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Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey

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Before the World War I, boxing was an informal affair controlled by a few men without the regulations of today. Safety concerns were strictly the responsibility of the fighter (which continues today to a smaller extant). But the Roaring Twenties brought a popularity to boxing that peaked with the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney fights, as popular in their day as the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fights (see "Beyond Glory" -2005- by David Margolick) or the trio of Muhammad Ali-Joe Fraizier battles (see "Sound and Fury" -2006- by David Kindred).

"Tunney" is a dual biography of both Dempsey and Tunney, their livies and a cultural times approach. It traces their respective careers, climaxing with their two epic fights, including the infamous "long count" which allowed Tunney time to recover and win the fight. It traces their respective post-fight lives and of their unlikely friendship. Funny and readable, "Tunney was make a great gift for the holidays.

After his first and only defeat in the ring,
heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney salved his
physical and mental anguish by pondering the pithy
perplexities of Shakespeare's retelling of the Iliad,
Troilus and Cressida. Lanky, literate, blessed with
athletic and mental agility, uncommon self-possession,
and artistic tastes, ranging from Victor Hugo to
Wagnerian opera, Gene Tunney is portrayed as a
pugilistic enigma in Jack Cavanaugh's fascinating
biography. A Marine Corps boxing champion in WWI who,
after turning pro, went undefeated as a heavyweight
(his only loss came as a light-heavyweight), Tunney
was knocked down only once in his career. He retired
at age 31, married heiress Polly Lauder, and for the
rest of his life pursued a variety of business
ventures and the arts. Tunney, like F. Scott
Fitzergerald's Gatsby, was a remarkable, self-created
individual. Tunney's heroic flaw, however, was that
he wasn't the champ the people wanted him to be -- but
what a fighter he was. What a man.

Jack Cavanaugh's wide-ranging biography chronicles not
only Tunney, but also the parallel rise of his
nemesis, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. Tunney
defeated Dempsey twice, the first time to take the
title from Dempsey in the "fight of the century" in
1927. Their rematch a year later became an indelible
event in boxing and sport history when Tunney was
knocked down by Dempsey for the only time in his
career in the round that became known as the "long
count." Cavanaugh takes the reader on a fabulous
carnival ride through the world of boxing as well as
providing a wonderful panorama of American popular
culture during the 1920s.

Cavanaugh engages the reader early with Tunney's
upbringing in Greenwich Village in New York. Tunney's
Irish immigrant father, John, was a hardworking
stevedore who labored on the docks of the Hudson
River. John loved boxing and encouraged his oldest
son, James, called by family members "Gene," to box,
buying him gloves when he was ten years old. A tall,
rangy kid, Gene Tunney learned how to fight not only
for self-protection but also to defend his two younger
brothers. It's not clear that Tunney ever loved
fighting -- he was simply very good at it, as he was
at almost everything he was to do in life from boxing
to literature to business. He was highly disciplined,
adept at learning and adapting from previous mistakes,
and had unusually high self-confidence in his mental
and physical abilities.

Cavanaugh also plumbs fascinating biographical
information about heavyweight champion and
contemporary rival, Jack Dempsey. Dempsey's
relentless, snarling, back-'em-up with hooks and
uppercuts from out of his trademark coal miner crouch
served as a marked contrast to Tunney's master-boxer
style. Dempsey's story -- going from town to town,
fighting grown men in bars while still a teenager --
is boxing true grit. A charismatic fighter before,
during, and after becoming champion, Dempsey had his
share of image problems, stemming from a highly
publicized divorce as well as the incorrect, yet
public, perception that he avoided fighting in WWI.
Dempsey was immortalized as an American icon in the
famous George Bellows painting depicting him being
knocked out of the ring (in one of eleven total
knockdowns in less than four minutes) in his fight
with the Argentinean "Bull of the Pampas," Luis Firpo.
Firpo, who incredibly became a successful businessman
and one of the wealthiest people in South America,
commented, "so many writers pushed him [Dempsey] back
in the ring it looked like he was getting a back
massage!"

