Great Dempsey article ... Jimmy De Forest

THE CHAMPION MAKER * A Series of Articles by Jimmy De Forest * The World’s Greatest Trainer * 1923 * ARTICLE IX

The first sight I got of Jack Dempsey was in Grupp's gymnasium, New York City. The man whom I was later to train for the fight, which won him the championship of the world, was then a big, raw-boned youth. He had not attained his full physical growth. ln knowledge of boxing he was yet in the kindergarten class.

With some other pal of his own age he had just come off the “road.” I mean by that, left his knockabout life of beating freights, tramping highways, working in the corn fields in harvest time and going out among the lumber camps.

This early part of his life frequently has been brought up a slur against Dempsey, but I can't see it that way at all.

Many another spirited lad has tried the same thing and later settled down to a chosen business or profession none the worse for haven taken a few hard knocks, known what it means to be hungry and learning generally the inside of life. It is a tough college and many ruin a boy as well as make him, but the fellow who comes out of it all right is a man you generally find you will have to consider in whatever walk of life he may afterward direct his steps.

Battled in Lumber Camp.

Jack afterward used to tell me in our training quarters of the adventures that he and his pal had among the lumber camps. They would arrange fights for purses up there and Jack told me of many whaling’s he had given out to bigger, but clumsier, lumbermen, but did not neglect telling me either of some tough birds he had met who gave him more than he could attend to in the way of staving off a licking himself. It was in the lumber camps he first definitely made up his mind to try to become a professional boxer.

Of course we trainers scout about among gymnasiums looking over likely material and I certainly gave Dempsey considerable observation in those first days of his arrival in New York and training at Grupp’s. I don’t want you to think I spotted him then and there as a coming world's champion. But it was plain that he had the makings of a mighty good fighter—the makings, nothing more. He had a long way to go to put him in the ranks of class.

What he showed to the bouts that would occur daily at Grupp's was that he was big and strong, although not fully developed, and that he had a good swinging right hand punch and a very fair left hand. He was far from being at the time the two-handed man he since become. He had some idea of using his left, however, and that is always a very promising sign. Best of all just then, he showed that he was able to take a lacing. He was not only fearless, but made of good tough stuff. It took a lot of hard punching to faze him. His weight at the time, as I remember it, was between 170 and 175 pounds.

No Start at First.

He didn't begin his career by any performances calculated to earn him the nickname of "K. O." Dempsey. His first fight under the management of John Reisler, better known as "John the Barber" were with Andre Anderson, "Wild Burt” Kenny and John Lester Johnson. He got a decision over the first two and the best he got with Johnson, a more experienced man, was a draw. He created no sensation, but one nevertheless so good an impression that not very long afterward Jack Kearns brought him to me at my training headquarters, then situated at Long Branch, N.J., and asked me to do what I could with him before Dempsey started to take on a series of fights in the Middle West.

The time I allotted was too short to do much, but I did a good deal more with him in that short stretch than I could have done with most fighters, for Dempsey had no idea that he was a world beater or even possible coming beater. He was very willing to be taught and quick to learn—-very quick, indeed.

All I attempted this first time I handled him was to correct the amateurishness of his style—to teach him how not to waste his punches, to cut out so much swinging and straighten his blows. The main feature of his training was with the heavy bag, using straight punches, as I would show them to him from time to time, to shorten the punch. That is the best use of the heavy bag—teaching a man to shorten his punches. The punch delivered with his whole arm extended can have little behind it. But the punch that lands midway against its object is the punch that makes the other fellow grunt or forget the world for a time entirely.

Jack Gets Heavier.

Jack was no longer so raw-boned in appearance. He was beginning to round out to his full stature of manhood. His weight had come up to 180 pounds. And I told Kearns then that his man had developed a knockout blow. I was pleased beyond measure at the remarkable improvement he had begun to show in his left hand. He was no longer forcing himself to use it, but was naturally putting it into play. He was on the way to acquiring a most valuable asset.

All close followers of ring history know what Dempsey did on that trip to the middle west on which Kearns took him. He began then and there to show several evidences of a heavyweight championship contender of the future. He put away Bill Brennan, knocked that tough customer Fireman Flynn out in a round and made Bob Devere and Terry Kellar hit the floor.

These were not star men of the ring, of course, but they were all hard customers for a beginner to go against, and when Dempsey licked them he began to win serious consideration. But the road to the championship of the world is no berry picking expedition and he had yet a long way to go to that day of all days in his career at Toledo.

Dempsey Trained Carefully.

