best champions in history, not so much for skill or talent, which for his time was great, but more so for his impact as an intellectual craftsman of the ring who tamed a wild, exciting legend in Dempsey.

As for him being under rated, I seldom have trouble finding info or footage on Tunney, and sure he isn't as famous as Dempsey, but if he is ever going to be remembered for anything...it shall be the long count and his two wins of Dempsey.

Could he beat Ali, Holmes, Tyson, Bowe, Frazier...I doubt it...but then again each fighter has a sports fetishist that loves him religiously and thinks he is the end of all...

Kym

Tunney was a beautiful boxer, no doubt. He was the continuation of the Corbett style, and a precursor to Ali. This guy had wonderful condition, could really move, and punched a lot for a guy who moved that much.

But his style is in part why he's so underrated. The reality is that ass beaters have traditionally garnered more fans than stick and move guys. So fighters like Sullivan and Dempsey are always going to be more beloved. Ferocity sells.

I think Tunney made a mistake by not hanging around longer as champ, and probably would have gotten a lot more respect from fans and historians if he had a longer career, but by that point, as noted, he had close to 80 fights, and had made a lot of money in the Dempsey fights, and likely felt that anything after that would be a downer/letdown. He was a rich guy, so he moved on with his life.

At the time Gene Tunney was active, there were relatively
few top black boxers. After Tunney became the World
Heavyweight Champion, there would be a dramatic
increase in the number of black fighters in the United
States. Starting in the late 1920s, many more top
white boxers fought their black counterparts.


- Chuck Johnston