25 first round knockouts

I am taking all of that into account. That is in large part why it doesn’t make sense.

If they paid a top 10 fighter in a big town to take a dive, it would have enhanced Flynn’s reputation.

Dempsey was far from that and this fight was in a backwater town. Odds are no one would ever know it took place regardless of who won. So why pay a basically unknown guy to take a dive when it wouldn’t enhance Flynn’s reputation or future earnings in any way? Why give away money?

Of course Dempsey didn’t want to talk about getting KTFO. Who would? You act like he’d be happy to take out a banner advertisement and shout it from the rooftops if he legit got KO’d (which he did).

 

https://coxscorner.tripod.com/dempsey_dive.html

https://coxscorner.tripod.com/dempsey_dive.html

Boxing historians know better.

 

LOL. The Chicago Tribune series was a farce. That’s basic ‘yellow journalism.’ They had to have fantastic claims to get people to buy to learn the ‘wicked truth’ … like today happens with tabloid journalism.

All accounts at the time were in agreement on what happened: Jack got sucker punched and went down and did not get up.

As the start of that story you linked points out, nobody had ever heard of Dempsey outside of locals. It’s not like you could go to Las Vegas and put a big bet on Flynn to knock Jack out — there were no odds. There’s no money to be made from it, so why would anyone fix the fight?

The Chicago article claims Dempsey took $500 to lay down. That’s about $11,000 in today’s money — who on earth is going to throw away more than 10 grand on a fight that is never, in any way, going to recoup that amount, much less make a profit?

It’s like paying a guy in a four-round fight in Toledo today $10K to take a dive at the local armory in a fight where both guys are making a couple hundred tops. What’s the angle to make someone do that?

Flynn didn’t go out and start making $20-50K per fight because he had beaten a guy nobody ever heard of in a fight that (as the article you linked correctly points out) no one ever heard about? He didn’t rise to prominence and demand a title shot because he’d beaten a hobo in Utah. He went straight back to losing (as did Jack, who had a draw and a loss in his next two fights — did he throw those as well?).

You probably believe Jack won the title with a railroad spike in one hand and his gloves encased in plaster of Paris covering an anvil in the other.

The fight wasn’t fixed. It’s a silly urban legend that was made up to sell papers (just like the plaster of Paris story) and now it’s being used to make Jack’s worse performance not count.

 

Jacobs vs Quilin was unexpected.