Boxing has always attracted and fired the imagination of the multitudes and every decade has produced one warrior that stood above the rest and became a people’s hero. Boxing in the 1920’s not only enjoyed popularity but was considered to be a social event and men and women attended boxing matches in their thousands.

Amongst the great fighters that the 1920’s era produced, one name that stands above the rest is that of Heavyweight Jack Dempsey, who dominated the boxing scene for most of that era in historic fights that made the Dempsey name immortal in boxing lore.

Dempsey is still considered by many as one of the greatest heavyweights and "pound for pound" fighters who ever entered in the ring - the ultimate yardstick by which all heavyweights are measured.

Jack Dempsey also known as "The Manassa Mauler" was born on  June 24, 1895 and held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first million dollar gate. He is listed #10 on Ring Magazine's list of all-time heavyweights and #7 among its Top 100 Greatest Punchers. He is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Jack Dempsey was born in Manassa, Colorado, with the name William Harrison Dempsey in a poor family. His father Hiram Dempsey, had difficulty finding work in these difficult times and thus young Dempsey spent much of his formative years moving from place to place and gaining little in the way of a formal education and at a young age had already dropped out of grade school to work for a living.

At age 16 Jack left home to seek a better life. With little money in his pocket he frequently had to travel underneath trains and sleep in hobo camps. However, Dempsey was a strong, powerful youth who soon discovered a talent for fighting. With the help of his older brother Bernie, he commenced training as a professional boxer.

Between 1911 and 1916 Desperate for money, Dempsey would occasionally visit saloons in the small mining towns of Colorado and challenge for fights saying "I can't sing and I can't dance, but I can lick any SOB in the house. He emerged from numerous saloon floor-boxing matches to rein victorious in over 80 professional fights by the meager age of 24. Dempsey was perhaps best known for his thrilling knockout victories, many of which occurred in just seconds of the fight’s onset.

A little known fact about Dempsey is that for a short time, he was a part-time bodyguard for Thomas F. Kearns, president of The Salt Lake Tribune and son of Utah's U.S. Senator Thomas Kearns. (no relation to Jack Kearns) The two men remained friends for years afterward.

Dempsey's exact boxing record is not known because he occasionally boxed under the pseudonym, "Kid Blackie". (His use of the pseudonym continued until 1916). Meanwhile, he first appeared as "Jack Dempsey" in 1914, after an earlier middleweight boxer Jack "Nonpareil" Dempsey, drawing with Young Herman in six rounds. After that fight, he won six bouts in a row by knockout (as Jack Dempsey), before losing for the first time, on a disqualification in four rounds to Jack Downey. He followed his loss against Downey with a knockout win and two draws versus Johnny Sudenberg in Nevada. Three more wins and a draw followed when he met Downey again, this time resulting in a four-round draw.

Ten wins in a row followed—a streak during which he beat Sudenberg and was finally able to avenge his defeat at the hands of Downey, knocking him out in two rounds. Three more non-decisions ensued. (At this point in the history of boxing, there were no judges to score a fight, so if a fight lasted the full distance; it was called a draw or non-decision, depending on the state or county where the fight was held).

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Dempsey worked in a shipyard while continuing to box. After the war, he was accused by some boxing fans of being a draft dodger although a jury exonerated him of a charge of draft-dodging,

In 1918, Dempsey boxed 17 times, going 15–1 with one no-decision. Among those he defeated were light heavyweight champion Battling Levinsky (who had never been knocked out before Dempsey did so), Bill Brennan, Fred Fulton, Carl Morris, Billy Miske ("newspaper decision"), heavy weight Lefty Jim McGettigan and Homer Smith.

In 1919, he began winning five bouts in a row by knockout in the first round. Then on July 4, he and world heavyweight champion Jess Willard met at Toledo, Ohio, for the world title. Few gave Dempsey a chance against the larger champion and many called this fight a modern David and Goliath. Three minutes into the first round Willard looked like a case for the coroner. He had been down seven times, and one left hook had broken his cheekbone in 13 places. Thinking the seventh knockdown had ended the fight, Dempsey and his manager, Jack (Doc) Kearns, left the ring but was called back.

