As Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney and his challenger, former champion Jack Dempsey, heard the bell ring for the 7^th round of their 10-round championship fight on September 22, 1927, their plans for the remainder of the bout could not have been less similar. Both men knew Tunney had probably already won at least five and possibly all six previous rounds. Dempsey could not win now without a knockout or a couple of knockdowns.

(Below: Handsome young Gene Tunney)

The “puncher’s chance,” people in the boxing world call it, meaning a knockout puncher can be losing every round of a fight and still win with one good punch. Inside Chicago’s Soldier on this chilly night, Dempsey’s fans, who made up the vast majority of a crowd some estimated to be over 140,000, were losing hope.

Among those watching were a who’s who of the sports and entertainment world. Douglas Fairbanks and Al Jolson were ringside and rooting hard for their friend, Jack Dempsey. Others in the huge crowd included John Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Tom Mix, composer Irving Berlin, and newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

From the sports world, there was New York Yankees owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, still infamous among their fans today for having sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920, along with Ty Cobb and baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Former Heavyweight Champion James J. Corbett, the conqueror of the fabled John L. Sullivan, was also at ringside. He must have sympathized with Tunny, as he had received some of the same negative reaction Tunney got for having dethroned a legend.

Given that Tunney had been judged the winner of nearly all the 16 rounds the two men had fought in the last year, and he had never been knocked down in 75 professional fights, he must have felt quite confident. But suddenly, less than a minute into the round, lightning struck for “The Manassa Mauler.” Near the middle of the ring, Dempsey landed a grazing straight right and a left hook. Neither landed flush, but they pushed Tunney back into the ropes. Dempsey hit him on the chin as he came off the ropes with his storied left hook. It was the punch Dempsey used to break the jaw of the 6’6” Jess Williard when he won the title in 1919.

Tunney crumpled, turning down onto his butt, grabbing the middle rope with his left hand as Dempsey landed several more punches. The millions listening to Graham McNamee on NBC Radio heard him screaming, “Tunney is DOWN! … Tunney is DOWN!” In the stadium, there was the deafening roar of over 140,000 voices screaming as one. Most of those fans were praying that Tunney would stay down and their hero would once again take the crown.

The early days of boxing in the United States were dominated by the Irish and Irish Americans. In 1890, Irish-American boxers held five of the seven weight division championships. That would slowly fade in the early decades of the 20^th century. Dempsey and Tunney would be the final great Irish-American heavy-weight champions. With apologies to James J. Braddock, whose “Cinderella” story was inspirational, but no one considers him among the great champions.

William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey was born June 24, 1895, in Manassa, Colorado. Jack was the ninth of his parent's eleven children. Though he did have Irish ancestry back through his father, the Dempsey’s had been in the New World since the 18^th century. His father, Hiram, was born in West Virginia and was a Mormon. His mother, Mary Cecilia Smoot, also born in West Virginia, does not seem to have any Irish roots, and the Smoots had been in the New World since the 17^th century.

(Right: Young Jack Dempsey)

Jack’s first Dempsey ancestor in the American colonies, William Dempsey II, was born in the early 18th century in Co. Offaly. Several centuries before that, the Dempseys had been a powerful family in the modern-day counties of Offaly and Laois. They were one of the few Gaelic families in eastern Ireland to successfully resist the infamous Norman Lord Richard "Strongbow" de Clare, who first established English power in Ireland.

It's unlikely that Jack knew anything about those noble Irish ancestors from generations before. He grew up first in the Mormon-founded town of Manassa, and then the family moved back to West Virginia. So he grew up away from the large Irish Catholic communities of the East Coast and was baptized as a Mormon. Tunney, on the other hand, grew up immersed in the Irish-American culture of New York City and was a Catholic, like most Irish Americans. It was Dempsey, however, who became the darling of the Irish-American community.

