Former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling, always a very astute observer and commentator on the fight game, got talking in his twilight years about the fighters he rated most highly. It wasn?t easy. ?Trying to name them all would be a little too much,? Max said with a smile.
?But in alphabetical order, my shortlist of those boxers who will never be forgotten includes Muhammad Ali, Henry Armstrong, Georges Carpentier, Julio Cesar Chavez, George Foreman, Harry Greb, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Jack Johnson, Ray Leonard, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Carlos Monzon, Archie Moore, Willie Pep, Ray Robinson and Mike Tyson.
?But now I want to add, all by myself, one more name: Jack Dempsey. Despite all the class shown by the others, Dempsey was not only my own idol, he remains for me to this day the greatest of them all. He was the big daddy. He embodied the complete perfection of a professional boxer.
?Jack welded brilliant technique and strategy with a stupendous punch like no other boxer. His punches came packed with the full power of his entire shoulder span. He was a nightmare of an opponent. He hated sharing the ring with anybody else. He appeared to be a fist fighter from another planet. It was no coincidence that they called him the ?man killer.?
?Writer Joyce Carol Oates, in her famous essay, On Boxing, was right on target when she said that Dempsey?s style of fighting ? fast, direct and merciless ? as forever put its stamp on the sport of boxing in America and not only there.
?She is also not wrong when she says that today?s boxing matches, compared with those of Dempsey?s, appear to be harmless minuets. By no means do I mean to over-glorify him or above all the first half of the twentieth century in boxing. But the fact is that our fights back then were definitely much tougher, much more brutal.
?I was still boxing with only four and five ounce gloves, and after two rounds they were mostly already torn apart, with only a few patches of tough leather covering my knuckles. The punches were extremely painful.
?Back then there were also only eight weight categories, in which there was, logically, only a single world champion. It was extremely difficult to box your way to the top.?
Question
Back in 1922, when Sam Langford was asked how Harry Wills would do against Jack Dempsey, the question didn?t pose Sam much of a problem. ?Well, if he ever fights Dempsey, my money will be on the present champion. Dempsey is the greatest fighter I have ever seen. He hits twice as hard as Jim Jeffries and is as fast in the ring as James J. Corbett.?
Six years before, it was Jack who was in awe of Langford. ?No way,? was Dempsey?s simple reply in 1916 when Langford was suggested as his next opponent.
Jack was struggling. One step forward and two steps back. This was the story of his life as he tried to break free from the pack and surge through the fiercely competitive field of his day. He was rarely satisfied with his performances in the ring. Every fight he had seemed to be tough, every move he made in the ring was manual and workmanlike. Nothing flowed. Nothing was coming naturally. Jack was trying to hack it in the unforgiving jungle of New York, and New York was winning.
Back in Ogden, Utah, in February of that year, Dempsey had knocked out the enormous Boston Bearcat with a salvo of punches in the first round. To Jack, that meant everything. Rumor had it that even the Sam Langford hadn?t been able to knock the tough and charismatic Bearcat off his feet. But that was Ogden, Utah, and where the hell was that? Most New Yorkers were more familiar with London.
Only one man gave Dempsey the time of day, and that was the astute and worldly Damon Runyon, who originally hailed from a very different Manhattan in the wilderness of Kansas. Runyon put himself around just as Dempsey did. He had seen Jack fight and had liked what he saw. He told the disillusioned youngster that it was a devil of a job to make an impact in New York and not to give up the fight.
Jack would remember those words and learn their value as he soldiered on, gamely trying to sell himself to the big city whilst hoping to hook up with one good and honest manager who could stay the distance.
Jack Price, who had been handling Dempsey?s affairs, suddenly jumped ship and went back to Salt Lake City, a move that gave Dempsey another headache he didn?t need. Business was very often conducted on a simple handshake at that time, and Dempsey never did have an official contract with any of his managers, including Jack Kearns.
Along came a character called John ?The Barber? Reisler to inform the young fighter that he was under new management. Reisler claimed that Price had sold him Dempsey?s non-existent contract. John The Barber also had some fancy ideas about Dempsey?s next opponent, dropping the names of such established killers of the ring as Sam Langford and Gunboat Smith.
