The Irish Heavyweights: A St. Patricks Day Salute
One of Dempsey toughest fight was against a fellow Irish the wily, hard to hit, Tommy Gibbons who took Dempsey fifteen rounds in the charged atmosphere of Shelby, Montana. Funding the fight would break the Montana town and Dempsey felt the danger in the air.
Dempsey described his ring entrance"For the first and only time, I was more worried about getting hurt by the crowd than by the guy I was fighting. I got a pretty good blast when introduced. The crowd was hollering and raising hell. I looked around for my bodyguard, a colorful New York character named Wild Bill Lyons, who packed two pearl-handled pistols and used to talk a lot about his days in the West. Wild Bill was under the ring, hiding."
Dempsey, and his crafty manager Tex Rickard, exited Shelby running but his most famous fight, with another fellow Irishman, was in his future.
Gene Tunney parents were Irish immigrants and he honed his fighting style in the Marines during the First World War. His style owed more to Gentleman Jim Corbett then it did to the brawling John L Sullivan. And like Corbett his style would be a perfect matching for the rushing, hard hitting Dempsey.
Tunney, a light weight who had beat Gibbons to earn his shot, out boxed Dempsey and took his crown in a shocking ten round decision in Philadelphia, PA. Afterward the battered Dempsey uttered that famous line, later robbed by Ronald Reagan to describe the assassination attempt on the President, to his wife "Honey, I forgot to duck."
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