After two more rounds the helpless Willard was spared further damage when one of his seconds signaled surrender by throwing a towel into the ring.

 

 

Now it was Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world.

The destruction of Willard convinced boxing men of the new champion's greatness, but the public was slow to accept Dempsey because of his war record. Ostensibly doing essential work in a Philadelphia shipyard, he had posed for a news photograph holding a riveting gun and wearing overalls, with patent-leather shoes. The fancy footgear raised noisy doubts about his contribution to the war effort.

Dempsey did not defend his title until September 1920. This was against Billy Miske in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Miske was a good fighter but past his prime when he challenged Jack for the title, and was knocked out in three rounds.

Dempsey's second title defense was much tougher, against Bill Brennan in December 1920 at Madison Square Garden, New York Dempsey in round 12.

The next fight for "The Manassa Mauler" was against Frenchman Georges Carpentier, who had been a war hero during WWI and was extremely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. The bout was shrewdly promoted by Tex Rickard, emphasizing the differences between the two men, and George Bernard Shaw, who claimed that Carpentier was "the greatest boxer in the world" and stacked the odds 50 to 1 against Dempsey. The anticipation for this bout was tremendous.

Dempsey-Carpentier took place on July 2, 1921 at Boyle's Thirty Acres, Jersey City, New Jersey, generating the first million dollar gate in boxing history. A crowd of 91,000 watched the fight. Though it was deemed "the Fight of the Century," and many people who didn't know much about boxing thought Carpentier had a chance to win, most experts anticipated a one-sided win for Dempsey, and they were right. RCA arranged for live coverage of the match making the event the first national radio broadcast reaching mostly homemade radio sets after first being telegraphed to KDKA for broadcast.

The Frenchman was stopped in the fourth round.

Dempsey did not defend his title again until July 1923 against Tommy Gibbons in Shelby, Montana. Gibbons was a skilled, clever boxer, but was not powerful enough against the bigger, stronger Dempsey, who won a 15-round decision.

The last successful title defense for Dempsey was in September 1923 at New York's Polo Grounds. His opponent in the fight was the huge, powerful, yet limited contender Luis Angel Firpo, from Argentina. Attendance was 85,000, with another 20,000 trying to get inside the arena. Dempsey won via a 2nd-round KO.

Dempsey did not defend his title for another 3 years.

In September 1926, Dempsey fought Irish-American former U.S. Marine Gene Tunney in Philadelphia. Tunney was an excellent boxer who had lost only once in his career. Nevertheless, Tunney was still considered the underdog.

In a big upset, Dempsey lost his title on points in ten rounds. No longer displaying his legendary punching power or hand speed, Dempsey was easily outboxed by the slick Tunney who would dodge, use excellent pad level, and then let loose with a salvo of punches of his own. The attendance for this fight was a record 120,557, the largest attendance ever for a sporting event outside motor racing and Soccer.

In July 1927, at Yankee Stadium, he knocked out future heavyweight champion Jack Sharkey in the seventh round of an elimination bout for a title shot against Tunney. Sharkey was beating Dempsey until the end, when the fight ended controversially. Sharkey claimed that Dempsey had been hitting him below the belt and when Sharkey turned to the referee to complain, he left himself unprotected. Dempsey crashed a left hook onto Sharkey's chin, knocking him out cold. The referee then counted out Sharkey.

The Tunney rematch took place in Chicago, Illinois, on September 22, 364 days after losing his title to Tunney in their first bout. This fight generated even more interest than the Carpentier and Firpo bouts, generating an amazing 2 million dollar gate, a record that stood for many years. It is said that Al Capone offered Dempsey that he could fix the rematch, but he would not hear of it. Millions of people around the country listened to the bout on the radio, and hundreds of reporters covered the event. Tunney was paid a record one million dollars for the Dempsey rematch (his official purse was actually 990,000, so he gave the promoters a check of his own for 10,000 so he could receive the "million dollar payday", a photo-stat of which is still owned by the Tunney family). Dempsey earned about half that.