Much of Dempsey’s popularity with Irish Americans was based on the fact that he was more of a brawling slugger than a scientific boxer. Even today, boxing fans of all kinds tend to idolize sluggers over boxers. Tunney was seen as more of a defensive fighter, though that was not entirely fair. Dempsey’s KO percentage of 81% was only slightly higher than Tunney’s 74%, but many of Tunney’s KOs were earlier in his career, while Dempsey was knocking out nearly everyone from 1918 on, as more fight fans were becoming aware of him.

(Left: Dempsey pummeling Jess Willard)

Dempsey knocked down the 6’ 6” Jess Willard, known as “The Pottawatomie Giant” in that era of great nicknames, seven times in the first round when he won the Heavyweight title in July 1919. He knocked out four out of five challengers before fighting Tunney. Dempsey KOed Argentinean Luis Firpo in the 2^nd round in September 1923 in a fight that featured 11 knockdowns and included Dempsey famously being knocked totally out of the ring in the first round. Many of Tunney’s KO’s were fights that were stopped by the referee from an accumulation of damage to his opponent.

Dempsey’s early boxing career made a far more interesting backstory than Tunney’s. He traveled back west as a young man and started out not as a professional boxer but as a professional barroom brawler. He would enter a bar and announce, much like John L. Sullivan, “I can’t dance, I can’t sing, but I can lick anybody in the house. I’ll fight anybody in here for a dollar.”  In his early fighting years, he often fought under the name “Kid Blackie.”

Dempsey’s older brother, Bernie, was also fighting for money in the West and had taken the name “Jack Dempsey” from Co. Kildare native Jack Dempsey, nicknamed “The Nonpareil,” (right) who captured the world middleweight championship in the 1880s. When Bernie asked his brother to step in and fight in his place one night, William Harrison, whom his family called Harry, and who had boxed as “Kid Blackie,” became Jack.

In 1917, Jack met and married Maxine Cates. She was a saloon piano player and reputed to be a prostitute as well. The marriage lasted only two years, with them being apart for much of that time as his boxing career took off. The man responsible for that was boxing manager John Leo McKernan, known as “Doc Kearns.”

Kearns got Dempsey bouts with contenders, some of those fights back in the east, where a boxer had to fight to make a name for themselves. This culminated in his title fight with Willard on July 4, 1919. Leading up to the fight, sports writer Damon Runyon, who had met Dempsey a few years earlier, had dubbed Dempsey with his most famous nickname, “The Manassa Mauler.”  Runyon wrote a series of articles on Dempsey’s career titled “A Tale of Two Fists” before the title fight. That helped begin Dempsey’s legend with boxing fans. His brawl with Williard, who outweighed him by some 50 lbs, helped him begin his climb to be one of the sports icons of the “Roaring Twenties.”

Tunney's road to the heavyweight title was a far more orthodox boxing story. His father, John, was from Cill Aodain, Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo. He did a little boxing in Mayo before emigrating to New York around 1880. John and his wife, Mary Lydon, met and married in New York, but she was from Gorthgarve, Kiltimagh, very near where John grew up.

In New York, John worked as a stevedore on the docks but also boxed at Knights of Columbus smokers. He followed the great Irish champions of the late 19th century, like John L. Sullivan, “Boston Strong Boy,” and “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, who took the title from Sullivan.

(Left: Gene Tunney and the 1911 graduating class at St. Veronica's.Tunney is second from the left in the row, 2nd from the top. NEW YORK DISTRICT CHRISTIAN BROTHERS ARCHIVES)

Mary gave birth to James Joseph Tunney on May 25, 1897. He would become known as “Gene” to family members and friends when the youngest of his four sisters, Agnes, struggled to say James, and it came out as something approximating “Gene.”

Like many boys in the ethnically mixed streets of New York, Gene endured some bullying. When Gene was 10, John bought his skinny son a cheap pair of boxing gloves to learn to defend himself. If he had known at that moment that it would lead Gene into a professional boxing career, he probably would not have given them to him. John and Mary wanted Gene to become a priest. Of course, had he also known the success Gene would have in boxing, and later because of boxing, he might have bought him a more expensive pair.

