Dempsey had been idle
for more than three years when he stepped into the ring against Tunney on
September 23, 1926, in Philadelphia.
He was only 31, but his lax approach to training had taken its toll. Tunney, a
29-year-old New Yorker, peppered Dempsey with jabs, crosses, and an occasional
hook while adroitly steering clear of danger himself. Dempsey spent much of the
time flailing at empty spaces left by the quick, evasive Tunney. At the end of
the 10 rounds, Dempsey’s left eye
was closed and his face a
bloody mask. He was thoroughly beaten, and no one questioned the judges when
they awarded Tunney a unanimous decision.
Tunney had hardly climbed
out of the ring with the title when the public began hollering for a rematch.
His excellent performance was not considered a fluke, but Dempsey’s dismal showing
was.
The clamor for a rematch
and, especially, the huge sums of money offered proved irresistible. The second
Tunney-Dempsey fight was scheduled for Chicago,
364 days after their initial encounter. It would be Tunney’s first title
defense and Dempsey’s chance to become the first man to win the title for a
second time.
The rematch was the most
ballyhooed sporting event ever seen up to that time. For weeks prior to the
bout, newspapers reported every detail from Tunney’s training camp at Cedar
Crest Country Club in Lake Villa and Dempsey’s at the Lincoln Fields racetrack (later
known as Balmoral Park) in Crete. Both fighters closed camp
the morning of the bout and drove to Chicago
for the weigh-in. Tunney tipped the scales at 189½ pounds, Dempsey was three
pounds heavier. Each man, of course, expressed total confidence in the outcome.
Dempsey: “I am ready for
Gene Tunney this time. I will win decisively. I think I am good enough now to
finish Tunney inside of seven rounds. If he happens to last the limit, I am
sure I will be far enough out in front to win the decision. If Tunney will
stand up and fight, it will not take long. If I have to chase him I will catch
up with him. I want the referee, whoever he is, to make us fight and give me
all that is coming to me, nothing more.”
Tunney: “I have reached
the very peak of condition and am without a bruise or any hurt on the eve of
the battle. I am even more certain I will win than I was when I first engaged
Dempsey at Philadelphia
last year. I feel as a result of another year of study and application, I have
improved considerably and will win without any great difficulty. I hope and
expect our contest will be a fairly and cleanly waged battle which will merit
the attention given it by the greatest crowd ever gathered to see a sporting
event.”
At Soldier Field, folding
chairs and wooden plank benches were arrayed in the grass around the ring,
augmenting the permanent stands and swelling capacity to 163,000 (assuming, as
the promoters did, that the average spectator on the plank benches was only 17
inches wide). The $40 “ringside” seats extended for 117 rows from the ring. The
top row of seats in the north end zone was 313 rows, or about 600 feet, from
the action; these seats went for $5.
People who were there said
what they remembered most was the brilliant light in which the fighters were
bathed. Dozens of cone-shaped fixtures were suspended directly above the ring,
sending columns of white light onto the canvas. “All is darkness in the
muttering mass of crowd beyond the spotlight,” Graham McNamee intoned to the
radio audience. “The crowd is thickening in the seats. It’s like the Roman
Colosseum.”
Estimates of the crowd
varied widely, from a low of 105,000 to a high of 150,000. This mass of
humanity produced gate receipts of $2,658,600—establishing a record that stood
for over 40 years. Dempsey received $450,000, Tunney slightly less than $1 million.
(Dempsey had earned about $900,000 to Tunney’s $200,000 in their first fight,
the most lucrative in history prior to their second.)
The weather was cool,
around 55 degrees, with a gentle breeze from the lake. The crowd paid almost no
attention to the four preliminary bouts, but came to life when Dempsey appeared
at 9:55 p.m. He bounced around the ring and chatted nonchalantly with Mayor Big
Bill Thompson while waiting for Tunney, who made his entrance some five
minutes later. Dempsey and
Tunney shook hands and said a few words to one another.
“They’re getting the
gloves out of a box tied with pretty blue ribbon,” McNamee informed his
listeners. Then it was time to get down to business. “Robes are off,” he cried.
“The bell!” As in the earlier fight, Dempsey was the aggressor. The methodical
Tunney was content to backpedal and feint, patiently looking for openings. When
he saw one, he struck quickly and danced away before Dempsey could effectively
retaliate. Throughout the early rounds, Tunney stayed out of trouble and piled
up points. Time and again, he lured Dempsey in too close, then nailed him with
a straight left to the forehead followed by a right cross to the jaw. By
general consensus, the champion won each of the first five rounds.
Dempsey emphasized body
blows early in the fight, but these had little impact. He went for the head
from the sixth round on, realizing that he would probably need a knockout in
order to win. He scored twice in the sixth with wicked lefts to the jaw, and
most observers gave him a narrow edge in that round.
Dempsey continued to
attack in the seventh. He came out of his corner with renewed enthusiasm and
caught Tunney against the west ropes almost at once. Tunney missed with a right
cross. Then Dempsey delivered a left hook to the jaw, followed by a right cross
that landed as Tunney was already falling to the canvas. “What a surprise!”
