Jack Dempsey and The Color Line...

As far as I'm concerned the jury's still out.Some saw it low, some didn't. The hook that put him down and out looked high enough.

 

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
The ko came in the seventh round but it was a beaten Sharkey that went to his corner at the end of round six. He lay back and closed his eyes. He no longer tried to paralyse Dempsey with a piercing look. Something terrible and unseemly lit up Dempseys face before the seventh round. Sharkey came forward no longer up and coming, no longer with flickering ambition instead he was marching to be knocked out. Sharkey appeared gone his eyes looked like pale China blue marble. The fight was out of him. Nobody in this world could take the lambasting he had on his stomach. I saw a twist of agony while his eyes rolled upwards as he took that crushing right on the stomach. the next moment his face was thrust over to one side white, helpless despairing as consciousness fled. They counted him out and carried him to his corner. He sagged back to the ropes and tears rolled down his cheeks. He was sobbing. When Dempsey entered the ring he turned his back on the vicious stare that Sharkey relies upon. When Sullivan called them to center ring Sharkey stared murder and Dempsey stared manslaughter in return.

Dempsey..."I am glad the doctor says that he did not find any evidence of a low punch. I certainly tried to keep them up although I knew when he started to complain that I was hurting him to the body so of course I made that the target. The punches that stopped him were a right to the body and a left hook to the jaw but it was the body punch that did all the work. That shot I put him down with in the third should have kept him down. He surprised me when he got to his feet. He's tough"

Doctor William Walker physician to the boxing commission examined Sharkey in his dressing room as a result of Sharkeys claim of foul but said that he saw no evidence of a foul having been committed.

 

My old instructor used to start with, "keep your guard up all the time".



"Sharkey I fought him to the body,because you look for a man's weakness,and he didn't like to get hit to the body.
I was fighting him in close.
He turned to the referee and said ,"He's hitting me low".

"About that time I let a punch go ,a left hook,hit him on the chin.and knocked him out. What the hell .You're in there to win it.
He had no business saying nothing to the referee.I was right
He said I hit him when he wasn't looking? The fight' s still on you should be looking , not at the referee,looking at me.He made the mistake himself ,I didn't ."
Jack Dempsey 1970.

" I'd been getting punches below,and then the last one hurt so much,I just went to tell the referee,"tell him to keep em up ",and then I got it and that was that.
I turned to say to the referee "tell him to keep the punches up",he hit me with a left hook.I got knocked out". " He was a perpetual motion,kept punching and punching.If there was anything open in the direction he was punching,he would hurt you".

Jack Sharkey 1971.

 

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Ref Sullivan
"What made Sharkey ready for the ko was a short right hand drive to the solar plexus that traveled about eight inches. Dempsey did hit Sharkey below the waist line earlier in the round but it was a glancing blow. None of the blows in that flurry landed to the groin and he showed no signs of being fouled when I examined him in his dressing room. I had warned Dempsey twice in the contest for a tendency to swing too low. What everyone has overlooked is that I warned Sharkey twice for doing the exact same thing. Sharkeys also held Dempsey with one hand and hit him with the other."

Brooklyn Call report of fight:
The more I study the aftermath of the bout and call into mind Sharkeys actions after he went down and until he left the ring along with his conduct in the dressing room and the report from Doctor Walker the more I am convinced that the three blows that I saw did not injure Sharkey. Public opinion seems to be veering to accept the referee and the official physician that Sharkey was not hit in the groin. Sharkey issued a public statement that one of the blows was delivered across the groin and therefore did damage but left no bruises. However as I recall the final flurry Dempsey did not hook any blow around sideways. Instead he brought them all straight up and I found no one that saw a sideswipe.

Ref Osullivan:
"Dempsey had Sharkey near a corner and was hammering the body. I saw one low right hand punch which did no harm and I came up to them and said "keep your hands up Jack I mean you Dempsey." Dempsey grunted "all right". The were still hitting freely and at that instant Dempsey struck that terrible short right to the abdomen above the belt or onto the solar plexus. I was not bewildered by the incident as this is generally the way Dempsey stops the men who do not go the distance with him. Sharkey was not injured by any low blow but instead a perfectly clean punch to the wind. What caused me to hesitate in taking the count is seeing clear that Dempsey step clear of his fallen opponent by going to a distant corner. I took the count from the timekeeper at 4 who was hammering out the seconds on the canvas with a wooden hammer. "I am counting you out Sharkey you had better get up I said as I took up the count but he did not get up."

