Bert Kenny dropped Jack Demspey twice?

New York Evening Telegram:
Although "Jack" Dempsey, the light heavyweight who came here from Salt Lake City with a record of twenty-seven knockouts to his credit, failed to put away "Wild Bert" Kenny last night in the main bout of ten rounds at the Fairmont A.C., in the Bronx, he handed him a terrible beating.

The bell came to Kenny's rescue several times during the contest and in the final session Dempsey scored knockdowns three times with short left hooks to the jaw. In the second round Kenny went to the canvas and again in the fourth he was taking a count when the bell rang.


NY Sun:
Wild Jack Dempsey subdued Wild Bert Kenney in fast ten round affair.

 

Probably Dempsey was fighting so damn often, he got his fights mixed up. And you're right that his style must have changed. When Arcel saw him in 1916, he said "He looked like anything but a great fighter... a saloon brawler." So he changed something.

 

It's impossible to know for sure.

I suspect Dempsey was a bit self-deprecating when it came to how well he did in some of those fights. He remembered how tough the fights were and credited his opponents with doing more than they actually had, perhaps. He similarly protested the reporters who had him shading or winning the J L Johnson fight. Dempsey insisted he'd been on the wrong end of a thrashing.

 

He was twisting and exaggerating to make his past look harder than it really was. Both about the supposed beatings he received, and how little money he supposedly got.

 

Do you know how much money he really got ?

 

And also, no neutral corner rule. If they were flashes Dempsey might have popped back up before a count even started. It soups be easy to miss.

Or, you know, Dempsey could just have been mythologizing himself...

 

I don't know, but in earlier version of the same story (not in his book, but in a series of articles from 1921), he said he got $43 for the bout with Kenny, only $14 in autobio book. 1921's $16 for the bout with Anderson turned into $9 in the book, $100 turned into $35 for Johnson, together with three broken ribs instead of one, etc.

According to Harry Downing's recollections, when Dempsey fought an amateur bout for him in 1914, he got $2.50. Gradually his part was increasing after that, even though they were only 4-rounders, $5, $7.50, $10, $15, $25. Dempsey got $500 for a bout with Gilbert in October 1916 (at Salt Lake City). Next bout, in Salida, of all places, he got $250 cash, of which he gave his mother $100.

 

:good

I'm not sure it's exactly stuff we would expect him to remember, to be fair.
I guess the details aren't as important as the moral of the story : It was hard work and the pay wasn't great.

 

Impossible to say, but either way I find it more palatable that the guys who go in the opposite direction.

I agree.
It's almost like the Johnson-Langford story (although, I think one reporter did see Johnson "slip" at one point ?).

On the other hand, I saw Mike Tyson recollecting the first Frank Bruno fight in a recent (last 5 years) interview and he said, "I had him down, he had me down, it was a great fight" or words to that effect.