Was just watching Jack Johnson-James Jeffries, I see Johnson directly standing in front of Jeffries when being counted and then when he gets up Johnson immediately fires away. Now I'm thinking to myself why isn't Johnson in the neutral corner, he gets to land right when Jeffries gets up. This leads to the question concerning the thread: when did boxing commissions decide to implement a neutral corner rule, when the fighter who scores a KD has to go to the neutral corner to give the opponent a chance to recover?
Hopefully someone can confirm this but I am around 75% sure that I read, some years ago, that the neutral corner rule was in affect for the Dempsey-Firpo fight but that it wasn't enforced.
Dempsey - Tunney fight was the first time I can remember of it being in the ruling. At least being enforced, and it's argued that it cost Dempsey big time.
I'm pretty sure thats correct. Dempsey dodged the bullet once but it caught up with him in the Tunney fight.
It was in effect ,but ambiguously worded ,along the lines of "failure to go to a neutral corner MAY result in the referee stopping the count until the standing fighter complies. As a result of this fight the wording was changed to the referee WILL stop the count, this is what hurt Dempsey in the second Tunney fight of course, when Dave Barry finally got Dempsey into a neutral corner he began the count at ONE. When Tunney dropped Dempsey in the 8th rd Barry immediately started the count,allthough Tunney was standing over the fallen Dempsey.