Fireman Flynn KO 1 Jack Dempsey

So let me get this straight: You honestly believe that its worse for Dempsey that as a struggling young fighter with barely enough to feed himself and not even sure he would continue his career he may have taken a bribe to lay down against Flynn. Or that the great Jack Dempsey who was two years away from winning the title was actually knocked out cold by a 38 year old journeyman who was 10 years past his prime and whose record in his last 7 fights was a dismal 1-5-1. You honestly want to argue that the Dempsey nuthuggers here who subscribe to the notion that Dempsey threw the fight are doing so because they think its worse for his legacy? Whatever. Dont **** on my leg and tell me its raining.

I disagree with this assessment. You're viewing the fight through a modern prism of values. Modern statisticians are well aware that Flynn was 1-5-1 in his last handful of fights but how many people of the time were aware of that or valued such things who were in attendance. Yes today people who are Dempsey supporters will try to spin that the fight was definitely a fix for a variety of reasons which you address-most notably it looks bad to lose to a past prime journeyman, by first round KO no less. However that is the historical perspective. A perspective that could only be formed through thorough and meticulous research. People that have levied the allegations of the fix were not doing so because they thought 60 years from now this loss will look like a real stinker on Dempsey's ledger. Now his fans may take the information they have alleged to utilize to that degree but that was not the original intent of said information. Maybe Dempsey's prostitute wife did lie about the dive, maybe the eye witnesses dug up by Soderman wanted attention, who knows but I highly doubt the motivation was the ability to forshadow that a Dive would improve Dempsey's standing rather than a KO loss 50 years into the future. Dives were highly frowned upon where as going out on your shield was not. At some point in history as the past fades the damage of the dive vs the KO has flipped in relevancy.

 

Yeah, most people reading the national sports press in 1919 or 1920 weren't asking "But how come he's got an LKO1 to that has-been bum Flynn on his record ?" .... most people were none the wiser about records and stuff, and cared less than today.
Kearns etc. could create a myth of Dempsey without worrying too much about that particular detail. For the same reason, most people following the build up to Dempsey-Carpentier either didn't know, care or remember that Carpentier had already been to America and being beaten by some middleweights.

 

The state of sports history at the time was pretty negligent. In Dempsey ' s era who held the career home run until Babe Ruth was a murky subject.

 

I am open to the possibility that the fight was fixed. In fact I slightly lean that it was but not to make Dempsey out to be a bulletproof superman. I feel Dempsey was susceptible to good boxers most of his career. The reasons I feel the fight may not have been legit are as follows:
Character: Dempsey was a hobo, married a prostitute, dealt with shady managers in the past such as Riesler and in general was well acclimated to the shadier side of life.
Necessity: He was broke, hungry and knew all to well those hardships.
Film: seeing Jack bounce up in the Firpo fight, dust off a perfect right from Carpentier and absolutely weather a ferocious first round assault from a prime Sharkey where he was nailed repeatedly and still march forward when he was well past it, shows me he had a grade A chin. The Flynn fight just goes against the grain of what we know about jacks durability and hunger.
Finally the evidence provided by Cox and others.
I am not certain, the fight was a fix nor would I be surprised if it weren't, I just believe the possibility exists It may have been. It's all circumstantial and the truth won't ever be known but it sure is interesting.

 

So you guys want to believe nobody knew that Jim Flynn was shot? And afterwards nobody knew that Dempsey was stopped by him? And later on that nobody knew Carpentier had been to America less than a year before he lost to Dempsey? And that Carpentier had lost to Americans? Pardon for being harsh but get your head out of your ass. All of this was well known and well reported.

