Fireman Flynn KO 1 Jack Dempsey

I just posted them for interest, I haven't a horse in this race.
Despite being a huge Dempsey fan I have no problem in believing an old pro may have got the drop on him.It happens,

 

fight was fixed and flynn said so. case closed

 

I truly love the Dempsey legend as much as the next guy and feel he would have been much greater if he fought more often post Willard, ect but I do feel he has benefitted from exceptional PR .. Kearns and Rickard really saved his ass on a myriad of issues ... he truly unfitted from the greatest PR campaign of any athlete I have ever seen ..

 

http://www.ibroresearch.com/?p=87

 

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Either way, this is like trying to solve a crime, when all witnesses have been dead for many years.

 

Whether you tell your Wife or not doesn't always decide what conclusion she reaches. According to Jack Sharkey even his wife had her doubts about the bona fides of the Carnera fight.

 

I do not consider the Dempsey Flynn fight to be at the level where I can say that it was probably fixed, but I do see it as being at the level where I have to mark it up as suspicious.

 

Yep.

 

While reading about a detailed account of first bout between Jack Dempsey and Fireman Jim Flynn, I got the impression that Dempsey was knocked out with at least one very hard blow to the head.

- Chuck Johnston

 

"it might be difficult to conceal the fact that you had inexplicably come into a large sum of money"

Why would $500 be considered an inexplicably large sum? Off the IBRO article, Dempsey had $350 and $325 paydays in a couple of obscure fights in 1916. With a gate of $5000, off the ringside report, $500 actually seems like a rather small share for the main attraction.

 

Yes, but her conclusion would not be good evidence.

The strongest evidence by far is Auerbach.

Derks describes a KO and then says he later learned it was a fix, but no details are given about what convinced him, so this is just left dangling.

Hardy Downing says he informed the sheriff, but the writer doesn't give any information about interviewing the sheriff and/or his deputies about this, so that is also left dangling. A serious investigator would have followed up with the sheriff's office, I think.

Living out in the boondocks myself, I would point out that folks in Salt Lake City in 1920 probably had no idea what was printed in the Chicago Tribune a thousand or so miles away.

 

It is pretty convincing to me that Dempsey was hit hard and actually knocked out.

That explains a great deal, including Dempsey giving such false accounts of the fight. He didn't remember it.

*If there was a fix, it was that Dempsey didn't really defend himself and allowed himself to be hit.

 

What is missing for me is any reason to fix Dempsey losing. He was clearly the hot young gate attraction. Flynn the fading old-timer. The fix would logically go the other way. How much of a betting coup could there have been in Utah to justify to everyone involved throwing away Dempsey as a gate attraction and probably ending boxing in the area by such a naked farce? It doesn't follow to me.

*I was just wondering if the pre-fight fix might in fact have been the other way. Flynn was being paid to take a dive. When he saw the size of the gate, he demanded more money which is why there was the haggling and the delay. The promoter wouldn't come across, so Flynn went out to put on an honest effort. Dempsey had not prepared himself for a tough fight and proved an easy mark. Just my speculation.

**obviously there is no proof of this

 

To a working man of that period, it would be a huge ingoing.

 

"Dempsey came rushing out of his corner like a mad dog. I crossed one to his jaw and he folded just like one of those folding beds. His second threw in a towel but it wasnt necessary. He was out like a light. They had to carry him to his corner. Dempsey learned from that right cross of mine that a guy had to be cautious and he went on to be the champ. He wasnt the greatest heavyweight like a lot of people claim. He was good but Jack Johnson was the best." -Jim Flynn March 5, 1935