Jack couldn?t believe it. This guy Reisler was trying to get him slaughtered. Dempsey protested and still wasn?t happy when the tough John Lester Johnson was finally selected as his next foe. The fight was staged at the Harlem Athletic Club and Dempsey never forgot it. ?Johnson had the reputation of being rough and dangerous,? Jack later recalled. ?That was an understatement. My bout with him almost finished my career. He socked me like a bulldozer and grunted every time he made contact.?
One ferocious body blow from Johnson in the second round doubled Dempsey up and had him in big trouble. Suspecting that Johnson had cracked a few of his ribs, Jack was in terrible pain for the duration of the fight. Again, however, the young Mauler impressed the crowd by hanging tough and punching back with such success that the assembled sportswriters were divided on who had won.
Dempsey needed time to rest his aching body and contemplate the jam he was in with John The Barber. He took some vacation time and went back to Colorado to see an old friend, but the fresh air and gentle scenery failed to soften the blow of coming back to New York.
John The Barber was still full of lofty ideas and brought up the name of Gunboat Smith again as an opponent. Dempsey was at the end of his tether with such fanciful suggestions, and his mood darkened further when his so-called manager suggested the big punching Frank Moran as an alternative choice. Jack knew he still wasn?t sufficiently prepared for such formidable competition. The pounding he had taken from John Lester Johnson was surely proof of that.
He and John The Barber had a violent argument, which concluded with Jack storming out and making the decision to pack his bags and get out of the great and sprawling city. He couldn?t have dreamed then that one day he would become one of its permanent fixtures and a living legend.
Stormy
In those stormy days of 1916, it seemed that the grey giant of New York had slain the young tiger and drained him of his resilience. But Jack Dempsey was made of sterner stuff. Over three breathtaking years, he would become the complete fighter and begin his fantastic run to the world championship.
Legendary trainer Ray Arcel, who lived to see Mike Tyson, saw something in Dempsey that he would never see again in any other heavyweight, something quite indefinable. Some years before he died, Arcel said: ?Dempsey would have absolutely beaten any fighter who came after him ? without a doubt. I know all about Joe Louis and how he knocked guys? teeth out. I have every respect for Joe ? I rate him number two. But Dempsey would have killed Louis, George Foreman, any of those guys. What Jack had was God-given. You can?t develop the kind of talent he had.?
Perhaps that certain something in Dempsey took root in earlier times. Before sampling the punches of New York, he had taken the blows meted out by his hard life in the Old West. He was brought to his knees many times, but always got up.
Around 1911, within the dark and sweaty confines of a copper mine in Bingham Canyon, Utah, the sixteen-year old Jack Dempsey got angry and showed a select audience what the future held for him. The lean and muscled youngster was working quietly on his own when the bully of the crew started throwing dirt at him for a laugh. Dempsey gave his tormentor every chance to desist, but then the bully made his biggest mistake by starting to swing his fists.
Jack began to circle him in the chilling manner that he would circle and snare so many great heavyweights in the years to follow. Fellow miners who had picked up on the commotion began to lay bets as they waited for the first blow to be struck. They didn?t have to wait long. Only one punch was thrown as Dempsey crossed a right to the jaw and knocked his man out.
?Fighting soon followed me into the mining camp,? Jack would later recall. ?My powerful fists were my prized assets ? my only assets, come to think of it ? and no one could take them away from me.?
This was the kind of tough life that Jack Dempsey led, before he even got around to the tough business of prize-fighting in earnest. In the gentler and more accommodating era in which we now live, it is essential that we do not forget the unforgiving, rough-and-tumble canvas on which the fighters of Dempsey?s era had to paint their masterpieces.
There is nothing misty-eyed or romantic about making such comparisons and highlighting the hardships of boxers from early times. For we are certainly not harking back to the ?good old days? when everything in the garden was rosy. Ordinary folk in Dempsey?s era had to work insufferably hard in the hope of breaking even, often traveling huge distances to obtain work. Jack and his family uprooted from the ?feud country? of West Virginia and hauled themselves all the way out to Manassa, Colorado, for a new life and a new chance. Many other poor families did likewise.
Ill health was dreaded, because so many illnesses were incurable. Diabetes, now so common and manageable, was a killer before the discovery of insulin in 1919. People with mental problems went straight to the asylum, because they surely had to be mad. Captains of industry couldn?t rely on analysts to tell them to wear a coat when it rained. A generation of young men from Boston to San Francisco hacked away at menial jobs in the hope that something better ? anything better ? would show up.
