Jack Dempsey

Heavyweight
Ring career: 1914-27 Record: 61-6-8 (50 KOs) and 6 no-decisions
Career notes: Held world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926, although only six of his fights
during that period were official title defenses. … Furious two-fisted punching style was hugely
popular with fans. … Engaged in some of the most celebrated battles of all time, including with
Luis Angel Firpo and Gene Tunney. … The "Manassa Mauler" was the face of boxing at a time
when it was still, along with baseball and horse racing, the most popular sport in the land. …
Rakishly handsome and charismatic outside the ring, was all-action inside it, brandishing a
breathtaking, go-for-broke fighting style. … Won the title by shattering the jaw of giant Jess
Willard. … When he lost it, by decision to Tunney in 1926, it was in front of the largest paid
attendance in the history of boxing -- more than 120,000 spectators. … In rematch, floored
Tunney for a count of nine, the infamous "long count" in which Tunney was actually on the
canvas for 14 seconds. … After losing rematch, retired and opened a restaurant in New York.
Let's go to the video: 50 Greatest: Jack Dempsey

Who Was Jack Dempsey?

As a boy, Jack Dempsey he worked as a farm hand, miner and cowboy and was taught to box by
his older brother. Dempsey's early prize fights were in mining towns around Salt Lake City but
on July 4, 1919, he beat Jess Willard "The Great White Hope," and became world heavyweight
champion. He defended his title five times but lost to Gene Tunney in 1926.

Early Years

Born William Harrison Dempsey on June 24, 1895, in Manassa, Colorado, Dempsey's parents,
Hyrum and Celia Dempsey, were originally from West Virginia, where his father had worked as
a schoolteacher. Around 1880, a missionary group of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints visited Dempsey's parents and converted them. Soon after, they moved west to
the tiny Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints village of Manassa in southern Colorado,
where Dempsey was born.

Although Hyrum later abandoned the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, his wife
remained faithful and observant throughout her life, and Dempsey was raised in the church. The
boxer later described his own religious beliefs: "I'm proud to be a Mormon. And ashamed to be
the Jack Mormon that I am."

Following their move from West Virginia, Dempsey's father and his two older brothers worked
as miners, and the family moved frequently around Colorado and Utah in pursuit of mining jobs.
At the age of 8, Dempsey took his first job picking crops on a farm near Steamboat Springs,
Colarado. Over the next few years, he worked as a farm hand, miner and cowboy to help support
his struggling family. As an adult, Dempsey often said that he loved three kinds of work —
boxing, mining and cowboying — and would have been equally happy doing any of the three.
During these years, Dempsey's older brother, Bernie, earned extra money as a prizefighter in the
saloons of hardscrabble Rocky Mountain towns. It was Bernie who taught young Jack how to
fight, instructing him to chew pine tar gum to strengthen his jaw and soak his face in brine to
toughen his skin.

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When Dempsey was 12 years old, his family settled in Provo, Utah, where he attended Lakeview
Elementary School. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, though, to begin working
full time. He shined shoes, picked crops and worked at a sugar refinery, unloading beets for a
measly ten cents per ton. By the age of 17, Dempsey had developed into a skilled young boxer,
and decided he could make more money fighting than working.

For the next five years, from 1911-16, Dempsey traveled from mining town to mining town,
picking up fights wherever he could. His home base was Peter Jackson's Saloon in Salt Lake
City, where a local organizer named Hardy Downey arranged his fights. Going by the name "Kid
Blackie," in his Salt Lake City debut, Dempsey knocked out his opponent, a boxer by the name
of "One Punch Hancock," in just one punch. Downey was so angry that he made Dempsey fight
another opponent before he paid him.

Bernie was still prizefighting at that time, calling himself Jack Dempsey, after the great 19th-
century boxer Jack "Nonpareil" Dempsey. One day in 1914, Bernie fell ill, and his younger
brother offered to fill in for him. Assuming the name Jack Dempsey for the first time that night,
he won his brother's fight decisively and never relinquished the name. By 1917, Dempsey had
earned enough of a reputation to book more prominent and better-paying fights in San Francisco
and on the East Coast.

A Boxing Champion

On Independence Day in 1919, Dempsey got his first big opportunity: A fight against world
heavyweight champion Jess Willard. Nicknamed "The Great White Hope," Willard stood a
menacing 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighed in at 245 pounds. No one in the boxing world thought
the 6'1", 187-pound Dempsey stood a chance. Despite his enormous disadvantage in size,
Dempsey dominated Willard with his superior quickness and ruthless tactics, knocking the
bigger man out in the third round to earn the title of world heavyweight champion.

The Willard-Dempsey fight became the subject of controversy in 1964, when Dempsey's former
manager, Jack Kearns — who, by this time, had fallen out with Dempsey — claimed that he had
"loaded" the boxer's gloves with Plaster of Paris. The "loaded glove" theory held some credence
because of the seemingly extraordinary amount of damage Dempsey did to Willard's face.
However, film evidence revealed Willard inspecting Dempsey's gloves before the fight, making
it highly improbable that the fighter could have cheated.

Dempsey successfully defended his heavyweight title five times over the next six years, in what
is considered one of the greatest runs in boxing history. Despite his successes in the ring during
this period, however, Dempsey was not particularly popular with the public. He had not served in
the military when the United States entered World War I in 1917, leading some to view him as a
slacker and draft dodger. Furthermore, an infamous and widely ridiculed photograph showed
Dempsey at a Philadelphia shipyard, supposedly hard at work, but wearing shiny patent-leather
shoes.

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Strangely, Dempsey finally achieved widespread popularity when he lost his championship title.
On September 23, 1926, he was defeated by challenger Gene Tunney before a record crowd of
120,000 fans in Philadelphia. When the bruised and battered Dempsey returned to his hotel that
night, his wife, shocked at his gruesome appearance, asked him what happened. "Honey,"
Dempsey famously answered. "I forgot to duck." The hilarious and self-effacing anecdote made
Dempsey something of a folk legend for the rest of his life.

A year later, in 1927, Dempsey challenged Tunney to a rematch in a fight that would become
one of the most controversial in boxing history. Dempsey knocked Tunney down in the seventh
round but forgot a new rule requiring him to return to a neutral corner while the referee counted,
extending the pause in the fight. Dempsey's slipup afforded Tunney at least five precious extra
seconds to recover and return to his feet, and Tunney eventually won the fight. Although
Dempsey fans argue that he would have won if not for the "long count," Tunney maintained that
he was in control throughout the fight.

After his second loss to Tunney, Dempsey retired from boxing but remained a prominent cultural
figure. He opened Jack Dempsey's Restaurant in New York City, where he was famous for his
hospitality and willingness to chat with any customer who walked through his doors. He also
tried his hand at acting. He and his wife, actress Estelle Taylor, co-starred in a Broadway play
called The Big Fight, and Dempsey appeared in a handful of films, including The
Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) and Sweet Surrender (1935). During World War II, Dempsey
put all questions surrounding his war record to rest by serving as a lieutenant commander in the
Coast Guard.

Book

In 1977, he wrote an autobiography, Dempsey: The Autobiography of Jack Dempsey.