Gene Tunney on Fitzsimmons, Corbett and Dempsey

On an afternoon back in 1918, I was jogging along a road in France. It was wartime. I was a Marine in uniform. I was likewise a boxer doing road work, thinking about the ring battle to come, planning the kind of fight I'd make. Then, just in front of me, a surprising thing happened. Along the road roared a United States Army truck, going fast on the slippery highway--it had been raining. The truck skidded and jammed into a deep rut. I saw the doughboy driver catapulted out of his seat for a flying dive through the air and onto the roadside head-first. He picked himself up. I saw him come staggering toward me, half stunned, groggy, his face bleeding, his arms open. And one thought flashed through my mind: What a mark he'd be for a left hook!

Fitzsimmons' Philosophy ​

Maybe if I had been a little more absent-minded I might have nailed him, but I caught myself--and caught him. He was only bruised and shaken. I was a bit shaken, too, thinking it over--a comrade soldier in the greatest of all wars, hurt, bleeding, staggering toward me for help, and all I thought was: He'd be a sucker for a punch. What a state of mind that was. But then, hadn't I been told that championship was a state of mind?
I was told it, in a way, by Bob Fitzsimmons. Not that I'd ever known Fitzsimmons. But I did know Eddie Behan, and that was almost the same thing. Eddie was Knights of Columbus athletic director with the Army in France, and was grooming me for the A. E. F. championship. Eddie knew boxing completely. Above all, he knew Fitzsimmons. He had trained the freckled wonder, sparred with him, had lived close to Fitzsimmons for years. He talked to me endlessly about old Fitz, and the No. 1 point of Fitzsimmons' philosophy he expounded was that championship is a state of mind.
Behan told me one story to illustrate, and it was like a thing fantastic. It concerned Fitzsimmons' terrific punching power. Never more than middleweight, Fitz was famous for the way he could summon the last ounce of his strength in one explosive effort. Eddie Behan mentioned the old figure of speech of drowning man and straw. That was the case with Fitzsimmons, actually and not figuratively. In training, he would close his eyes, slowly roam around a room or ring and concentrate on the thought that he was drowning. He'd get himself tense with the terrifying sensation of drowning. And then he'd imagine a rope on the water, or the proverbial straw. He'd clutch for it, shooting one arm out and grasping--the mad grasp of a drowning man, a complete explosion of strength. He'd practice that as a sort of shadowboxing, training himself to summon all his power into one swift flashing act, putting everything he had into one punch.