I took a strong personal liking to Dempsey at our very first meeting as boxer and trainer. He took all the work asked of him cheerfully and as I have said, with an eagerness to learn that gets the best out of the trainer himself. A sulky or chesty boy can never bring out a trainer’s best. In his off hours of training he was as full of tricks as a 14-year-old kid.

His favorite diversion was to ring a string across some trees near the camp just high enough to wipe off a man’s hat. And that wasn’t all, for just as the man would be grabbing up to his head and wondering where the hat was gone another string would catch him about the ankles and give him something new to worry about, which would be to prevent falling forward on his nose.

Jack was having a lot of fellows visiting down at the camp, some of them older in the game then himself and pretty pompous at looking him over, and these were the ones that he always somehow or other managed to set his trap for. His favorite indoor sport at night was pumping me dry of stories I knew of fighters of the past. It was our own private little joke that if he did not give a good day’s work on the road and gym, there would be no more stories for him that night.

....

 

Here's another terrific one on Dempsey ..

http://www.sportthemagazine.com/1947/02/746/

 

anoter section of the first ..

THE CHAMPION MAKER * A Series of Articles by Jimmy De Forest * The World’s Greatest Trainer * 1923 * ARTICLE X
The second stage of my training of Jack Dempsey is developing him into the world beater who faced Willard at Toledo was when he was matched to fight Fred Fulton.

Fulton, long and rangy, with a terrific blow, a big reach and a heart, had been much talked of as the legitimate candidate for championship honors, and there were negotiations under way to have him to meet Willard. But these fell through. There was big popular demand at that time, however, for a battle of big men, and thus it was that Jack got his chance to go against Fulton, and when he did so to put himself on the map in a most sensational manner as a man to be considered when future heavyweights might be discussed.

Jack had done well in the Middle West but afterwards he had made a trip to his old home and to the Pacific coast, where I had heard he had been holding reunions with his old friends, even some of those whom he had known when riding the blind baggage and tramping the roads as a youth. I had received word that I was to have Jack to work on again, and this news had made me uneasy as to what might have happened to him—fears that he had been having too many good times and would report to my Long Branch camp completely out of condition.

But when Jack arrived all these fears went into the discard. He may have enjoyed himself with his old pals, but not in ways that would knock him out of shape. He was as big, clean, strong and healthy as ever, and while he had not been in hard training was in the best of condition to start in with again.
Taught Finer Tricks of Game.

This time I had a fair chance to work with him and over him and teach him the finer tricks of the game. There were to be six weeks of training and a lot can be done for the right man—a man with championship stuff in him, in that time.
As soon as I got him to work in the gym I found that he had forgotten nothing of whatever I had taught him regarding the straightening, and shortening of his punches, and he amazed me at the speed which he showed in punching the heavy bag. He had nearly become then what he later became, and that is the fastest bag puncher of any heavy that ever lived. He was readier with his left hand than ever.

The big point that I undertook to bring out in him then, and which has proved one of his greatest assets in the ring, was the training of his punches with a strict view to peculiar shoulder development. Jack has not the characteristic shoulders of a boxer. Such boxers as Corbett and McCoy, Fitzsimmons and Johnson had long, sloping, very flexible shoulder muscles.
Has Shoulders Like Wrestler.
Dempsey’s are bulgier and built largely on top. He has the shoulders of a wrestler. But there was tremendous power growing there and he was becoming the master of short hook and swing I put in much time teaching him to work his blows by throwing his body forward while I developed his wrist and forearm muscles.

In accomplishing this I used almost entirely the mechanism I have already mentioned—the wooden upright bar built in three sections like a telescope drawn out. The hands are first clasped around a narrow handle then an upper thicker handle, then around a third handle far too thick for the hand to clasp entirely. The fighter twists and twists at these handles winding a rope that is drawing up a heavy weight.

The result of this was to give Dempsey terrific power in his forearms, and develop a hitting style in Dempsey different than that possessed by any other fighter. Out of it his marvelously swift right to the body, his lightning right hook to the jaw and his always surprising left hook to the jaw—a left hook with K.O. force in it equal to that of his right. Those are his three best punches.

Head Roll Improvement.

Another important weapon I gave him in this second training in my Long Branch camp was not of attack but of defense. It was an improvement on the English head roll. At least I thought it was, and Dempsey will tell you himself of its high value. The idea is never give your opponent a set target at your chin or any part of your face. The English were trained to do it by keeping up a constant circular motion of the face. But my way was to keep my man rocking his head from side to side like the pendulum of a clock.

