did Dempsey use the plaster of Paris?

I don't think Dempseys gloves were any more loaded than anybody else's gloves ---for that time.

Those gloves were 5oz, so to prevent your knuckles being smashed to pieces they wore all kinds of binding stuff. There is only so much tape you can get inside a small glove. But no doubt it was harder and thinner than is used today. They had to and they all did. They also hardened their hands pickling them like leather. They all did. Had to. A generation before they did not use gloves at all so no doubt a lot of the lost arts of hand hardening was still used. Jimmy deforest did say Jack had the hardest hands in America that day.

Another thing, why once Willard was so helpless did Jack favour the fore knuckle area of his glove so much? Watch the fight it is not technically the correct part of the glove to hit with. Willard claimed he was being stabbed by a rail pin but Dempsey opens and closes his hands all the time, there is nothing held in his hands. But why is he using that part of his hand?

 

GunBoat Smith had electric tape on when he fought Willard. He did not manage to floor Willard despite landing his Sunday punch flush twice.

 

The idea that Dempsey had a railroad spike in his hand comes from photos that show a half smoked cigar on the canvas.

 

Also, Jess Willard said he had it, and Jess kept that railroad spike at home. He showed it once to Harry Carpenter.
Big Jess was no liar.

Thing is, I don't think it hurts Dempsey's standing. These things were just part of the game back then, before the sport became p*ssyfied.

 

Harry Carpenter interviewed Willard decades later,he had the spike in his drawer and showed him.
If he did use a spike Willard would have died

All bull****

 

When will this nonsense that Dempsey was alleged to have loaded his gloves with a spike, plaster of Paris, Kotex even, and the latest rumor, an anchor from a retired U.S. Naval battleship , END ??? Nat Fleischer was in Dempsey's dressing room watching Dempsey having his hands taped as with others. Dempsey entered the ring with only his taped hands in view of thousands of people along with the camera's of the day...To seriously think that a fighter could put an iron spike in his tape without shattering his hand upon contact
defies logic and is another example of how Dempsey is so viciously maligned by some of his haters today...OUCH !

 

He just held the iron spike in his gloved palm. It wasn't taped to his hand or inside his glove.
It's a wonder the referee didn't see it, but maybe he was in on it too.

 

I've heard people say he had a knuckle duster on under the gloves but who will ever know

 

I read an interview with Smith right before he passed away. He stated that he hit Willard with a right hand that tore Willards ear "clean off". Yet Willard kept coming.

 

The answer is no.

 

Willard died as a very old man ...with two ears.

 

Dempsey might have used plaster of Paris to make models occasionally!

 

When in camp Jack also liked to unwind making amusing shaped objects from papier-mache....

 

So he would probably have used plaster, if it had been to hand!