If Gene’s progression into professional boxing was orthodox, he was far removed from the average boxer of the time personally. He was an avid reader who loved school and learning. He even memorized some speeches from Shakespeare. On the mean streets of old New York, that was likely to get you branded a “sissy,” but any who challenged him were quickly disabused of that notion.

Gene was more self-educated than formally educated, however. He left school at fifteen to help his financially strapped family. He went to work as a mail clerk at the Ocean Steamship Company. A year later, veteran boxer Willie Green, who had given Tunney boxing lessons after his father gave him those boxing gloves, hired him as a sparring partner. Soon, Tunney was fighting smokers at the Knights of Columbus, as his father had, but with much more success as time went on. On July 2, 1915, Tunney had his first professional bout against Bobby Dawson at the Sharkey Athletic Club in New York. He won by TKO, as Dawson couldn’t come out for the 8^th round.

(Right: Tunney in his Marine Corps uniform.)

Tunney’s career was on a steady upward trajectory from there on. When the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, Tunney enlisted in the Marines. He never saw combat, as his regiment was instead assigned to guard Romorantin air base. No one was aware of Tunney’s pro boxing experience until he was urged to fight in a bout on the base by a sergeant who had seen him dispatch a base bully with one punch.

The Marines were vastly outnumbered by Army personnel in France, and looking for someone who could take them on. From then on, boxing became Tunney’s only job. He would win nine straight bouts in France, most against other professional boxers. His last win was for the light-heavyweight championship of the American Expeditionary Forces. He came home as “The Fighting Marine.”

Dempsey’s connection to the war would be far less positive. He got a deferment as his family's sole supporter. This would come back to haunt him in 1919, when his wife, whom he was divorcing at the time, accused him of lying on his draft papers. In the trial, she was shown to be lying when she claimed she was actually supporting Dempsey, and he was found innocent. But some fans continued to hold it against him.

Gene Tunney told a friend just before leaving France, “I'm going to win the heavyweight championship of the world.” He started getting information on Dempsey, who beat Willard a month before Tunney returned, but Tunney had a lot of work to do before he would get a shot at that title.

(Left: Dempsey on the cover of the September 10, 1923 issue of Time Magazine.)

Back in New York, training for his first fight back in the U.S., he had a meeting with Dempsey on the Hudson River ferry. They had a brief conversation, and no doubt Tunney was shocked by Dempsey’s high-pitched voice. Dempsey gave Tunney a tip for a way to tape his right hand to protect a knuckle he had injured in one of his bouts in France. Given his reputation as a merciless brawler, Tunney was surprised that he was soft-spoken and friendly. Tunney found that he liked him.

In December, Tunney started fighting again, and he surely made up for lost time. In the next 13 months, he had an incredible 15 bouts, winning all of them. It was a pace no modern professional boxer would ever attempt. By mid-1921, he advanced in the boxing world to the point where he fought and won the undercard of the Dempsey – Carpentier title fight. At this point, Tunney was fighting as a light-heavyweight.

(Below: Harry Greb, left, and Tunney.)

In January 1922, Tunney outpointed Barney “Battling” Levinsky to win the American Light Heavyweight Championship. He lost that title when he was out-pointed by Harry Greb in May 1922. Greb is considered one of the greatest light-heavyweight fighters of all time. He was also said by some to be one of the dirtiest fighters ever. He was known for low blows, butting, holding and hitting, and rubbing his laces or gloves against an opponent’s eyes. It was the only loss of Tunny’s career and he was a bloody mess at the end. But he won the title back on a close decision over Greb in February 1923.

Dempsey, meanwhile, fought far less during the first years of the 1920s. From 1920 to 1923, he only fought five times. He knocked out four of the five opponents, most notably the highly regarded Frenchman Georges Carpentier in the fourth round, and his epic battle with Firpo, dubbed the “Wild Bull of the Pampas” by Damon Runyon, which was glorified in a famous painting by George Bellows.

