Tunney believed a heavyweight boxer could beat a 460 pound silverback

Should I respond to Tunney's absurd contention? There isn't a heavyweight boxer ever born who could defeat a chimpanzee let alone a silverback. But what does one expect from Tunney. He suffered from that Mallacht a mhuintir.

 

"So, humans evolved and thrived mainly around stamina and intelligence, right?"

"Yeah, like how we hunted in groups."

"So, most fights that we were able to take in the far-off past were likely due to that stamina and intelligence alone, right?"

"Yeah, like how we could make weapons and track animals for long periods of time."

"So, to beat a silverback gorilla, we'd probably need to use our stamina and intelligence in similar ways, right?"

"Nah, I think I could probably beat a silverback alone with my bare fists."

Tbh it would've been hilarious if Tunney died/got permanently injured because he actually TRIED to fight a gorilla, but unfortunately, we don't live in a world where that happened.

 

better.

 

Man… lol

You could take prime Wladimir, Lewis, Vitali etc and the could get the first sucker punch with everything they got on a Silverback and that would spell REALLY bad news. lol What happens when a pissed off Silverback grabs ahold of anyone of those guys and starts BITING AND GNAWING their arm/hand off out of pure rage??? You think they could break that grip?! I just can’t envision a fight with a pissed off Silverback working out very well. I imagine a Silverback defending itself would be mainly biting off chunks of body parts. Probably how the fight! lol

Now prime Wlad’s straight right might stumble the beast but that’s probably it

 

Go to 1:10

Guy brought a baby Gorilla out to where a Silverback was. Look at the rage and speed that 500lb creature moved at him with…

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Now imagine punching it

 

The man in your avi KOs a healthy tiger.

 

That last sentence makes it clear that He did not want to be the one testing out that theory:
"Unfortunately, I am no longer in fighting shape. However, I would like to take up the offer for any one of a dozen third-rate heavyweights I know."
If You ask me, He wanted to see if He can set somebody up to do it - and maybe make some money in the process. I mean, I would gladly take the offer like that for a couple forum members I know also ).

 

Tunney drifted into some strange ramblings later in life, of which this is but one.

 

Y'all sure there's no racial under tone here?

 

Exactly. With a body shot, no less? Yeah, that'll stop it.

Gene Tunney could memorize Shakespeare, but he was a moron.

 

Exactly.

 

Possible, but probably not as simple as "I'm ostensibly talking about fighting a gorilla, but that's code for black fighters."

This kind of stupid question seems perpetually interesting to people, including non-racists today. The great ape vs human question is timeless.

Where I think the racism comes in, though, is that stereotypes about black people tended to track stereotypes about apes back then. So the same kinds of reasoning applied to one would be expected to be applied to the other. Tunney probably did believe that gorillas had the weaknesses he mentioned. He -- or at least his readers -- often believed or said similar things about black fighters. But I think in this piece, the gorilla is a gorilla.

EDIT: In fairness to Tunney, I know little to nothing about what he said about black fighters. If he was typical of his time period, I'd expect the kinds of stereotypes I mentioned.

 

The bit that made me think maybe some double talk happening is the clinching. Maybe Tunney knows a lot more about ape behavior than I, but I've never seen any do this. More like ragdoll and hammer fists. Johnson was very clinchy though. I might even go as far as calling him a stall master.

I don't mean to make this a race debate thread. I just replaced gorilla with Johnson, read it again, and thought, **** maybe.

Maybe though, I had it backwards? Like you say, during then, some of us are treated more ape than man. Perhaps then it isn't beyond reason to say a person who believes along these lines might watch a black man and relate his actions to an ape. The vice versa if you will.



But really I found Tunney's depiction of the "one attack the gorilla knows" really interesting in that, this dude ever even seen a gorilla attack? I don't pretend to know apes super well, average knowledge on that front I'd say, but I do have youtube get me?


Just a very weird description of any ape attack.


That said, the clinch was Jack's main criticism. Well, I mean skills and in ring ability wise. Of course his being black was the the main criticism.

 

I edited my post to reflect that I know almost nothing about Tunney's writings on black people. His readers might be expected to have the right stereotypes, though.

On the clinching, etc., I'd only say the following: As you know, we aren't talking about a period where people can boot up YouTube (or the TV) and watch a gorilla attack. Whatever memes were floating around about what a gorilla attack looked like, that's probably what Tunney was basing his "prediction" on. Wikipedia says nothing about Tunney being a big game hunter of gorillas. Could've been as simple as hearing from some guy back then -- maybe an equally clueless "old hand" when he was in the service; maybe the guy made it up to mess with Tunney; who knows -- saying that gorillas squeeze people to death. It's a natural assumption for somebody who knows nothing about gorillas. ("It's really strong. No claws. Oh. It must squeeze people. That's what my strong big brother did when we were fighting as kids." Or what have you.)

You could probably trace the meme back like any other folklore if you felt like it. Or it might be a stupid Tunney original. Maybe he made it up because it made sense to him, or to sound knowledgeable.

EDIT: In general, it's one of those chicken and egg problems, IMO. If people back then thought black people = apes, you'd end up seeing some of the same tropes showing up in stereotypes of both. But a person at the time might not have made the comparison explicit in his own mind: "Aha. I know black people do XYZ in boxing matches. Therefore, gorillas do, too." But they're filed in the same general category, and many white minds of the time would expect similar stuff from both, so they could use similar language of both without necessarily needing to consciously draw on the direct comparison.

 

Or...just a thought based on nothing but speculation...

The gorilla attacks Tunney would be expected to know the most about would be (1) in adventurer type books and articles, which may or may not be legit; (2) in literary sources, which are probably made-up and silly stuff written by the Lester Dent crowd; (3) reported in newspapers.

The last of these is probably the most "reliable" source of the time. But what sort of attacks would be reported most in those? Probably attacks in zoos, on zookeepers, and in circuses. Maybe some gorilla in a traveling circus accidentally squeezed her handler too hard in a fake wrestling match for the carneygoers, and Tunney read about it in the paper over his bacon and eggs a decade before his article was written. It's not as if whatever tabloid (was it Ring?) paid him to write this article would've fact checked it with a primatologist. Of whom there were few, anyway.