Tunney wrote in his autobiography. Dazed, Tunney sat on his haunches with his
left arm looped around the middle rope. Dempsey stood over him menacingly,
eager to finish him off if and when he got back to his feet.
Referee Dave Barry did not
begin to count over Tunney until Dempsey retreated to a neutral corner, per the
rule that is meant to prevent a man from being struck while he’s down. Between
four and five seconds elapsed before Barry began counting. “Meantime,” Harvey
Woodruff wrote in the Tribune,
“champion Gene, whose title seemed [to be] slipping from his grasp, rose on one
knee and, with his senses rapidly recuperating, coolly awaited the count of
nine before arising to his feet.”
The notorious “long count”
was that simple. There was no question that Tunney was on the floor for 13 to
14 seconds—when 10, of course, is enough to register a knockout. But there was
also no question that Dempsey was tardy in moving away from his fallen
opponent. He had stood over Tunney for several seconds with his right arm
cocked. Barry correctly interpreted the rule which stated, “Should the boxer on
his feet fail to stay in the [neutral] corner, the referee and the timekeeper
shall cease counting until he has so retired.”
Tunney always maintained
that he could have gotten up whenever he pleased. “I was not hurt,” he said,
“but considered it just as well to take my time about arising.” When the fight
resumed, Dempsey attacked relentlessly, but Tunney held him off with body
blows. Dempsey chased Tunney around the ring, derisively motioning for him to
stand and fight. Tunney kept on moving. Soon his head was clear of cobwebs, and
he managed to deliver a right to Dempsey’s jaw and a left to the midsection
just before the bell.
By surviving the seventh
round, Tunney had recovered the momentum. He scored a knockdown of his own in
the eighth with an overhand right cross to Dempsey’s head. Jack popped back up
after a count of one, but he was wobbly as the bout continued. Tunney shot a
series of lefts to the jaw, then rocked Dempsey with lefts and rights to the
head. The bell sounded with the two fighters toe-to-toe in the center of the
ring and the fans on their feet, roaring.
Tunney was in command the
rest of the way. Dempsey, desperate by now, repeatedly resorted to illegal
“rabbit punches” to the back of the champion’s head throughout the later
rounds. Like his legitimate blows, however, they did little damage. Most
uncharacteristically, Tunney threw caution to the wind. Sensing that Dempsey
was tired and wounded, he abandoned his dancing and forced the issue. He
advanced on the challenger and banged away virtually at will in the ninth
round, opening a nasty cut above Dempsey’s left eye. In the 10th, the frustrated
Dempsey wrestled Tunney to the floor. When he got back up, Tunney landed five
left jabs to the face without being hit in return.
Dempsey knew he needed a
knockout, but as the clock ticked down he simply did not have the strength to
throw anything but a few token punches. Tunney showered him with a barrage of
left and right hooks in the closing seconds. If the bell had come any later,
Dempsey almost certainly would have ended up on the canvas.
Tunney won a unanimous
decision. “It simply was a case,” Walter Eckersall wrote in the Tribune, “of a boxer, who was much
faster, winning a 10-round decision over a fighter who always commands respect
because of his punching power.”
Dempsey and his
supporters, naturally, complained bitterly about the long count. “It appeared
they gave Tunney a generous count in the seventh,” Dempsey said, “just enough
extra time to let him get his bearings and climb back on his bicycle.” Dempsey’s
manager, Leo P. Flynn, declared that Tunney had retained the title “by grace of
what was either a queer decision or a colossal case of inefficiency in the
simple matter of counting seconds.” Flynn was just warming up. “Even if Tunney
could have got to his feet at the end of an up-and-up count,” he said, “Jack
would have floored him again. He needed those extra five seconds mighty bad.”
Flynn filed a formal
protest, which was denied. At the time, his and Dempsey’s grievances were
written off as sour grapes. Over the years, though, the controversy surrounding
the long count grew until it nearly overshadowed the estimable careers of the
two principals, both of whom deserved to be ranked among the great heavyweights.
“Some folks are saying
that I should fight Dempsey again,” Tunney said the day after the fight in
Soldier Field. “I don’t agree with them. I have beaten him twice and I see no
reason why the public should want to see us matched again.” With that, Dempsey
retired; his record was 62-6-10, with 49 knockouts. He became a sort of
professional celebrity and opened a successful nightclub in New York. Tunney fought only once more,
earning a technical knockout of Tom Heeney on July 26, 1928. He then hung up
his gloves, married a Connecticut society woman,
and embarked on a tour of Europe’s art museums
and literary haunts. His record was 65-1-1, with 47 knockouts.
Tunney and Dempsey
had a reunion of sorts during World War II. Both served in the Pacific (Tunney
as a commander in the Navy and Dempsey as a commander in the Coast Guard),
conducting physical training courses. Dempsey even saw combat duty on the island of Tarawa, putting to rest once and for all
the questions about his patriotism that had dogged him for over 25 years. 
