David Tua -vs- Jack Dempsey

$500 appears to be a lot of money to me to pay Dempsey, but the point is fixes were reasonably common place in sports like horse racing and boxing at this time, to me there are doubts about the fight but to argue that it wouldn't be worth doing because of the money is the flaw in your argument, we are talking about people with virtually no morals here.

 

$500 was only slightly bigger sum than Dempsey was receiving for his fights the normal way at that time.

Reasoning that a fight is a fix based on "fixes being common thing at the time" is a flawed logic, this way you can call any fight from that time a fix. There needs to be additional evidence. The fight was not surrounded by signs that usually surround fixes, there were no rumors in the press anywhere, there were no suspicious circumstances in the fight itself based on three next-day reports. The delay that some people try to use as evidence of a fix, not only can be easily explained (as it was not the first time it happened there, some previous shows at the same place had similar delays because of bad organization of the show), but actually works against the version of a fix, because: a) it means the opponent's side was involved in the fix, which means they had to get their share of the money from it, which makes it even harder to get enough money from betting, for everyone involved, in those circumstances; b) there was no reason why it had to take so long, if it was pre-arranged for some time before the fight, as Downing claimed, that he had time to go to the police and report on such thing.
Finally, there was no reason to start staging fix of Dempsey's fights at that particular moment, unless it means he was involved in fixed fights even before meeting with Flynn. But that doesn't seem logical from the circumstances either, as he was beating inferior opposition, being a favorite for most of his previous fights and there were no unexpected results.

 

The Pueblo Chieftain printed the result but had nothing of pre-fight coverage. Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal didn't have anything. The IBRO author, obviously, has looked up some newspapers too, and only found it in The Salt Lake Tribune. A list of scheduled fights means nothing, you don't bet on or against a fighter you don't know anything about, and Dempsey had local reputation, not national.

What syndicate? We are talking about relatively small fight in Utah, the managers of both boxers had too little influence, to be involved in games of "big boys", the attendance was too small to have any big betting either, Salt Lake City wasn't staging any significant bouts to grab attention of big gamblers, there was bigger "fish" elsewhere, in NY, Philadelphia, etc. You are clutching to a straw here.

There wasn't a word about anything besides $500 from the person who supposedly paid the money to Dempsey. Fighter's purse was usually reported with his manager's and expenses money substracted from it. The IBRO article says explicitly that that's the money Dempsey was paid for those bouts. The sum seems plausible also, for a main event participant, say, between 500 and 1000 spectators paying $2 for addmission, at least half the sum goes for fighters' purses.

Facts have to be interwoven into reasoning logically. A long delay in such circumstances goes against the logic, and makes the theory of a fix less plausible.

What trial again, and how was it involved with this fight? What's your source of this oath and everything? You don't defend your husband by testifying that he was involved in illegal activities.

What evidence? There's none, except gossips long time after the fight had taken place, and which are contradicted by facts or have no logical explanation.

 

That reply was not to your post.

Put yourself in place of a judge or a commission that has to investigate this case and rule a decision, what evidence are you going to come up with as a prosecutor, and how plausible is it? Most or all of the evidence for a fix here is a hear-say, not backed up by any facts. There are too many flaws in this theory to believe in it.

He dived against whom? Jack Downey, when Dempsey was still a preliminary fighter, and where one had the advantage for some time, then the other, and back and forth, until Downey's superior experience told and he had the better of the final round?

 

I think if any fight was to be fixed it would be a smaller fight with less scrutiny, wherever we see gambling we see fixes of some sort or cheating it happens now even with all the media scrutiny. We are talking about the murky dealings of small time fight promoters and gamblers just after the turn of the century. What better way to make a killing than have the average Joe bet on a hot prospect blasting all before him who unexpected comes back to earth, its just the fight game.
Give me all the evidence you like but this fight smells bad, we will never know for sure though.

 

Gambling has logic too. There's little logic in this case about the source of such big money.

Flynn was a nobody at the time, no more than, say, Dick Gilbert whom Dempsey beat several months prior. You are clutching to Flynn's past as if he had been a champion before, not a simple short-lived contender.