Perfecting a Decoy Punch ​

The way to know about championship quality is to learn from champions, and that I did; studying them with professional purpose during my time in the ring and from habitual interest afterward. Some of the heavyweight title holders were a source of unending instruction, others not at all. Some I reckoned inspired warriors of the ring, others mediocrities. The champions have been written about copiously by sports commentators. Seen and sized up by a boxer, they may look very different; and this article is a survey of what one boxer learned from champions and about them. My slant always put emphasis on the mental side of prize fighting. I got that idea at the outset from Bob Fitzsimmons through Eddie Behan.
We had our hangout after fights in a Knights of Columbus warehouse in Paris, a huge dingy place full of packing cases, and on the packing cases we'd sit and talk Fitzsimmons. "Fitz would alter his stature, change his height," Behan told me, and explained. Fitzsimmons would fight round after round from a crouch, doubled over. He'd seem small of stature, and establish that in his opponent's mind. Then abruptly he'd change his style and stand at full height. His opponent would feel himself suddenly confronted by a giant--a giant hitting savagely.
Behan gave me the inside story of how Fitzsimmons won the championship. For fourteen rounds, Fitz lashed out at Corbett with an overhand right swing, and missed. You couldn't hit the swift, elusive Corbett with that kind of punch, and Fitzsimmons knew it. Yet for months of training he had practiced that overhand right, getting it down perfect--a punch he never expected to land. To trick the nimble-footed and nimble-witted dancing master, some heroic sort of strategy was required, like fourteen rounds of futile hitting with a murderous and yet really a fake punch. Fitz wanted Corbett to raise his guard; and with those rights whizzing high at his head, Corbett did hold his guard higher and higher, never realizing he was doing it--some reflex action. Then, in the fourteenth round, Fitzsimmons had the champion's guard just where he wanted it. He launched another ineffectual right, which Corbett blocked as he had blocked them all. Fitzsimmons shifted with a left into Corbett's midriff, the much-talked-of solar-plexus blow--the blow with which Fitzsimmons from the first had planned to win the championship. It laid Corbett out on the ring floor, gasping, his body paralyzed from the hips down.
That story came back to mind years later, at the Braddock-Louis bout in Chicago for the heavyweight championship--it was so different. Before Champion Braddock went into the ring to face the savagely formidable Joe Louis, I asked Whitey Bimstein, his trainer and second, "What kind of fight has Jim planned?"
"Oh, you know Jim is different; he hasn't anything planned," Whitey replied. "He never plans anything. He just takes things in the ring as they happen."
I thought Jim would need a plan of supercunning to meet the physical devastation of the Joe Louis attack. But the champ wasn't the planning kind or the winning kind that night.
Max Schmeling did have a plan in his first fight with Joe Louis, based on his observation that when the Bomber advanced to attack, he always carried his left hand low, ready for a smashing left hook, which left his left jaw wide open for a straight right. Exploiting that secret, he slaughtered Joe. In their second fight, the Louis fault was counteracted, and Max had no further secret to exploit, which left him just an aging veteran. His ideas in the ring were like his legs--too far apart.
I did six years of planning to win the championship from Jack Dempsey. I got my cue from a punch that proved futile--a blow that failed. I saw the Dempsey-Carpentier battle at Boyle's Thirty Acres, Jersey City, saw the magnificent champion at his most devastating. I noted one thing: When Carpentier hit Dempsey--the only real thrill in the fight, the only hard punch that Carpentier landed--he hit Dempsey with a straight right. The Frenchman had a good punch, but was no dealer of paralyzing destruction. He hit Dempsey too high--on the cheekbone instead of the jaw. Yet Dempsey went back on his heels, and for an extended moment was dazed. I said to myself that he had his weakness, that Dempsey could be hit by a straight right and hurt. This was confirmed by what I saw in subsequent Dempsey battles--as when the clumsy Firpo battered the champion with a right.

A Surprise for Jack Dempsey ​

The next pertinent factor was Dempsey's ring mentality. If you were to ask me: "Who is the most intelligent fighter you have ever known?" I should reply: "Jack Dempsey out of the ring." In the business of life, Jack handles himself with an amount of nimble wit and deftness that sometimes makes me envious. I have often thought, if circumstances had not made Jack a prize fighter, he might well have become a clever and able politician. But in the ring Jack Dempsey was an instinctive fighter. I doubt if he ever planned anything in the ring, or thought about it much. But what a fighting instinct he had--the intuitive craft of doing the right thing subconsciously. I knew he could be hit with a straight right, but I might get killed while trying it. My best chance, I reckoned, was surprise. Get the champion to rush me, headlong and careless, and never expect what was coming--an attempt to knock him out with a right-hand smash to the jaw.

 

