Coming Soon - In the Ring With Jack Dempsey - Part II: 1919 - 1923

Good to know, I might give it a read.

 

Volume One might be the most exhaustively researched sports book I've ever read. It's not the gushing love letter to Dempsey that Kahn's book is. Far more balanced. Volume Two ought to be about the same, I understand it's even longer than the first one.

 

Tried them, the overarching take away is one of glowing admiration.

 

Let's go champ! Save a copy for me...and make sure Klompton gets an autographed copy!

 

Thanks for the update Adam. Really looking forward to it.

 

Find that surprising and makes me wonder what you consider 'glowing admiration'. Especially given that in Ghosts of Manila Kram was actually challenging what he saw as the myth of Ali rather than the real person and criticising the uncritical hero-worshipping coverage/response he had got. It was also meant to address how he had behaved towards Frasier.

 

Adam Pollack's 2 volume biography of Jack Johnson is a diligently researched ,unbiased account,like his books on the heavyweight champions preceding him, it is excellent!

 

Pollack's second Dempsey book makes me realize that, intersecting with racism, money, fistic caution, boxing as political-points-scoring (freedom of conscience vs. coercive moral crusading), there is also a sort of 'normalcy', reaction-against-any-progressivism, Good Times/don't mess-with-success (if you feel you're in fact succeeding) ethos of the twenties which factors into the difficulties of making a Dempsey-Wills fight (and, in some places, Dempsey-vs. Anyone -- this, again, intersecting with an indignation regarding Dempsey's lack of military service which had more 'legs' than I had previously realized).
I get the feeling that by mid-22's Dempsey/Kearns would have welcomed a mega-enormously monetarily and politically guaranteed fight against Wills. And nothing less than that.

 

Interesting reading that champion Dempsey liked listening to jazz and classical music, and that he had recently enjoyed The Triumph March from (Guiseppe Verdi's opera) 'Aida'.

This made me remember a recollection of Dempsey's fourth and last wife, Deanna [Piatelli],

[Deanna} longed for Jack to share her enthusiasm for the arts, especially the opera. Finally, she persuaded him to attend a dress rehearsal of Puccini’s 'Madama Butterfly' at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. "When the cast heard we were in the house, the whole orchestra stood up to pay tribute to my husband. During the opera I saw Jack watching intently. When it was over he expressed real joy but sadness, too. Sadness that he had not seen opera before." -- cited from https://www.irishamerica.com/2020/06/remembering-the-champ/

[also Deanna 1997 interview
Hobbies/Interests: “Reading, golf, opera. He {Jack Dempsey] discovered opera when he was 80. Madame Butterfly, which was also my favorite. He told me how sad he was that he never saw one younger.” https://mrbiofile.com/2020/12/06/biofile-jack-dempsey/ ].

-------

The combination of Pollack's research, Deanna's recollection, and a chance radio re-listening to 'the march which champion Jack had admired, got me to looking up youtubes of stagings of the Triumphal Scene: Glorai all'Egitto - Triumphal March - Ballet Music - Vieni, o guerriero vindice ['Aida', Verdi, premiere 1871] . I was quite WOW'ed!

Arena di Verona 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqaqZX-BwI

59:09-1:10:56
Teatro de Fenice 2018/2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ0UYvWqqIU

2018 Arena di Verona [Similar to 1994 Arena di Verona, but some different camera angles]
English Subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9vH3Il4jBU

57:32-1:09:17
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma 2023
with English subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4ncegxJtQ4

I don't know where/when this last video was staged. The youtube info. says 'Chor der Wiener Staatsoper/Wiener Philharmoniker/Herbert vo...', but this isn't Herbert von Karajan conducting at the videos start.

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It almost seems that Tunney garnered more admiration for enduring a miserable drubbing in his first encounter with Greb, than he had for his (Tunney's) previous victories. Aside for admiration for his gameness, he also seems to have (in defeat) compared favorably to Tommy Gibbons, another recent Greb victim.
.....
It almost seems that Greb was viewed as a 'contemptible wonder': fast, with terrific stamina and excellent durability, and a unique ability to hurl individually negligible punches non-stop from all angles, not skilled as commonly reckoned, but almost impossible to box against, leading to a frequency of success that was acknowledged while simultaneously deplored -- a sort of fistic infamy. (I don't mean in Pittsburg, of course).