(Below: Dempsey and Firpo, 1924 by George Wesley Bellows, 1882–1925)  

After the bout, Dempsey had a falling out with his manager, “Doc” Kearns, who had guided him to the title. The dispute had much to do with Dempsey’s girlfriend and later wife, actress Estelle Taylor, and his resentment of Kearns's 50% cut of the purse of his fights. This would lead to lawsuits by Kearns and cause Dempsey to refuse to fight until 1926 when his contract with Kearns would expire.

During Dempsey’s three-year layoff before his first fight with Tunny, Gene fought nineteen times. He won eighteen of them, with one draw against his old nemesis, Harry Greb in September 1924. But he avenged that by outpointing Gregg again in March 1925. Tunney also beat Carpentier by TKO in July 1925. On December 29, 1925, he had a 2^nd round knockout of Dan O’Dowd.

As 1926 began, Dempsey was looking to fight again. He had been making movies with his wife and doing a vaudeville show. He was making plenty of money, but after more than two years, he missed the excitement and competition of boxing.

(Below: Harry Wills)

The leading contender was Harry Wills. But Wills was black, and the powers that be in boxing believed there was no money to be made with a black champion. A decade later, Joe Lewis would disprove that, but that was no help for Wills. Dempsey believed he could easily beat Wills and was willing to fight him, but it was not to be. One would have to wonder why he and his management would think an excellent defensive boxer like Tunney was a good match for someone coming off a three-year layoff. Once they started negotiating for the title fight, Tunney stopped fighting. He would be off for 9 months leading up to it, and unheard of layoff for him, but certainly nothing compared to Dempsey’s.

Fight promoter Tex Rickard wanted to stage the fight in New York City, but the License Committee of the New York State Athletic Commission insisted Dempsey fight Wills. They refused to give him a license to fight in NY unless he agreed the fight would be with Wills. Rickard moved the fight to Philadelphia. The date was set for September 23, 1926, and set at 10 rounds rather than the usual 15.

Dempsey had an aura of invisibility with the public, and some 135,000 of them showed up for the fight in spite of having to sit in the rain. But Dempsey had lost some of his popularity by staying idle so long; ignoring the public uproar demanding a heavyweight championship fight. He was booed coming into the ring, while Tunney was cheered. 

Though he had been idle for three years, Dempsey was still favored to win the fight. Tunney did not agree with “smart money,” however. He had been studying Dempsey for years and planning how to beat him. "I am positive that I am capable of a better fight than I've ever fought because never yet have I been extended to the limit,” he said before the fight. Then he proved it in the ring.

Tunney stung Dempsey with a hard right in the first round, then dominated him with skillful boxing for the rest of the 10 rounds. Dempsy said afterward, “There was plenty on that sock, and I never really got over it through the rest of the fight.” The bout was fought in a rain storm with no roof over the ring, but the video of the fight doesn’t seem to show either having any footing problems.

The New York Times story on the fight said Tunney was “a complete master, from first bell to last. He out-boxed, and he out-fought Dempsey at every turn.” After the fight, Dempsey famously told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Though he lost his title, Dempsey made a tidy $850,000 (worth about $11.3 million today).

Most papers gave Tunney little credit for fighting well. They wrote that Dempsey was “over the hill” or had only lost because of the long layoff. Sportswriter Ring Lardner even called it a “fake, a very well done fake,” though only in private. Tunney also became the first Heavyweight Champion who did not win the title by a knockout, and that is not what boxing fans wanted or expected.

Tunney was the antithesis of the barroom brawler the fans thought of as the ideal type of champion. Besides being a fan of Shakespeare, he seldom drank alcohol. In fact, he celebrated the night of winning the title, an occasion that would have resulted in a long drunken night for most boxers, with a cup of tea. 

(Below: Tunney and Dempsey in Chicago before their 2nd fight.)