This fight was to be infamously known in history as “The Long Count Fight” In round seven; however, the 104,000 spectators in attendance witnessed a moment that would live on in boxing history. With Tunney trapped against the ropes and near a corner, Dempsey unleashed a combination of punches that floored the champion. Two rights and two lefts landed on Tunney's chin and staggered him, and four more punches deposited him on the canvas. It was the first time in Tunney's career that he'd been knocked down.

Apparently dizzy and disoriented, Tunney grabbed on to the ring's top rope with his left hand. Dempsey, who used to stand over opponents and rush right back at them after they got up, looked down on Tunney. Referee Dave Barry ordered Dempsey into a neutral corner to no avail; Dempsey just stood there, observing his opponent. This gave Tunney precious seconds to recuperate. By the time Dempsey finally walked to a neutral corner, Tunney had been down for around 3 to 7 seconds. Barry could not start to count on Tunney until Dempsey reached the neutral corner, but he was still able to count to nine before Tunney got up. Some believe that if Dempsey had responded to the referee's orders in time, he would have likely regained the world Heavyweight crown with a seventh round knockout of Tunney. The validity of this argument has been debated even to this day. In the fight film, a clock was superimposed that recorded Tunney's time on the floor as 13 seconds, from the moment he fell until he got up. Because of this delay, it became known as The Long Count Fight.

 

 

Personal life - In his early days in the mining camps, he had been married to Maxine Gates, a saloon piano player, then he married Estelle Taylor was a star of silent films whom he met in Hollywood. Dempsey and Estelle Taylor were divorced, and he married the singer Hannah Williams. They had two daughters, Joan in 1934 and Barbara in 1936. He and Hannah Williams were divorced in 1943. In 1958 he was married for the fourth time, to the former Deanna Piattelli. He later adopted her daughter from a previous marriage. She took the name Barbara Dempsey and helped him write his 1977 autobiography, ''Dempsey.''

 

 

 

 

 

Retirement – Dempsey’s retirement was an active one, from 1935 until 1974 on the site the old car barn across from Madison Square Garden Jack Dempsey's Broadway Restaurant was truly an American institution. Most nights for those nearly forty years would find the proprietor Dempsey on hand to greets guests, sign autographs, pose for pictures and hold court with the famous from all walks of life.

In WW II - He joined New York State National Guard and was given a commission as a first lieutenant. He resigned that commission to accept a commission as a lieutenant in the Coast Guard Reserve. He reported for active duty in June 1942 at Coast Guard Training Station, Manhattan Beach, and Brooklyn, New York, where he was assigned as "Director of Physical Education.

True to his passion for the Sweet Science, Dempsey wrote a book on boxing called Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense, which was published in 1950. The book emphasizes knockout power derived from enabling fast motion from one's heavy bodyweight. Though no longer in print, Dempsey's book became and remains the recognized treatise in boxing.

Dempsey campaigned for Tunney's son John when he ran for the U.S. Senate, from California.

Dempsey might also be considered as the fore-runner of MMA and cross training; he wrestled in training camp and later took judo lessons. He later wrote a book on this, How to Fight Tough, which dealt with close-quarters combat incorporating boxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu.

 

 

 

In 1977, in collaboration with his daughter Barbara Lynn, Jack published his autobiography, titled Dempsey. In May 1983, Dempsey died of an amphetamine overdose at age 87. With his wife Manuela at his side, he told her ... "Don't worry honey; I'm too awesome to die." He is buried in the Southampton Cemetery in Southampton, New York.

Dempsey is a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame. The street where Madison Square Garden is located is called Jack Dempsey Corner.