Jack Dempsey vs rocky Marciano

I just looked up Dempsey's record on box rec to clarify to myself where he was when--

5-17-1916 a fight in Provo, Utah
5-30-1916 a fight in Price, Utah

6-24-1916
7-8-1916
7-16-1916 these three fights in New York City

9-28-1916 a fight in Murray, Utah
10-7-1916 a fight in Ely, Nevada
10-16-1916 a fight in Salt Lake City
11-28-1916 a fight in Salida, Colorado

2-13-1916 fight with Jim Flynn in Murray, Utah

So he was in the west traveling from State to State for fights for about six months prior to the Flynn fight.

Anyone have evidence he was somewhere else?

 

I think it would be important to surviving members of Dempsey's family.

 

I think it would be important to surviving members of Dempsey's family.

Your inclusion of Tunney and Gibbons was to imply that Dempsey always had a reason when he lost or didn't do as well as expected.This is obvious because you used the expression," excuses are for losers".

Dempsey made no excuses when he lost to Tunney in fact his answer as to why he lost ,"I just forgot to duck ,"has become part of fistic folklore.I've never seen a quote from him in which he excuses not koing Gibbons either.
If your remarks were aimed at me personally then that's different .I don't excuse anyone for losing but I'm interested in what the circumstances were leading up their loss whether they be Dempsey or Joe Blow.

If you can't take on board that the times that Dempsey and those who came before him practised their trade under was vastly different to that in the 50's when fighter built up local followings and fought in just a few arenas with the benefits of regular professional coaching diet etc ,then that's your problem.
Marciano had a pilot from the beginning and he fought 15 of his first 16 fights in the Rhode Island Auditorium and 28 of his 49 bouts there.
Dempsey was all over the place, fighting in hick towns getting ripped off by unscrupulous managers and promoters in the early days fighting for," pass the hat money," is it any wonder he had some losses? In contrast to that lifestyle Marciano was protected. He had regular meals where Weill had him boarding near the gym and he had workouts every day under the supervision of Goldman.

.All I've done is highlight the circumstances of the Flynn fight which you brought up in the first place to somehow prove Marciano had a better chin the Dempsey. Going down that route which seems gratuitously ridiculous to me, unless a 21 years old sporadically trained Marciano was hit on the chin by Flynn we won't get the answer to that one.

 

Ok yeah, rereading that, that is absolutely outrageous. Thanks for catching that. I looked at another source and it seems like your estimate of $500-$600 is accurate. At least way more accurate than $10,000 lmao.

Morris didn't provide any room and board whatsoever. In Dempsey's autobiography he was specific about having to spend most of his money on room and board. He also recalls an event where he was eating the doughnut at lunch and Morris refused to buy Dempsey anything when Dempsey was obviously starving.

Going by how he describes his situation at the time, we can deduce that he was pretty much living off of scraps. Needless to say, his diet was nowhere near close to what a boxer should be eating.

 

Tiger Flowers sure had some sh*t teeth!

 

Just on the cost of living in the 1910's, I came across an old-time movie actor who related what it was like back then working in movies and the relatively low pay but

"You could get a room in the swank Hollywood Hotel for $3 a week. A good meal cost two bits."

As for Dempsey,

"Morris didn't provide any room and board whatsoever."

But when exactly did he work for Morris? Wasn't that in the summer of 1916. Dempsey was out west by late September of 1916. He was a local draw. Did he starve out there? What exactly is Dempsey's timeline in his autobiography? Did he say directly he was starving when he fought Flynn?

The problem for me is that all this info comes from Dempsey. I am certain he had it tough, but he wouldn't be exactly unique if years later in memory he exaggerated the hardships. It is human nature. The reason autobiographies are not usually that accurate when judged by facts which can be checked.

*last night I read an interesting little article by Carlos Acevedo. He sees Dempsey as the real Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby. A kid from nowhere poverty whose boxing skills threw him into the world of the wealthy and famous in which he at first felt out of place. But he reinvented himself as Gatsby did. His hard background was too well known to simply put utterly behind him, but he could spin it to his advantage and later create a polished veneer which left little trace of what might have been the young Dempsey.

Who knows? Just a writer's take, but food for thought.

 

"Dempsey made no excuses when he lost to Tunney."