Its pure bull**** to pretend that because the wider press didnt cover the Dempsey-Flynn fight that a fix would have gone under the radar. There was actually very good local coverage of the fight and NONE of it hints at a fix. None of it. So yeah, when people close to Dempsey come out years later and in the context of trying to rehabilitate his image after a disasterous court case and a near loss to Bill Brennan (which left many discussing the rumors of loaded gloves against Willard) I call into question their motives. The cult around Dempsey has always been based on his seeming invincibility. As such (and I know Im telling his fans anything they dont know but dont want said) it behooves them to pretend that he wasnt knocked out by a guy who a decade early was getting stopped by middleweights. You dont think that fight made the wires and that nobody knew about it? Do a quick newspaper search and you will see it was reported as far away as New York, San Francisco, Canada, and Florida. How do you think their rematch in 1918 was promoted? In 1918, long before he won the title, Bob Edgren wrote in his syndicated column about the Flynn loss (not questioning it one iota) stating that Flynns ring career was so far behind him he should be wearing white whiskers, his words not mine. In march of 1918 Dempsey's record was published nationally along with a story about his rapid rise which included his KO loss to Flynn. Why publish his record if people didnt care about those things? Why did the police gazette, pittsburgh post, and several other sporting news outlets devote so much time to publishing annual record books? You guys act like they were living in the stone age back then. It was different sure but anyone who followed boxing was aware that Flynn was shot in 1917 and that he knocked out Dempsey. The other thing they were aware of (which most of you cant seem to wrap your heads around) is that Dempsey was a nobody and his loss was totally inconsequential. Such things happen and only in hindsight does it look like anything approaching a massive upset. Had Dempsey retired right there and then as he considered none of you would even question it.

People keep talking about the evidence Cox brought up. I ask again, what evidence? Where is it. There isnt one ounce of evidence that anything happened under the table. NOTHING.

 

I never stated that nobody knew that Flynn was not past his best, only that record keeping was not nearly as accessible as it would become. It was also done with shoddy research much of the time. The fact that Dempsey was a nobody only lends credibility to his motivation to throw the fight. The average fan who attended the fight probably did not know Flynn was 1-5-1 in his last seven fights.
If you want to believe they came up with the story of a fix to rehabilitate his image after the Brennan fight because he had looked less than stellar or to restore his name after the mud slinging of his draft hearing that is fair. That is a plausible scenario.

 

This is the bottom line.

A few people are in positively indecent haste to validate this fight, and that is simply not possible given the evidence at our disposal.

 

It's not that nobody knew, or that it wasn't reported. It just wasn't high on the agenda. It wasn't like anyone was making a big deal out of it.
You can spin it whatever way you want, but the vast majority of build up for Dempsey-Willard wasn't using the loss to Flynn as any sort of barometer or of much relevance. Not like what might occur nowadays.

You can't have it both ways.
You know a 'Dempsey myth' was built in the press within that era, that he benefitted greatly from rosy media coverage and ballyhoo.
So, clearly, there wasn't much dwelling on the Flynn loss and not enough details on Carpentier being sub-standard.
Point is, the 'myth' was pretty damn strong. I don't know of any statements from that time using the Flynn loss against his fighting reputation, so I don't think people necessarily came up with that rumour to counter criticism or protect his rep.

Why is it "pure bull****" ?
There's no way of knowing. IF it were a fix ... You might have had four or five local guys cover the fight, all of who accepted it on face value, none of whom would even give a **** about the event a week later. Maybe Dempsey and a few other guys knowing it was a fix, one who told someone else, and someone told someone, and some bookie somewhere complained to someone .... etc, etc. ... doesn't matter to anyone apart from a tiny clique, until a year or so later, and even then no one gives a **** much anyway.

Just like if it was legit. No one cared much.

You have to accept that not everything can be discovered through newspapers. Shady stuff especially. Fixes aren't supposed to drop hints.

I actually agree with most of this.
Of course they weren't in the stone age.
And yes they cared about records.
And of course it was reported.

But you sum it up pretty well at the end, it was, and is, inconsequential. Losing like that on the way up. These things happen.
That's the point.
The fact that no one was using it against Dempsey, no one was doubting his chin or his ability.
So why do you think the rumour started as a defense of his reputation ?
No one was attacking him on the Flynn loss, so maybe the rumour had different origins, right?

 

You can call it 99% probability for all I care.
It just seems wrong to say it was 100% legit, and that anyone who is willing to serious doubt is driven by an agenda to boost Dempsey. Or to imply that's where the rumour originated when it seems otherwise maybe.

My personal opinion is most fixed fights in olde history have probably gone undetected, and/or no trace remains of them today. That just seems commonsense to me. People never dumped a fight hoping the press would report the ugly fact.
So if rumours of a certain fight do exist, let's just accept that that fight might be one of the dodgy ones.

 

You're probably right.
But it cuts both ways. People who want to knock him head to head will judge his chin by this one fight.


On another note, I'm willing to believe both his fights with Flynn were fixed.

 

Well, well - At least this keeps you all from hanging around on the stret corners.