Actually, I started my ring career as a terrific hitter; then my hands cracked up and I had to resort to boxing and tricks to win. To break a hand in the first or second round and get a decision at the end of ten or fifteen rounds requires and develops resourcefulness. I was a boxer, relying on skill and speed. Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare. Little chance was given me against Dempsey. The odds were 4 or 5 to 1 against me at ring time. The best I could hope for was to avoid getting knocked out in a few rounds--so they said. My obvious way of fighting Dempsey was to use boxing craft. Everyone advised me--the newspapermen and all my friends--"Stay away from him and box him."
I pretended to accept that advice, and never gave the slightest hint of what I was about, incessantly practicing a straight right. Not in public training bouts. In these I put on exhibitions of sparring and footwork. But secretly, with the heavy and fast punching bags, I practiced a straight right, developing the knack of putting all I had into one shot. On the road, jogging along, I'd stop for a bit of shadowboxing, imagining Dempsey in front of me, rushing me, and then I'd lash out, nailing him in imagination with a straight right. But I never let on.
Thus was determined the Dempsey state of mind. Jack expected me to dance away and defend, as everybody said I would, as I myself gave the impression I would. He believed he was in for a hoofing match, and that his task would be to catch me. His own trainers played into my hands on the very day of the bout. They kept from him the knowlege that I was flying to the fight, taking a plane from Stroudsburg to Philadelphia. Building up his confidence, they didn't want him to think: "This fellow's nerves must be okay, flying to battle."
That was part of what turned out to be a very peculiar psychological mix-up. I took a plane because I didn't want the long automobile trip on slippery roads; it had been raining. I was cocky about flying, having been up once before--for a few minutes on a bright day in France. I was a great deal too cocky. I got airsick. It was a dim, dismal day, with rain threatening, ceiling not much more than zero. The great old pilot, Casey Jones, who flew me, lost his way in the clouds. It was one of the worst airplane rides anyone ever had, and I almost passed out, airsick. When I got to Philadelphia, I was shaking and pale, green. And I had to go at once to weigh in. Boxing Commissioner Weiner saw how I looked--shaking, pale, green--and he drew his own conclusion. He told a group of friends that Tunney was scared to death, quaking in his shoes. A friend of mine, Bernard Gimbel, spoke up to defend me. But there was no changing the opinion that Tunney was green with fright, going into battle with Dempsey, the killer. Actually, I soon snapped out of the effects of airsickness, and was in top shape for the fight.
The illusion created by my airsickness put the finishing touch to the psychological background. The Dempsey camp believed more than ever that the champion needed only to go in for a quick kill. That Dempsey would rush me headlong became the surest of sure things. When the bell rang, he came charging. I fended him off and backed away, giving him still more impression that I was strictly on the defensive. He made a second rush, and I repeated the maneuver of elude and clinch to confirm the belief that it was a hoofing match. Then, when he rushed a third time, I waited for the inevitable opening, the wide left hook that he was throwing at me.
I stepped in with the straight right I had so long been practicing for just that moment. I had learned to throw it with every ounce of power I had, and it landed. But it landed high, just as that Carpentier straight right had five years before. It landed, not on Dempsey's jaw but on his cheek--just as Carpentier's Christmas punch had done. It was the straight right of the Carpentier fight all over again. Not so much of a coincidence, however, for Dempsey fought with his head down and his chin on his chest, and the tendency was to hit him high.
He was stopped in his tracks and his knees sagged. I could see he was hurt. Perhaps if the punch had landed on Jack's jaw, I might have knocked him out. As it was, that blow won the fight. Dempsey was dazed for the rest of the battle, and it was a certainty to outpoint him for the championship. There was much talk. What was the matter with Dempsey? He hadn't fought his fight; something wrong with him. It was that straight right in the first round, the completely unexpected thing, which dazed and defeated him. Perhaps you might call it that old Carpentier punch come back to life.
It isn't so unusual for a boxer to become aware long in advance that he can defeat the champion, and how to do it. Max Baer found out about Primo Carnera in studio bouts they had, working in a Hollywood picture. Carnera was the champion and Playboy Baer was only supposed to provide some spectacular movie opposition for the giant. But in the studio bouts Baer discovered that Carnera could be hit by a long overhand right, his own most effective blow. Carnera had a fair boxing routine, and was not so slow for his size, but Baer found that he was a sucker for a right swing brought up from the floor. What Baer learned in the Hollywood studio he applied in the Long Island ring. He cut Carnera down with sweeping overhand rights.