Private bets against whom? As I said, you have to be winning at very least $1000 on bets for it to be enough for all people involved, if Dempsey was to received $500. I'd say much more than $1K, actually. And there was nobody who would bet so much money on Dempsey. If we are to believe you, then Flynn had received an even bigger sum for this fix, but it's even less plausible, and Dempsey's manager doesn't say a word about any money for Flynn, he'd surely mention that the other side received much bigger money from the fix too.

A purse in that time is usually what a fighter got AFTER all expenses were subtracted from it. Dempsey received $325 and $350 precisely. See my calculations about how much money can be gathered from attendance and how the gate money is usually divided, which you should have known if you studied that time. This is not the 1940-1950's where the mafia would get all the money and the fighter received nothing.

A delay is used by the author of the article as another evidence of a fix. While, like I said, and you agreed, it most probably was because of organizational troubles.

Source of Dempsey's wife's testimony?

I could tell a lot about Gans-McGovern fight. But I will limit it to just one thing - look up NY's newspaper The Evening World 1 day before (!) the fight and see what it says about who the colored people were betting large sums against, Gans or McGovern?

 

Gambling cases have logic, where you can't produce a big sum with little betting on the fight.

Why don't you provide examples of Flynn's name being popular nationally by early 1917? I'd bet all my money that some white hopes' names were as well known nationally as Flynn's, but did you read about crowds of bettors following them around, anywhere?

That money was with expenses subtracted. Whatever he might have owned to somebody, doesn't mean it was subtracted from his purse, he paid it himself from the money he received for the fight. For example, "Dempsey, by the man himself" (1960)
page 65: "It was a full house. John the Barber had guessed $500, minimum, for our 25 per cent if the house was full."
page 66: "It was in Salida, Colorado, against a fellow named Young Hector. ... I got $250 for that fight, and there was no manager around to protect my interests, as they always said. I gave my mother a hundred."

Where can I see this transcript? Dempsey in his autobiography doesn't mention her testifying on any fixes, where he talks about his first wife.

You could point something he said many years after the event had taken place. I could point to contemporary (primary) sources that heard and saw no evidence of it being staged. And regarding Gans-McGovern, like I said, The Evening World the day before the fight (well, actually, it is dated Dec. 13, but this is because the newspapers are usually printed in the night, and are sold the next day, so this one was being sold before the fight, thus we always have "next-day reports" on fights, the fight result and report was printed in Dec. 14 issue), has at the top of the very first page with huge letters:

Gans and M'Govern ready for bout.
FIGHT "FAKE" DENIED

a below it an article full-page high (and concluded on page 10), containing the follows fragment:

Rumor of a Fake.
Lou Houseman had Al Herford on the carpet last night. There was a rumor that all the wise colored money was going that McGovern would put Gans away inside the six rounds, Gans to lay down.
The rumor spread around betting resorts.
"There is a lot of this money around, Herford," said Houseman, "that McGovern knocks Gans out. That means that Gans is to lay down to McGovern inside of six rounds. Now, that won't go in this town. If there is the slightest sign of the irregular Siler is instructed to call all bets off, withhold your money and give McGovern his share."
"You won't get a cent, you won't win any and I'll give your share of the purse to some hospital, you understand?"

 

I cannot provide the transcript but it is refered to by Monte Cox in his article "In Defence of Jack Dempsey".

His first wife Maxine Cates was reputed to be turning tricks as a prostitute to help make ends meet. She admitted that Dempsey was “offered more money to lose than to win” (Khan 121) to which she testified under oath at Dempsey’s slacker trial that Dempsey accepted $500 to lie down for Flynn.

This is testimony in court, under oath, before Dempsey was famous, and cant be explained by either desire to positivley effect the outcome of his trial or positivley enhance his historical standing.

Dempsey always denied taking a dive but he gave three conflicting acounts of the fight.

 

I dont think its that simple. Dempsey had the defense and footwork to evade most of tuas punches allowing him to tee off on Tua. I think Dempsey beats Tua by decision, not by KO.