That does more than merely mystify an opponent. It also means that your head is loosely held and that fact greatly lessons the effect of any blow put on it. It also strengthens the muscles of the neck to resist the shocks of blows. One of the reasons which allowed Battling Nelson to bear the brunt of the heaviest attacks and outwear many abler men in the boxing line was that he carried a heavyweight’s neck on a lightweight’s body. I think he wore something like a seventeen collar.

I found Dempsey unspoiled by promises of greater success in the ring then he had ever dreamed of attaining. I am sure, when he first came as a raw kid into Grupp’s gymnasium and later when I was giving him his first real training when he found a manager in the astute Kearns. It was genuine friendliness that grew up between us and continued to grow that not only helped him but continued to bring out in me the best I had.

Also Developed Body.

It wasn’t only in working in the gym and putting him through several paces by which I added his development, but I carried away with me nights the picture in my mind of the big fellow’s body and studied it at every point see where else a new strength in his physique might lie.

I never worried about his legs, but carry little supercilious flesh and I tried them out and found them to be tireless. Besides that, sometimes when we got on the round he would show off to me the speed he had in them. And I can set it down that when the ring got Dempsey a great runner was lost to that other branch of sport. Jack Dempsey can run like a deer. I never clocked him exactly, but I have seen great runners go and he could have developed to give the best of them the speediest rumbles of their lives.

I turned him out of my Long Branch camp as confident that he was going beat Fulton as if Jack was going to meet a six-month-old baby.

 

THE CHAMPION MAKER * A Series of Articles by Jimmy De Forest * The World’s Greatest Trainer * 1923

ARTICLE XIII.---HOW DEMPSEY WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

All the dope on how Dempsey hoped to win the championship from Willard had been that he was going to go right in and rush him. Willard believed this himself as I knew from having watched the champion, through field glasses, boxing in his camp only half a mile away. It was plain that Willard was planning to meet a rush attack with a straight left followed by a smashing uppercut.

There was a surprise coming to Willard. It was planned as Jack and I took an easy three-mile walk on the morning of July 4, the day of the fight.

I felt satisfied that I was behind a champion. I knew he was physically topnotch and ready, in this regard, to put up the greatest fight of his career. He was, besides, displaying not the least nervousness over the coming event. You would think he hardly realized the importance of it to him. I knew he had slept soundly, for I had visited his bedside four times during the night to see that he didn’t toss the covers off and give the lake winds a chance to stiffen the muscles of the shoulders and arms. I knew he had scarcely stirred in his sleep the night long.

PLANNED A SURPRISE.

“Jack,” I said, as we strolled along. “Willard is all set to meet a rush from you. The way to surprise and puzzle him is for you to begin by hitting and getting away. He will be looking to meet a rush with a straight left to the face. Look out for that left Lead and get away about three or four times, till you see that he is puzzled. And just then when he begins to figure you mean to make a long fight of it, go in and take him---the right to the heart, a left cross and then the right hook.

“As soon as we get into the ring, I’ll leave you and go over to Willard’s corner. Don’t let that worry you, because it is my job to give him a good, close looking over. I want to see if his heart is jumpy or beating slow. If it is jumpy then I am going to advise you to go in to beat him in the first round after you have first puzzled him with the hit and getaway, but if his heart is slow and regular, I may I have to change the scheme, because of course he is a big, strong fellow and it may be necessary for you to do the McCoy and cut him to pieces, as I know you can, before going in to finish him.

“All right, Jimmy,” said Dempsey, “whatever you advise me when I’m in there I’ll do.”

MEANT $1,000,000 AND MORE.

“Remember, kid,” I added, “it means $1,000,000 and more to you and more fame than any man could want. Remember to pay no attention to anything that is said to you or yelled at you unless you recognize my voice. Remember there’s only one man in front of you and that’s Willard, and only one man behind you and that’s me.”
Jack slapped me on the back.

“I got that good and straight, Jimmy,” he said. “And we are sure going to fool ‘em.”

“You said it!”

“All the wise birds think I haven’t got the stuff and he’s too big for me. You just wise him up in his corner and give me the right dope to go on, Jim, and I’ll put it over.”

And that is the way he felt when we started for the arena about 2:00 o’clock that afternoon. Jack was sprinting on his way to his dressing room, and when he got his clothes off, pranced all around the place showing off to me in what perfect muscular form he was.

ABOUT THOSE TAPED HANDS.

Soon afterwards I took up the job of tapping his hands. Right here is where I have a statement to make to the public once and for all. The punching power that Dempsey had developed over all his previous battles proved so amazing to many persons when he mowed big Willard down. The crack and the kick of his blows were so forceful that after the fight many of those who had lost heavily on Willard turned detractors at Dempsey and myself. They spread stories which got wide circulation to the effect that I had “doped” the tape on Dempsey’s hands.