 

Yes Mc. Dempsey was exonerated by the referee and that's all that counts, otherwise Every decision in which a referee was involved [ numbering in the tens of thousands], should and would be invalid today ! We would have to throw away the record books for certain...Please folks do not tell me that the name Jack Dempsey doesn't invoke wrath amongst a handful of posters only on ESB...His name is like a red cape to a bull...When I came to ESB I became astonished how so many threads and posters
wrote so many negative sayings about a man who fought so many years ago, and was held in such high esteem by millions of fight fans and the public in general lo these many years. Reading these posters demeaning Dempsey one would think he was the
reincarnation of Jack the Ripper of Whitechapel fame...
These naysayers of ESB somehow get their joys today kicking a man who fought 90 years ago in a much harsher time as my dad and millions of others lived through, and their knowledge of the
days Dempsey fought compares to squat next to the thousands of fighters, boxing writers, boxing trainers, and multitudes of fight fans who SAW him at his best and declared Jack Dempsey amongst the true greats in the heavyweight pantheon of boxing...And may I add a beloved gentleman amongst his fellow citizens throughout his long life...Only on ESB folks, ONLY on ESB.

 

Gene Tunney was superior to all of them. Hell, he beat Greb repeatedly, and he knocked out Carpentier and Gibbons.

You think Firpo and Brennan were better than Gene Tunney?

Go sit down somewhere. :roll:

Sharkey, in the second half of the 1920s, would've likely beaten all of the names you listed, too.

 

Tunney beat Greb over and over again. He proved he was better in the ring. He proved he was better than Carpentier and Gibbons, too, when he stopped them.

Tunney proved he was the better man inside the ring against practically everyone Berlenbach named.

And Dempsey fought Tunney.

Tunney and Sharkey were no slouches.

And if Dempsey had faced Wills, it would've probably ended up like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBOUmkoI44w

That said, Dempsey should've fought Wills. Wills was the top contender for years. Then it was Tunney. And then it was Sharkey. It was NEVER Greb.

Enough of this Greb cr*p. Tunney was better than him. Dempsey fought Tunney.

 

No he didn't. Tunney beat Greb clearly twice in five fights.

 

I am going through my old archives of newspaper clippings. Here is one.

"Pictures disprove Sharkeys claim"
Blows that contributed to Dempseys victory apparently Fair slow movie shows
The official slow motion pictures of the Dempsey Sharkey fight were shown at Yankee stadium last night showing the milling in the seventh round. This revealed that the disputed blow which contributed to Dempseys victory was fair. The film was only shown to newspaper reporters.

The film was run three times to permit the newspapermen to compare there judgements. The slow motion of the fighters show that Dempsey struck three hard rights to the stomach of Sharkey before delivering the left hook that knocked out his opponent. The pictures showed that Sharkey was wearing his trunks higher than Dempsey which led the newspapermen to conclude this fact may have contributed to the confusion of the bouts end. Rickard watching the film leaned intently forward in his chair. There is the right hand it lands in the pit of the stomach. Now the left to the jaw. That's the knockout. All very clear.

The pictures showed a great majority of Dempseys blows were to the body. They were short vicious jabs and hooks to the ribs or pit of the stomach. The continual raining of these blows caused Sharkey to slow up after round 4.

When the final blows were delivered the fighters were at a slight angle. Dempseys heavy upper thrusts appeared just on the beltline of Sharkeys trunks. Some of the observers thought these blows were close to the line. A FEW OF THE NEWSPAPER CRITICS STILL CLAIM THE DISPUTED BLOW WAS LOW BUT THE MAJORITY AGREED THE PUNCHES WERE FAIR.

 

If so, Greb would have been the top heavyweight contender.

He wasn't. EVER.

 

That's from the evening independent.