As far as I know not in 1926. But there was a brief flurry of interest when he came forward to say he might have been drugged before the first Tunney fight back in the sixties. I remember hearing him interviewed about it on a radio sports show while I was milking the cows one evening back then. The whole thing blew over in a couple of days.

But Dempsey was certainly not above making excuses. Here is box rec quoting Dempsey from the Oakland Tribune of March 16, 1917--

"The one blotch on Dempsey's list of performances is the fact that he was knocked out by Jim Flynn at Salt Lake. Dempsey explains this by saying that when they first come into the center of the ring for the first round, he put out his gloves to touch his opponent's mitts as is customary, and Flynn took advantage of the move to whip a right haymaker to the jaw."

Two comments--I don't remember the ringside reports mentioning this gesture. And I checked the first rounds of Dempsey's films over on you tube. Gibbons and Dempsey did touch gloves in the first round. Willard, Brennan, Carpentier, Firpo, Tunney twice, and Sharkey, did not touch gloves with Dempsey who usually came out swinging.

This reminds me of Fritzie Zivic commenting that if ever an opponent offered to touch gloves anytime except the beginning of the last round, he took advantage to get in his best punch.

Box rec also says this--"Dempsey also claimed that he fought the fight with a badly injured right hand which occurred when he dropped a bowling allay on it while working at a bowling alley."

"dropped a bowling alley"--box rec should proof their comments. They must mean a bowling ball or bowling pin.

*My take is this was bread and butter for Dempsey so I don't hold any of this against him whether accurate of not. Getting fights depended on his image as a fighter. It helped to explain a bad loss away. Flynn cheated. I was injured. It was a fluke. It was his livelihood for him and I would probably have done the same. It doesn't obviate that excuses are for losers though. Winners don't have the need to cover a failure.

"you brought up" the Flynn fight.

Yes, I did. It is part of Dempsey's record. Marciano was down twice, by the then current light-heavyweight champion who scored more KO's than anyone in boxing history and stopped 19 of 25 over 200 lb. men he fought, and the heavyweight champion who had won the title with a one punch KO of Ezzard Charles and knocked Joe Louis down more often than anyone. In both cases Marciano was up and ready to go before five. Dempsey was actually knocked out for the count, knocked out of the ring, knocked down much more often, etc. So I conclude the evidence points to Marciano having the better chin. All I have to go on is evidence.

What if Marciano was hit on the chin by Flynn.

No one has proof of anything in fantasies. What we know is Dempsey was hit on the chin by Flynn and went out. Marciano fought better punchers than Flynn off the records and never went out.

Marciano fought 28 fights at Providence.

and went 28-0 with 24 KO's, or 27-0 with 23 KO's (box rec). Either way he did better fighting outside of Providence where he was 22-0 with 20 KO's. It could be the distraction of training and fighting before the home folks worked against him.

The three biggest cities in the USA during both the Dempsey and Marciano eras were New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Dempsey fought 11 fights in these cities, 6 in New York, and went 8-2-1 with 5 KO's. Marciano fought 14 fights in these cities, 10 in New York, and went 14-0 with 12 KO's. The home cooking argument just doesn't fly with me.

 

He worked for Morris when he arrived in Kansas City in order to help Morris prepare for a bout with Frank Moran which was called off. He left New York in mid 1916 so probably in August he started working for Morris.

I found a Hotel and Motel red book from 1919 for cities across the country including Kansas City starting on pg 370.
[url]https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015070578318;view=1up;seq=401[/url]

The lowest rates I am finding are $1 per night...

It would seem Jack wasn't getting paid enough per day to even cover room in a hotel. In 1913 bread was $0.06, a gallon of milk was $0.36, and a sirloin steak was $0.24. [url]https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/pdf/average-food-prices-a-snapshot-of-how-much-has-changed-over-a-century.pdf[/url]

Since they didn't have refrigerators back then, I'm guessing Jack probably bought every meal he ate and did go grocery shopping. That means the price of just one meal was probably as much if not more than what milk or steak cost at the time.

Dempsey extensively spoke about Maxine Cates. She took what money he had and would run off while Dempsey was gone fighting. Here is an except from after the first Flynn fight.

