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By Root 754 0

vicious tough-guy. While Dempsey, in Tunney’s words, “depended on his wallop,” Tunney was a highly disciplined, intelligent technician who relied on tactics and skills. Tunney’s wholesome public image blended “self-improvement, social idealism, and physical toughness” in contrast to the perceived hedonism and immorality of his era. Like Charles Lindbergh, Tunney managed to reassure his fans that old-fashioned values could coexist alongside the positive aspects of modernity and science. He attributed his success in the ring to his study of physiognomy, psychology and boxing technique. Where Dempsey was unruly, self-indulgent, passionate and spontaneous, Tunney was controlled, disciplined, methodical . . . and just a little boring.

The mood had changed at Dempsey’s training camp from the louche, carefree days in Saratoga Springs. Kearns was noticeably absent and the rich and famous Dempsey was guarded by detectives night and day. His relationship with Estelle was strained and he was suffering from eczema and intestinal flu, both brought on by stress. His retinue made excuses for him as he failed to land punches on his sparring partner, telling one another that he was taking it easy on his friend—but the truth was that Dempsey was not in ring condition. Physically and mentally he was no longer the “jungle Fighter” of the old days, but because Rickard persuaded him he could beat Tunney, Dempsey carried on. Dempsey’s reputation alone ensured that he was the 4-1 on.

A confident Tunney arrived in Philadelphia in an airplane for the fight, smiling and waving for the crowds. Over 120,000 people had come to the Sesquicentennial Stadium on a dark, damp September night, among them W. R. Hearst, Babe Ruth, Norma Talmadge (Constance’s sister), Florenz Ziegfeld, Charlie Chaplin, and the usual gathering of Astors, Rockefellers, Whitneys and Roosevelts in the $27.50 ringside seats, along side the sports-writers and commentators. Associated Press assigned first eight and then ten men to cover the contest; the New York Times devoted seven pages of its central section (rather than its sports pages) to its coverage of the fight. Gate receipts totaled nearly $2 million.

Tunney’s game plan was to psych Dempsey out before the fight by a demonstration of bluff self-belief. As they got ready to enter the ring, Tunney made an impatient Dempsey wait, taking as long as he could to bandage his fists. Once they started fighting Tunney hung back, allowing Dempsey to think he was afraid of him, waiting for the moment when a newly over-confident Dempsey would make a mistake that would allow Tunney to strike. Dempsey said later that he knew he was beaten from Tunney’s first blow. Out of fight-practice, flat-footed, his timing off, the champion lost on points in a unanimous decision by the judges.

In defeat, though, Dempsey discovered something he had never known before: the support of the crowd. Always in the past his audiences had booed him while they bet on him to win, but never until the Tunney fight had they taken him to their hearts. “Losing was the making of me,” he said later. “I had never been cheered before.”

Paul Gallico described the moment when Dempsey made the transition from “most unpopular and despised” of sportsmen to best-loved. In the early hours of the morning the former champion made his way back to his room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where his wife, who could not bear to watch him fight, was waiting for him. Estelle took him in her arms and touched his purple, shapeless face tenderly. “What happened, Ginsberg?” she asked, using her pet name for him. “Dempsey grinned out of the good corner of his mouth,” wrote Gallico: “‘Honey, I forgot to duck.’” Gallico believed that this dichotomy between Dempsey’s self-effacing gentleness outside the ring and his toughness inside it was the key to his appeal. “How wonderful to be so quiet, so gentlemanly—and yet so terrible!”

Moved by the crowd’s reaction to his defeat, yet devastated by the loss of his title, Dempsey returned to Hollywood. Babe Ruth, whom he had first become friends with in the