The transcript below is from the video “The Most Vicious Heavyweight In History – Jack Dempsey” by Rhythm Boxing.

Rhythm Boxing:

Jack Dempsey is the angry hobo who could. As a teen, Jack, without sin, leaves his large Mormon family with a small inheritance to chase a dream of becoming a champion. Before long, what little he had was gone. With a rumble in his stomach and no place to go, Jack chased migrant work as much as his dream. He once said, “You could have hit me in the chin with a hammer for $5. If you haven’t eaten in days, you’ll understand. It didn’t matter if it was a mining camp, a bar, or a boxcar.”

Rhythm Boxing:

Jack Dempsey fought anytime, anywhere, often for just enough to eat, just enough to keep a dream afloat between jobs. Jack Dempsey was a desperate man and a desperate man is a dangerous thing. When his stomach wasn’t growling, Jack grew into a different animal. 6’1″, 190 lbs of simmering rage, each fight, he made a little more money and got a little closer to his goal until Jack makes his first legendary appearance on film. In his title shot against the Potawatomi giant Jess Willard. Jess was 6’6″ inches and weighed 245 lbs. He won the heavyweight title off an aging politically exiled Jack Johnson in Havana, Cuba. It took a mere 26 rounds of a fight scheduled to go 45. Jess was a huge, strong, powerful man with near infinite stamina, took up Boxing in his late 20s to make some money and found it easy given his massive dimensions.

Rhythm Boxing:

The day was July 4, 1919, 19,500 people gathered under a brutal toledo sun. All of those people owned the same hats. All of those people were about to watch Boxing change in front of their eyes. The simple fact is Jess Willard was a head taller and had 10 inches of reach but strength and stamina tell over time. Jack Dempsey decided he had to get the giant gone quickly. Within a minute of his first appearance on film, he creates his signature move – the Dempsey double shift.

Rhythm Boxing:

Every punch Jack threw was thrown for power. By dropping his weight and stepping in with each foot as he punched, he keeps Willard on defense as he closes the gap. Crossing the beach minefield and getting close enough to drop Jess for the first time. The remains of the round is the filthiest beating in boxing. Jess Willard looked like a baby deer learning to walk in a ring with a wolverine. Made all the worse by the fact that Jack was under no obligation to move to a neutral corner after a knockdown, so Jack Dempsey stood there daring the big man to rise as he stepped around the referee to get to Willard’s back. Any predator knows the best place to attack is from behind.

Rhythm Boxing:

It was a round in the genre of horror. Jess Willard was knocked down seven times and because he was a champion he got up eight. The crowd was in a frenzy, drowning out the bell to end the round. Dempsey thought the fight was stopped and left the ring. The ref and corner had to hurry him back in. Willard was able to stay upright for another horror show with an increasingly unrecognizable Jess Willard playing victim.

Rhythm Boxing:

His champion’s heart called him out for a third round. Willard’s face became a mask of blood and bruise that began leaking down his legs. Jess understandably couldn’t come out for the fourth. He was beaten physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He got up to congratulate the man who tried to slaughter him. As the adrenaline of the mauling wears off, Jess Willard is left alone in a crowd of 19,000. The biggest man of them all felt small as a field mouse. He sat and reevaluated his entire life. Big Jess Willard began to cry. Through a mixture of blood and tears, Jess Willard was repeatedly choking out the words that this would be his retirement. “I have a hundred thousand dollars and a farm in Kansas.” Jess Willard went back to that farm in Kansas and mostly stayed there.

Rhythm Boxing:

Jack Dempsey took Boxing from barely legal to the biggest sport in the U.S. Jack drew the first million dollar gate in Boxing against George Carpentier. The best boxer in French history was also a fighter pilot of some renown. In over 110 fights, he had nearly 90 victories and was reigning light heavyweight champion but he was simply not a heavyweights. Dempsey blew him away in four rounds. It was the first fight ever broadcast over the radio and the first title fight sanctioned by a major commission that still remains today.

Rhythm Boxing:

The next year Jack got in the ring with another giant – Luis Angel Firpo, was a big man and big puncher, nicknamed the “wild bull of the pampas”. Firpo looked tailor-made for Dempsey to put his favorite game plan to work. Dempsey got into his mediator mindset. Even if he had made it look easy but it’s easy to forget that giant slaying is dangerous work. It’s arguably the wildest round in Boxing history. When Jack Dempsey is driven through the ropes by Firpo, Jack claws his way back through the ropes and the war is back on. It was reckless violence and it was incredible. Jack comes out in the second and butchers the wild bull.

Rhythm Boxing:

Jack would finally meet his match in the fighting marine, Gene Tunney. Nearly 130 000 people, a record which stood for nearly 67 years. What Jack had in ferocity, Gene Tunney had in-game planning. The best way to beat Jack Dempsey was simply to not exchange with him. Gene jabbed and moved, clinched and peppered. He certainly outboxed Dempsey because he understood there was no outfighting him. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

Rhythm Boxing:

In an unusually short 10-round fight, Gene soundly decisioned Dempsy. A rematch was held in Soldier Field in Chicago. Another 100,000 strong showed up to see a man who was still very much the same angry hobo he was a decade earlier.

Rhythm Boxing:

He fought the same insistent weaving style but Tunney had him figured out. A puncher like Jack is always dangerous but the game had changed around him when he leveled Gene with a combo, he hovered over him like he did with every other opponent. Only before the fights was a rule made about going to a neutral corner. Jack did what he always did, which gave Gene precious seconds to recover. Supposedly, Gene was on the ground for a count of 14 seconds but rose. Gene would go on to get the decision. Jack laid down his gloves after a fight forever known as the long count fights.

Rhythm Boxing:

When Jack Dempsey retired, he was one of the most famous men in the country. He was secure enough to turn down a trilogy with Tunney and the payday that might have come with it. Jack didn’t languish in his retirement. Jack Dempsey wrote the single most influential book of Boxing technique of the modern era. He didn’t even get out of shape. He didn’t even stop getting into fights. There’s a video of him in his mid-40s mauling a pro wrestler who decided to call him out. Even when him and Jess Willard met for a friendly media piece, Jack just couldn’t help but throw PTSD triggering punches. There’s stories of him deep into his 70s laying out a pair of New York muggers. Boxing is an expression of the beast in us. Even as an old man, the beast never left Jack Dempsey.