Some of them had it that, I had doped plaster of paris between the gauze strips which hardened after Dempsey got his hands into the gloves. Others speculated “tea lead” This is the paper, this lead that comes from tea boxes and has figured in the use of bandages by unscrupulous managers, trainers and fighters.

I have never played the game that way, and for me to have done so in Dempsey’s case would have been sheer idiocy. For what Dempsey most needed to beat Willard was speed. And to have weighed his hands would have defeated his own purpose. It would have made Dempsey’s hands too heavy for fast use and would have slowed him up to the ponderous Willard’s own gait.

SOAKED HANDS IN BRINE.

It is true, though, that Dempsey went into the ring that day his hands were hard as steel-jacketed bullets, and the reason for that was that every morning and night from the day we began training I had made Jack soak his hands in brine---a strong, sharp brine. It puckered and shrunk the skin until it was cured to the toughness of leather. All the fat and softness was plucked out of them. They were the toughest pair of hands in the United States that day. And all I put on them when we went into the ring was seven wraps of soft gauze and two wraps of adhesive tape. That’s everything that was in Jack’s gloves besides his hands the day he made a quitter of big Willard. I guess I need not go into the details of the fight itself, which is still vividly remembered, same as the intimate things regarding it which have never been published.

As I had told Dempsey, I would go the instant we got into the ring. I bustled over to Willard’s corner and leaned closely over him demanding a last look at the bandages. But I knew these were alright and that Kearns had seen to them. What I was after was a study of Willard’s heart and I was tickled when I saw it was beating so hard it had the flesh on his chest jumping. So I went back to Dempsey’s corner and said;

“He’s ripe for it Jack, fool him a few times by making him think you are going to make a hit and get away of it and then when you’ve got him guessing, go in with what we’ve practiced---the right, left cross and right hook.”

“All set, Jim,” said Jack with a wink and a smile. And it’s history that our plan went through.

CUT WILLARD TO RIBBONS.

By the end of the second round I knew Dempsey would be the new champion, and everybody was beginning to realize it, for Jack’s speed had Willard practically defenseless, and the force of the punches Dempsey was putting over had Willard’s face cut to pieces and his eyes all but completely useless.

In the fatal third, however, there was one blow that Willard landed which almost reversed all he had lost and held the championship for him. It was a last gasp punch, but it was a terrific one---a right hand straight punch that landed near Jack’s solar plexus and nearly crumpled him. If Willard could have followed that up with a hook in the jaw he might have got Dempsey. But when he landed it he was beaten and wild and did not have the stuff left to follow it up. Jack carried a sore spot from that punch for ten days afterward.

“Did you see it!” he asked me, coming back to his corner.

“I did.”

“Well, I felt it.” grunted Dempsey.

“I hope nobody else saw it.”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t.” I answered. Nor did they, in so far as the newspaper reports I read went, or as the talk I heard afterward.
Back in his dressing room Jack gave me a boyish hug and said;

“Well Jim, we did it!”

And in every read word since Dempsey has given and taken that he has not forgotten who trained him and who was in his corner when he won the championship of the world.

 

Nice quality footage of a pretty ripped 1921 Dempsey ..

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/dempsey-beats-carpentier/query/jack+dempsey

 

More .. sorry out of order .. posting them as I find them .. wonderful thread about getting Dempsey ready for Willard ..

Dempsey having cracked the hardest nut in Billy Miske, went on a long barnstorming trip and then, in answer to public feeling and demand, got his chance to fight for the heavyweight crown.

Shortly after the articles were signed for his fight with Jess Willard, Jack Kearns wrote to ask me what my terms would be to train Dempsey for the fight. In reply to the letter I sent him he telegraphed me from Toledo, Ohio on May 18, 1910 as follows:

Jimmy De Forest
Long Branch, N.J.

“Will accept your terms. You will have full charge of Dempsey’s training. Will have others to rub and box. Would like to have you here right away. Have already engaged Lester Johnson, Big Bill Tate, Jamaica Kid, Jack Grier. Try and line up some others, big fellows to work as they will not last long. Ship me your big bag at once. Write me when you can come, as I must have you to look after Jack.
(Signed) “JACK KEARNS”

I came pretty near turning back when I saw the house that had been engaged as training quarters for Dempsey on Maumee Bay. The house was built on piles with the water of the lake seeping underneath and flanked on the land side by a rocky hill that was a veritable watershed and almost made the cottage a thing afloat.

Old-Fashioned Washtub.