Jack Dempsey, before he met Jack Kearns and Tex Rickard, before he even became Kid Blackie, was just one young man trapped in this frantic hive of quiet desperation. He traveled for miles, rode hobo-style on the rods of trains, worked at back-breaking jobs and frequently got knocked back. But Dempsey had one crucial ace in the hole. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he wasn?t drifting aimlessly. He knew his strengths and he knew what he wanted to do.
That initial victory in the Bingham Canyon mine, small and irrelevant in the great scheme of things, had fired Jack. The other miners wanted to shake his hand. Suddenly he was somebody special. He had worked the mine with his older brother, Bernie, but no longer was he seen as Bernie?s kid brother.
Crystal
Great men, irrespective of their backgrounds, always seem to have crystal vision. Assessing those early days of his life, Dempsey would say, ?As I covered ground, moving from place to place and from job to job, I came to the conclusion that I was master of my own fate. I was determined that if I didn?t find a way to become successful, I would make one. As a young man, I saw no limits in what I could do. My options for success were countless. My long range goal was to become a champion ? and now I ate, slept and dreamed of it.?
The gods, in their mischief, certainly found many ways of testing Dempsey?s resolve. There was the time when Dempsey sent a fellow hobo flying into the wilderness after a vicious brawl on top of a fast moving freight train, never knowing whether it had literally been a fight to the death.
It had been a battle of survival, one cameo among the many small wars of the hobo jungle. Hungry and desperate men waged such perilous fights constantly in that stark and ferocious era. Never proved, but apparently true, is that Dempsey killed a fellow hobo by throwing him off a train after a fight.
There was another occasion when Jack wasn?t so fortunate, as he later recalled: ?I hopped a freight train moving out of Grand Junction, Colorado, one cold afternoon, right after running away from home. I was headed for Delta, forty miles away. I had just grabbed the ladder when a railroad man on top of the freight spotted me.
?He had a long broomstick in his hand, like a cop?s billy. He yelled at me to jump off. I couldn?t. The train had picked up too much speed. So, very systematically, and while the train picked up more speed, he kept belting me with that club and split open my head. I jumped or fell off, crashing face down in the cinders along the way. I thought I?d never stop rolling.
?I walked the forty miles to Delta while the blood dried.?
By 1916, Jack Dempsey was still very much a rough diamond in need of polishing, but the emerging talent was there for all to see as he began to hit the road and take any fights he could get in the sprawling towns of the Old West. He jumped a freight train and rode the rods into Salt Lake City, where he had a great idea.
Jack needed stiffer competition and he knew it. He had been fighting professionally for around two years, knocking over amateurs and semi-pros whose names sparkled far more greatly than their talent: guy like Chief Gordon and Two Round Gillian.
Walking into a gym, Dempsey introduced himself as Kid Blackie and boldly announced that he would fight any man available. But Jack?s reputation was already spreading and he found only a few takers, fighting them for peanuts. He took a job as a porter at the Hotel Utah in return for free food and board, engaging in fights when he could get them. But the competition was drying up fast as many ambitious young fighters began to head East for the real action. Dempsey still didn?t consider himself ready for that kind of move and made the decision to head back to his native Colorado via the rods.
You have to ask yourself how many young fighters today would opt for a less strenuous way of life in such trying circumstances. Dempsey was giving of his best and getting no return. Just a year before, he had lost his earnings of a hundred dollars after his losing fight with the tough Johnny Sudenberg in the brutal heat of Goldfield. When Jack woke up the following morning, stiff and bruised and feeling as if he had been in a stampede, he discovered that his money had gone along with his carefree manager.
Determined
Dempsey sucked up all these disappointments, so determined was he to make the grade. The tough life only served to make him a tougher man as he rode the rods back to Colorado by way of the hobo jungles. There were times when he was kicked off the train by rail officials, often in the middle of nowhere. Hanging precariously to the rods, Jack would battle to keep himself warm in the colder months while shutting his eyes to avoid the blinding cinders. Tiredness was his most dangerous foe. The mail trains would hurtle along the track at up to seventy miles per hour and Dempsey would tie his hands and feet to the train?s lower rungs with light chains or anything he could find.
In Colorado, Dempsey would walk into saloons and challenge the local toughs to fight him. Jack won most of these brawls, but the pickings were still lean and he was going nowhere. He had to make the big move. The big move East.
The old lady of New York tried to swallow him up. She picked on the wrong man.