 

Jim Corbett learned the great secret in a three-round exhibition bout with John L. Sullivan. Corbett was a mere San Francisco boxing instructor at the Olympic Club, brought in to give the people a chance to see the terrorizing John L. in action--mere sham-battle action. A champion doesn't like to look bad, wants to make a showing and Sullivan wanted to display his easy superiority over the dancing master, Corbett. But he couldn't touch Corbett--that's what Jim learned in those three play-acting rounds. He acquired the positive knowledge that the stocky Sullivan, with his short arms, clumsy left and murderous right, fought the kind of fight that Corbett would surely win. It turned out that way in the ring. Corbett was always angry about the stories that Sullivan was no more than a bloated, whisky-soaked hulk when he was defeated. Jim claimed that John. L. was in good shape for that famous bout at New Orleans. He vowed there never was a day when Sullivan could have hit him with that haymaker right swing, the only thing Sullivan had.
It was typical of Corbett that the lesson he learned concerned defense--not getting hit. That was Corbett's state of mind--defensive. Different from Fitzsimmons, who thought in terms of hitting. I knew Jim intimately, had long talks with him and boxed with him, although he was over fifty years old. Jim Corbett could talk better about boxing than any other man I've ever known. I learned as much from him, perhaps, as I did from Fitzsimmons through the mouth of Eddie Behan, but it was defensive boxing knowledge from Corbett.
He told me that in preparing for fights, he used to shadowbox for one whole hour every day--he called it shadowdancing, typical of Corbett, the dancing master. For that daily hour he would go stepping against a mythical opponent, and in Corbett's imagination that opponent was always hitting at him, Corbett blocking, ducking, side-stepping, schooling his mentality and his reflexes to defense.
He told me he used to draw diagrams of defensive boxing problems, charting the position of feet and the movements of footwork. He'd diagram his position in a corner of the ring, and his opponent's position, and sketch the way he would feint and side-step, eluding a rush. It was something like a dancer charting foot positions of a new dance--always a defensive dance with Gentleman Jim.
This came back to me vividly the other day, when I was told about a Jim Corbett of classical antiquity. Edward Capps, of Princeton, writes and refers me to the pages of the historian, Dio Chrysostom, for an account of the ancient Greek pugilist, Melankomas, who was never hit by an opponent and who never hit one. The following is a quotation:

Although he met so many antagonists and such good ones, he went down before none of them, but was himself always victorious. . . . He won all his victories without being hit himself or hitting his opponent, so far superior was he in strength and in his power of endurance. For often he would fight throughout the whole day, in the hottest season of the year, and although he could have more quickly won the contest by striking a blow, he refused to do it, thinking that it was possible at times for the least competent boxer to overcome by a blow the very best man, if the chance for making it were offered; but he held that it was the truest victory when he forced his opponent, although uninjured, to give up because of his whole body, and not simply the part of his body that was struck.​

