Fireman Flynn KO 1 Jack Dempsey

[url]http://senya13.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/1917-02-13-jack-dempsey-l-ko1-fireman.html[/url]

Senya's blog

 

I am a fan of Senya's blogs!

 

We arent in a position to uphold the official verdict but we are in a position to pretend Dempsey was so great even pre-prime that he couldnt get stopped based on nothing but innuendo put forth by people with a vested interest in Dempsey... whatever.

 

Me too. Senya does good work.

 

I don't think anyone here is an a position to question it, either. We might as well question every result from pre-1940 while we are at it. Dig a little in every fight and you will find someone from the loser's corner claiming foul play.

Agree whole-heartedly.

 

[url]http://coxscorner.tripod.com/dempsey_dive.html[/url]

I think jas posted this link already. Great read, well researched and providing a logical explanation as to why it was likely a dive.

Also in the Gene Tunney biography "Tunney" by Jack Cavanaugh the author's own unrelated research leads to the conclusion of a fix.

I am of the belief the fight was not on the level

 

Wow, a bunch of Dempsey's friends and coattail riders say it was a fixed.

Color me shocked.

 

Actually times have changed quite a bit. If they were Dempsey's "friends" they would have stood by the story of a KO loss for Dempsey. a "dive" was seen as far less noble then getting caught cold in the era that it occurred.

 

"Well let me put it this way. I hit him with a one, two..But just put it down that I didn't exactly knock Dempsey out." - Fireman Jim Flynn

 

Except the ONLY bit of evidence, again, that Cox uses is a newspaper article written by someone close to Dempsey years later and this article doesnt even match the actual facts on the ground at the time.

I reject the notion that Dempsey's supporters would stick with the story of a legit KO for the same reason that his supporters here today are not sticking to it: They want us to believe that Dempsey was bulletproof and he wasnt.

No free floating "quote" purporting to be from Jim Flynn posted on the internet with no provenance or citation is going to change that.

 

Tunney- Jack Cavanaugh page 81

Just reporting the facts.

 

Tunney page 81
The outcome stunned the crowd. It also gave rise to rumors that Dempsey had taken a dive. In a column more than a decade later, Joe Williams, a widely known sportswriter for the Newspaper Enterprise Association wrote that Dempsey "had laid down, as the boys would say." In the fight. "I understand he got three hundred for taking a synthetic belt to the whiskers and that he carried the money tucked away in his trunks when he entered the ring."
According to Williams account Dempsey in agreeing to dump the Flynn fight, "possessed more of an immediate urge for money than an ambition to ride to the top ranks in the fight game." Since Dempsey was still occasionally riding from town to town beneath freight cars and his purses rarely exceeded a hundred dollars, it was true that he was usually in need of money. By then too he was married to Maxine Cates, who, after the divorce, claimed that Dempsey had indeed thrown the Flynn fight because they needed money badly. Dempsey himself always insisted that Tyne fight was square. But then, too, there were exigent circumstances that some people thought might have inspired Dempsey to do whatever he could to make as much money as possible at that time.

Even Flynn seemed surprised at the knockout. "Well, it was like this way." He explained some years after his most notable victory. "I hit him with a one two. But just put it down that I didn't exactly knock Dempsey out. He forgot to duck." Or maybe Dempsey hadn't intended to duck.

 

You've never seen someone go out on one punch before? It happens. It doesn't happen a lot at the highest levels of boxing, but it does happen. Then you have to consider all of the one punch knockouts that happen in the late and middle rounds. Statistically, some of those are going to happen in the early rounds, especially if the fighters aren't loose and warmed up. Tyson and Duran used to wipe out guys in the opening round all the time. Come to think of it, so did Dempsey. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

 

Jack Cavanaugh's book would be one of the last books I would quote. More to the point Cavanaugh, decades later, is quoting Joe Williams (who was in Cleveland when Dempsey was knocked tits first into the dust in Utah) who, decades later, was quoting "the boys" and supposedly Jim Flynn (who himself was speaking years later) without citation or provenance or any other means of actually tracking that qoute. Sorry if I dont consider a fourth hand source as proof of anything.

 

"We shook hands and then walked to our corners, when we walked out again at the sound of the bell, I put out my hand to touch gloves, as is customary, and Flynn instead of touching gloves let go a punch and copped me. I suppose it was my fault, but Flynn you know is an old bird at the game and takes advantage of what he has learnt."

Jack Dempsey, Salt Lake Telegram March 19, 1917.