Jim Jeffries, trying to regain his title from Jack Johnson was knocked down and partly out of the ring by Jack and then helped to his feet by his seconds ,why wasn't he dsq'd? One of Jeffries seconds can clearly be seen inside the ropes helping him regain his feet this warranted an immediate and automatic dsq . It does today and it did then, as the second Sharkey v Corbett fight shows when Corbett was getting a hiding ,his chief second Con McVey entered the ring causing an immediate cessation of the fight and Sharkey was awarded the fight on a dsq. "According to Referee Kelly, Corbett's man McVey attempted to climb through the ropes but was blocked by a policeman. Seconds later the same fellow crawled into the ring and Kelly was forced to order the men to their corners, whereupon he declared all bets were off and Corbett was disqualified." Why wasn't Jeffries penalized in the same way? This content is protected
Probabaly because he was James J. Jeffries and pretty much everybody in attendance wanted him to win.
several reasons. Tex Rickard was not a professional referee. Probably Rickard (and I think Johnson) would not have wanted the fight to end on a DQ. Did Nevada have any kind of official rules in those days? It only delayed the end a few seconds. Hardly worth starting up a flap about.
The man making all the fuss about the Dempsey Firpo fight is the biggest booster of Jeffries on this forum. Double standards?
Did a DQ cancel wagers? Boy, DQ'ing a beaten Jeff just before the end would have really gone over well with the guys who bet on Johnson in that case. My own take is that there is a difference in that Jeff was finished anyway. It made no real difference. If one thinks Dempsey was illegally helped, it changed the outcome of the fight. Personally I don't think Dempsey was illegally helped and off the New York Times report was back in the ring well before ten. The Times reporter said he was on his feet back in the ring in five seconds.
The rules only covered being on the floor of the ring ,not being out of the ring. How one interprets reporters pushing Dempsey off them is personal opinion.As Dempsey was back in the ring on the count of 3 and fighting back at 4 I don't see that it changed anything.The fact that the referee failed to enforce the neutral corner rule is another matter.