The next day, without telling anyone, Tunney made a visit to Dempsey in his hotel room. He said he wanted Dempsey to know he had not forgotten his kindness to Tunney when the first met six years earlier. He was shocked at how badly bruised and cut up Dempsey's face was with his left eye swollen shut. The two gracious men, who had tried so hard to knock each other out less than 24 hours earlier, had a cordial conversation. Tunny praised Dempsey as a “great champion.” For his part, Dempsey said, “Gene, I'm sorry to lose the title, but I'm glad you were the one to win it from me.”

Talk of a rematch began immediately, but Dempsey wasn’t sure he wanted it. Harry Greb, who had been secretly fighting for years while nearly blind in one, died during surgery that was partially for injuries from his boxing career in October. Dempsey had always had a fear of blindness, Greb’s eye problems and Tunney’s speed and slashing punches increased that concern. Promoter Tex Rickard knew a rematch was the only real big-money match he could make with Tunney.

Dempsey was talked into taking another shot at Tunney. He fought and knocked out contender Jack Sharkey, later Heavyweight Champion, in the 7^th round of an “elimination bout” in July 1927 to set up the rematch. It would be Dempsey’s last KO with his famous left hook, though he came awfully close to having one more. The rematch was set for September 22 in Chicago with Tunney being the one with the long layoff this time.

(Left: Dempsey follows through with the left hook that knocked out Sharkey.)

America was at the height of the “Roaring 20s” as the fight approached. It was a golden age of sports heroes, all with memorable nicknames: Jack Dempsey, “The Manassa Mauler;” Babe Ruth, “The Sultan of Swat,” Red Grange, “The Galloping Ghost” of football. Even horse racing had one of the most famous horses of all time, Man o’ War, with the nickname of “Big Red.” The country was two years away from the market crash, and Americans were swimming in cash.

This time, the crowd gave Dempsey the larger ovation as he climbed into the ring tanned and with a three-day stubble on his face. He looked every bit the rough brawler. Tunney, the scientific boxer, looked pasty white as his robe came off. His looks and his now well-known bookish intellectual pursuits were not what most boxing fans wanted in their heavyweight champion. They wanted their brawling "Manassa Mauler" back.  

(Below: Dempsey lands his devastating left hook
to Tuinney's jaw just before Tunney went down.)

And so it was that they arrived at the famous, or infamous, moment in round 7 of their second fight: Tunney sitting on the canvas with his back to the ropes, holding the middle one with his left hand. It’s been frozen in time for avid boxing fans for nearly 100 years now. This was a totally new experience for Tunney. He had taken a brutal physical beating in his first fight with Greb, but in 65 professional fights, this was the first time the master defensive fighter had ever been knocked down.

“God, how I dreamed of this moment. Seventeen rounds [counting the ten in Philadelphia]. And now I had him,” Dempsey later said. But now the dream turned into the nightmare of giving Tunney extra time to recover by not going to the neutral corner. “Now, in the event of a knockdown, unless the boy scoring it goes to the farthest corner, I will not begin the count until he does,” referee Dave Barry had told both before the fight started. When Barry finally got Dempsey started to the neutral corner, he began the count.

There is no doubt that Tunney on down for more than a 10 count. No one is certain, but the best estimates are that he was down for 14 to 18 seconds. But does that prove he would have been knocked out if Dempsey went to the neutral corner immediately? Dempsey supporters said yes, but Tunney claimed he could have gotten up much sooner. He said he was listening to Barry’s count and could have gotten up any time after he heard Barry count 2, but stayed down until his count of 9 to recover as much as possible.

The film of the fight does show (left) Tunney looking up at Barry and seeming to possibly be able to get up sooner than he did. Only Tunney could ever know for sure if that was true, but what is definitely true is that Dempsey was not in any way robbed of the knockout. Whatever the outcome would have been had he immediately gone to the neutral corner, the rule was correctly applied. The blame lay entirely with him.

Tunney recovered quickly after getting up and danced away from Dempsey the rest of the round. In rounds 8 through 10, Tunney was in control again, even knocking Dempsey down in the 8^th, though Dempsey was immediately back up. No one disagreed with the unanimous decision for Tunney. His purse for beating Dempsey in Chicago was a staggering $990,000. Tunney gave the promoter $10,000 so he could get the first one million dollar check in boxing history.