There was no shower bath and no gymnasium paraphernalia. To bathe and rub Dempsey I had to organize a bucket brigade composed of Bill Tate, Jamaica Kid, One Round Davis and other sparring partners and stand Jack up in an old-fashioned, round wooden washtub.

However, within three days, I had things shipshape. I had the wrist machine, pulley ropes for chest development, and the small punching bag erected in the cottage and the big bag set up on a platform inside a put up within 100 feet of the house where the public was to come and watch Dempsey in his afternoon tryouts.

In condition Dempsey softened considerably due to the irregular living that theatrical engagements bring about. He had not been dissipating, but late retiring hours and the unwholesome diet of small hotels had thrown him off form largely in the matter of wind. I then set him a program of getting up at 7 o’clock in the morning, giving him three miles roadwork, running and walking, intermittently, finishing the last mile on a hot sprint.

The “Shower Bath.”

After the run, of course, came the shower, which consisted of buckets of water thrown on him by a half a dozen sparring partners, and then a loaf until noon.
In the first two weeks Dempsey took to the lake for swimming of which he is very fond, but I was forced to stop it because swimming is weakening to a man in training. The resistance of cold that his body is put to by the water is not good for a man’s heart or endurance. Twice a week is as much as anybody should go in for a swim.

Then in the afternoons I would put him on his sparring partners. Bill Tate we used a great deal because he was the same size as Willard and with practically the same reach and method of fighting. Jamaica Kid was our most valuable ally because he was fast and could hit and could take it. With him I could let Dempsey go at full pace. Terry Keller would come next because of his fast footwork, and then I would give him a final rough and tumble round with Jack Ross, a big heavy of no skill but great willingness to carry a battle on.

Dempsey Never Sulked.

Jack Dempsey is the best-natured great fighter I have ever dealt with. He never sulked at any time during his training, and took everything cheerfully, and my only trouble with him came first when I cut off his swimming, but he resigned himself to that, and second when I cut out his rowing, and third when I insisted he go to bed at 9:30 o’clock.

My objection to the rowing was simply that I had scientific exercises for him to do and the rowing served no purpose, while at the same time it might take up too much of his stamina. I spoke to him about giving it up and he didn’t like the idea, so that night I went out and set the oars adrift. He raised cain about that and I sympathized with him, told him I would find out who did it, and he could kick the fellow out of camp. That night I stole out and set the boat adrift and sympathized with him again at breakfast. This time he was wise and slapped me on the jaw and burst out laughing.

I was worried about the wind on the lake. It would strike up fiercely in the early hours of the morning, and in spite of the fact that it was late in May the wind damp and chilly. I slept in the room immediately adjoining Dempsey’s, and at least three times at night made it my business to get up and see that his arms and shoulders remained covered, because for them to have become chilled would have meant that I would have to begin all over again training and rubbing, or as we trainers say, “oiling his sinews.”

Wrist Machine Worked Wonders.

My main effort in the first three weeks of training was to increase the strength of his wrist and forearms by the use of the wrist-machine. I have already described the machine as a solid piece of wood shaped as an open telescope. In six weeks of this exercise I increased the dimensions of Dempsey’s wrist one-half inch and the biceps of the forearms one-inch and a half.

I installed a special chef, who cooked strictly by my orders. Dempsey’s breakfast consisted of a cup of hot water immediately on arising, apple sauce, soft scrambled eggs, bacon and one cup of coffee. His heaviest meal was taken at midday. No fried foods or stews permitted.

Within four weeks after I started to train, I had brought him up to condition to enter a ring for a real battle, and I planned that he should have one. On this day, with none present, but myself and his sparring partners. I made him take on five men for the distance of 12 rounds which was the distance he must go with Willard. He first took on Terry Keller for three rounds, knocked One Round Davis out toward the end of the second round, knocked Jack Ross out in two minutes and 50 seconds of fighting, and then he and the Jamaica Kid went into a whale of a bout for three rounds and the last three were with Bill Tate, the human replica of Willard. He gratified me in every way as to speed, wind, and endurance from that day I was confident I was handling a coming champion.

Hour of Secret Training.

There were a great many spies coming around our camp from the Willard “grand” Headquarters and I instituted an hour of secret training that they never got close until the day before the fight.

Instead of sending Dempsey out on the road in the morning. I sent a “dummy” out with three of the camp residents, the “dummy” wearing Dempsey’s sweater and hat and being of his like and general appearance. Meanwhile Dempsey and I would go later into the big tent and no one ever knew.

 

Is that also Gateway because I think that's where I found them .. either way you are correct .. I just get excited to share golden nuggets .. :good