"Maxine sauntered in at three o'clock in the morning, reeking of whiskey and cigar smoke. I asked her where she had been and she said it didn't matter, she was with me now. I was too tired to argue, so I accepted the fact that she was there and showed her my money. She took the bills without saying a word. When I woke up in the morning she was gone. Bernie came around to see how I was and I told him to leave me alone. I guess I was taking Maxine out on him. Poor Bernie." (Dempsey pg. 56)

It would seem Dempsey did starve out there because he had little to no money. Dempsey's autobiography starts from a background on his family (relation to the Hatfields) and ends in 1975.

Dempsey hardly ever directly says he was starving compared to the times he was actually starving. He just gives a vivid description of his situation at the time and the reader can deduce from there that he was eating very poorly.

Btw when I say starving I mean he either didn't eat at all or he ate very little each day. I highly doubt he's exaggerating anything. If he is its very little exaggeration. Back then times were much much tougher, especially if you were poor. They didn't have food stamps or welfare or any of that stuff. You either made it or didn't eat.

I suggest reading his autobiography. It's insanely cheap to buy. I got mine off of Amazon and the standard shipping cost more than the actual book. I think the book itself cost like $0.99.

 

Goldman and training

Yes it is an advantage to have a good trainer, but there is no way to separate the boxer from his trainer. It is just a fact of life.

"Marciano was protected"

Which one of these two drew the color line?

Dempsey fought in hick towns.

So having an inferior record in the boondocks proves you superior?

"If you can't take on board that" "the times Dempsey and those that came before him practiced their trade under was vastly different to that in the fifties" "that's your problem."

I don't see it as a problem. The swimmer (and later actor) Buster Crabbe remarked that he was working full time but took off two weeks to train for the 1932 Olympics. He won the gold medal in the 400 meter freestyle. Modern swimmers train all year around. And they also swim much faster than Crabbe swam. Claiming that with modern training Crabbe would swim faster than the modern guys is nothing but guesswork. All we know is that the modern guys swim faster, and yes they have lots of advantages. Fact of life. This is true of many if not all sports. American baseball and football players used to hold jobs in the off season. Now they train all year around.

Concerning boxing, I would say that Joe Louis had advantages of backing and training over Jack Johnson. It should be noted, but I don't see that this is any criteria for determining what would happen if the two men actually met in the ring. The only Joe Louis we know is the Joe Louis trained by Jack Blackburn and with solid training facilities.

 

"They didn't have refrigerators back then"

This is off of Dempsey, but they had something called an icebox. Even I came after those, but if I understand it you got a delivery of ice from the iceman daily which kept the food cold. Joe Louis worked as an iceman carrying these blocks of ice about and up stairs and the like. So did Red Grange (the Wheaton Iceman). If you consider it, there would have been almost no way to eat meat in the summer without some way of keeping it cold.

Just on Dempsey, I agree that it appears hotels would have been over his head. What about a flophouse? That was a place where down and outers could get a bed for the night, I think for very little. As for food, one could get a sandwich at a bar for the price of a beer. It was pretty rough.

I would think his better bet would have been staying in a rooming house rather than a hotel. They were much cheaper.

I did stay at hotels back in the day that were just a simple room. The bathroom was a communal one at the end of the hall. There was nothing to wash up in but a sink. I never stayed in a flophouse, but the army barracks were about the same. Everyone had a bed in the same room.

Just on the list of hotels. I noticed the Waldorf-Astoria did not list prices. I guess if you had to ask it wasn't for you.

 

Dempsey didn't have a permanent residence a lot of the time. Owning an ice box would have been an expense that Dempsey could not afford.

Dempsey doesn't mention a flophouse although he probably stayed there at some point in his life.

Would $0.75 be enough to get you a cot in the local flophouse and 3 meals a day?

 

Probably. I think flophouses were very cheap. Like a dime a night.

 

So Dempsey stayed in a flophouse and ate 3 good meals per day and wasn't starving by any means during his time as a sparring partner or up to the Flynn fight?

 

I don't know.

Only that one probably could bunk in a flophouse for a dime, and a good meal might go for as little as two bits.

 

I doubt it. A raw steak bought in the store cost a quarter. In any restaurant, diner, etc. It's going to cost 3x that at least.

I could buy the flophouse bit but not in any way being able to have 3 meals on $0.75 per day. Especially since Dempsey would have to buy every meal due to his living conditions.