(Right: Dempsey getting up after the 8th round knockdown.)

The bout went into history as “The Long Count” championship. It is arguably still the most controversial fight in heavyweight boxing history. People clamored for another rematch, but Dempsey, after first saying he wanted one, retired. Tunney defended his title one more time, against New Zealander Tim Heeney, TKOing him in the 11^th round, then also retired. With Tunney's retirement, the golden age of Irish-American heavyweight fighters was over.

(Below: Crowd of boys at Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Gene Tunney.)

Soon after he retired in 1928, Tunney visited Ireland, where he was given a hero's welcome. “I feel that I am going home ... I have always wanted to see Ireland... and now I am realising one of my life's ambitions,” he said. The adulation of the Irish for this son of Irish parents must have made him wonder why he never got the same sort of respect from the Irish-American community at home.

Tunney married wealthy Connecticut socialist Mary “Polly” Lauder in 1928. They had three sons and a daughter. Their oldest son, John, was elected to the U.S. Senate from California. Dempsey divorced Estelle Taylor in 1931. He married Deanna Piatelli, his 4^th wife, and they remained married until he died. In 1935, he opened "Jack Dempsey's Broadway Restaurant" in New York, which became an iconic business in the city.

Both men later served in the Navy in WWII. Tunney remained in the U.S., but Dempsey actually served on a ship in the Pacific during the invasion of Okinawa, where some of the worst Kamikaze attacks occurred. Perhaps in doing that, he put to rest some of the “draft-dodger” accusations from WWI.

(Below: Dempsey and Tunney in their Naval uniforms.)

Gene Tunney, though the younger of the two, passed away at age 81 on November 7, 1978, at the Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut of a blood infection. Jack Dempsey died of a heart attack at age 87 on May 31, 1983, in New York City. As had always been the case, Dempsey overshadowed Tunney even in death. When Dempsey died, it was a story on the front page of the New York Times. When Tunney died, the article was on page 22, with the headline, “Tunney, Boxing Champion Who Beat Dempsey, Dies.” His relationship to Dempsey was what gave him most of his worth in the eyes of the press.

Tunney and Dempsey remained good friends throughout their lives. Dempsey never whined about the “Long Count” fight, once saying, “Gene has often told me he could have [gotten up], and I have no reason not to believe him. Gene’s a great guy.” Tunney had demonstrated his deep respect for Dempsey when he went to see him the day after their first fight.

There are moments in sports that can connect opponents for posterity. Baseball has had Ralph Branca giving up Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Around the World” home run and Dennis Eckersley giving up the “I don’t believe what I just saw” World Series walk-off home run to Kirk Gibson. In boxing, Tunney and Dempsey will forever be connected by “The Long Count.”

RELATES LINKS: 

“Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler” by Randy Roberts

“Gene Tunney” by John Jarrett 

“A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s” by Roger Kahn

“Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack D... by Jack Cavanaugh 

“Dempsey: By the Man Himself” by Jack Dempsey and Bob Considine

“Gene Tunney: The Enigma Of The Ring” by Nat Fleischer

“Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties: The Life and Times of a Box... by Thomas Myler 

“The Fearless Harry Greb: Biography of a Tragic Hero of Boxing” by Bill Paxton

Full First Dempsey - Tunney Title Fight (Video)

Slow Motion Replay and Analysis of Long Count (Video)

Gene Tunny Boxing Record

Jack Dempsey Boxing Record

Gene Tunney in Ireland watches the horse racing at Leopardstown. (video)

Gene Tunney, the American heavy weight boxing champion in Dublin (1928 video)

Gene Tunney - The Technical Genius (video)

Gene Tunney Legendary Heavyweight Champion (video)

Story of Jack Dempsey (video)

Jack Dempsey Accused of Draft Dodging WWI

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