Apparently, Melankomas never met his Jim Jeffries, but Corbett did--the supreme master of defensive boxing hit by perhaps the most unexpected and one of the most disastrous punches in the history of pugilism. They were matched for twenty-five rounds at Coney Island, Corbett determined to win back the heavyweight championship. He was dazzling that night, boxing with flashing skill, making mock of the powerful, ponderous Jeffries. For twenty-three rounds Corbett peppered the boilermaker. He had the fight won; only two more rounds to go and he'd have the championship back again, as no boxer has ever had. Then, in that twenty-third round, the hopelessly outclassed Jeffries suddenly hit Corbett one punch and knocked him out.
I was always curious about that, and I asked Jim. He told me the story. Yes, it was a state of mind all right. Corbett said by the twentieth round he was completely sure of winning. Jeffries couldn't hit him in a hundred rounds. "I knew I had won back the championship," Corbett told me, "and I began wondering about the banners I'd have hung out." Corbett, the actor, contemplating a theatrical tour across the country. He was very much of an actor, and to him regaining the championship meant great flaming banners of victory in front of the theater where he was playing. "From the twentieth round on," he related, "I kept thinking the banners would read, Corbett Rewins the Championship of the World! And I kept wondering would I have the letters three feet high or six feet high. That," said Jim, "was the problem bothering me, not Jeffries." It was a state of mind with a touch of ham. Corbett, boxing beautifully all the time, became engrossed by the thought of the banners and the letters three feet or six feet high. So engrossed that Jeffries hit him and knocked him out. "I was in a corner," Jim told me, "as I had often been. He rushed me, just as he had rushed time and again. All I had to do was to sidestep and slip out, as I'd done a hundred times. And then it happened."
Corbett told me that Jeffries came virtually staggering toward him. He claimed that the big fellow really threw out his arms to get hold of him. In that desperate clutch, Jeffries' left glove collided sidewise against Corbett's jaw. The boilermaker was so powerful that the jolt knocked Corbett out, banners and all. Reminiscent of Fitzsimmons playing the drowning man, the convulsive grasp at a straw calling forth the ultimate effort.
I myself was never tempted to think about banners, but I learned the chagrin and surprise of the unexpected blow. There was Spalla, whom I fought in the Yankee Stadium in 1924. In the first round he began punching me all over the ring. I found myself at the end of a barrage of swings, left and right. Not only a painful but a most astonishing phenomenon. I knew Spalla well. We had trained together for months, boxed with each other numberless times. I knew all about Spalla--or thought I did. He was a wonderful singer. A big Italian and heavyweight champion of Europe, also a baritone studying for opera. As a boxer, he was strong and had a hefty punch, but was utterly crude. I admired his voice. Yet in that first round he came out swinging, and hit me with every punch he threw. And was I surprised!

A Problem in a Corner ​

I was dizzy and nonplused as I went to my corner. Billy Gibson, my manager, was bursting with advice. I told him to let me alone. I wanted to think it out. I had a minute to do it, and I sat there, figuratively with my head between my hands, thinking as hard as I had ever thought. The kind of cogitating a fighter does in the ring may seem no profound exercise of the mind, but it's not quite the same as sitting in your comfortable study for some quiet and leisurely reflection. You're in there getting your brains beaten out, and in a few seconds you may get knocked cold. You're battered and dazed. It is a little difficult to ratiocinate profoundly in such circumstance, especially when you're almost knocked out by sheer surprise, as I was.
It was apparent that Spalla was keyed up with the great old do-or-die spirit, steamed up to give everything he had to beat me. He was throwing more swings than I ever dreamed he had in his system. But why were they hitting me? Why couldn't I get away from the shower of crude haymakers? What was wrong about my boxing? That was what I had to think out during the minute between rounds. Well, I pondered, and the answer came. Every time I feinted him, he would leap in with left and right. In feinting, I would do the orthodox thing--pull back, as I thought, out of his reach. That put my head just in position to be hit by those long secondary swings that followed the original misses. I was being battered around because I was pulling back.
About the time I had that figured out the bell rang. I went out and started feinting Spalla, but, instead of drawing my head back, I leaned forward and brought my head down. Spalla's swings flailed around the top of my cranium. That was the solution of the problem of the swinging Spalla. He kept launching haymakers that never landed, and the knockout was only a matter of time--the referee stopped it finally. My opinion of Spalla was restored. What I admired was his voice--which really was admirable. Last season, Ex-Prize Fighter Spalla made his operatic debut at renowned La Scala in Milan, and scored a resounding success as a baritone.

 

Yes.

 

I guess it comes down to whether you see the war ending after the armistice was signed. Some historians consider that the war ended in 1921.

Saying that the war ended with the armistice might be a bit like saying that the second gulf war ended when Iraq was fully occupied. The second world war did not end in practical terms after Germany surrendered. There was gurilla warfare for some years afterwards.



Or he could jus be guilding the lilly as you say.