Dempsey On Tunney: The Greatest Fight At 100

Gene Tunney beat Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight championship one hundred years ago this week in front of 120,757 fans at Sesquicentennial Stadium in Philadelphia. The fight, which took place on September 23, 1926, saw Tunney win every round over ten frames against the defending champion, ending one of the most dominant title reigns in the sport's history.

Dempsey had climbed from desperate poverty to boxing immortality. As biographer Randy Roberts documented for The Guardian, the champion grew up in mining camps and hobo jungles, taking any work available from washing dishes to digging ditches. Dempsey himself put it plainly: "I was a hobo, but I was never a bum." Fighting as Kid Blackie from age sixteen, he logged roughly 100 bouts across Colorado, Utah, and Nevada between 1911 and 1914. In one early fight, he recalled being knocked down eleven times before getting up to win. "I had to get up," he said. "I was a hungry fighter. When you haven't eaten for two days, you'll understand."

How Dempsey Built The Modern Heavyweight Division

Dempsey became champion on July 4, 1919, when he destroyed Jess Willard in Toledo. The challenger weighed 187 pounds against Willard's 245. After three rounds, Willard's jaw and nose were broken, six teeth were gone, and cuts ringed both eyes. Promoter Tex Rickard saw in Dempsey the vehicle to make boxing respectable across all classes. The Carpentier fight in 1921 drew over 80,000 fans and a gate of $1.8 million, more than double any previous record. Trainer Ray Arcel later said Dempsey fought like a saloon brawler, treating every part of the body as a legal target. Sportswriter Paul Gallico wrote that Dempsey had "a constant bottomless well of cold fury" and "was utterly without mercy or pity."

But Dempsey had not fought in three years when he met Tunney, a brilliant tactician who picked apart the aging champion's aggression. The Guardian notes that Tunney won every round in their first meeting. Dempsey acknowledged the role reversal from his 1921 bout with Georges Carpentier, when the Frenchman was the hero and Dempsey "the flat-nosed bum." Against Tunney, the beloved champion found himself outboxed by a fighter with superior ring intelligence.

The rematch took place one year later in Chicago. Both fights remain among the most storied heavyweight championship bouts in American sports history.

Source: theguardian.com