Cavanaugh also describes an eerie foreshadowing when
Dempsey and Tunney accidentally met on a ferry in New
York. Tunney, recognizing Dempsey, strode over and
introduced himself. Dempsey, as affable and friendly
outside the ring as he was a raging pit bull inside,
even advised Tunney how he could wrap his right hand
to protect a knuckle that Tunney had previously
injured. The right hand, of course, was one of
Tunney's most damaging weapons in his future
domination of Dempsey in their subsequent twenty
championship rounds against each other.
A fascinating digression in Tunney's tale is
Cavanaugh's discussion of the great lightweight
champion Benny Leonard, about whom writer Budd
Schulberg said, "I think that Leonard was to many
young Jews what Ali became to young blacks many years
later." Cavanaugh tells the "you can't make this
stuff up" story of Leonard's savage pounding of Irish
Eddie Finnegan in a fight that took place in western
Pennsylvania. Amidst the din of anti-Semitic catcalls
and insults aimed at Leonard, Finnegan startled
Leonard by begging in Yiddish for Leonard to take it
easy on him -- telling him that his real name was
Seymour Rosenbaum!

Still another fascinating and entertaining side story
is Cavanaugh's mention of five-time Tunney opponent
Harry "The Pittsburgh Windmill" Greb. An incredible
fighter who threw hailstorms of legal and illegal
punches from every angle, Greb rarely trained, was a
wanton womanizer, had perfect hair, powdered his face,
and defied common sociological explanations as to how
and why he ever got into and liked the fight game.
Greb was the only man ever to beat Tunney, so badly,
in fact, that writer Grantland Rice said it was "like
a butcher hammering a Swiss steak." Harry Greb, who
is ranked by boxing historian Burt Sugar ahead of
Dempsey, Tunney, and Ali (#5 out of the hundred
greatest fighters), is fabulous and, of course,
ultimately tragic.

But there's much more. Cavanaugh tells the
machinations behind another "fight of the century,"
the Jack Johnson versus Jim Jeffries title fight in
Reno, Nevada, in 1912. And then there are the stories
of the Jack Londonesque life of boxing promoter Tex
Rickard, quotes by "Golden Age of Sportswriters"
characters, like Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, Ring
Lardner, W.O. McGeehan and the
hard-drinking-ukulele-playing Hype Igoe ⦠and
there's more, incidental to Tunney. But who cares?
It's vaudeville, it's a Broadway musical revue, it's
boxing, and it's great.
.
The second half of the biography is more
straightforward from the reader's standpoint as it
chronicles Tunney's two fights with Jack Dempsey.
Tunney's taste for reading the classics made for a lot
of press. Tunney, for his part, was annoyed,
sometimes disdainful, and tried to play it down. But
when hearing of Tunney's training camp reading habits,
Jack Dempsey's bodyguard told Dempsey, "The fight's in
the bag, Jack. The so and so is reading a book!"

The first fight between Tunney and Dempsey took place
on September 23, 1926, in Philadelphia's
Sesquicentennial Stadium. According to Cavanaugh, it
was the "biggest sports attraction ever held before
the largest sports crowd of all time." Attendees
included, among others, the Astors, the Vanderbilts,
Irving Berlin, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's
three sons, William Randolph Hearst, Flo Zigfield,
Babe Ruth, Gertrude Ederle (the first woman to swim
the English Channel), Walter Chrysler, New York City
Mayor Jimmy Walker, Ellis Gimbel, Leopold Stokowski,
Douglas MacArthur, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Harry
Sinclair, William Wrigley, Andrew Mellon, Charles
Schwab, Bobby Jones, Arnold Rothstein, Abe Attell,
eight members of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team,
including Shoeless Joe Jackson, and more women
(estimated at 10,000 out of a total 135,000 who came
to the fight) than had ever attended a boxing match.
Incredibly, seemingly totally out of character, and
after vehemently denying rumors, Tunney and a
colleague took off from a New York golf course in a
bi-plane and flew to Philly the day of the fight -
unheard of in a day when rail travel and the
automobile were the preferred public modes of
transportation. Though it turned out to be a mistake
(the pilot got lost in the fog and the flight was
nauseating), Tunney, nonetheless, had no problem
handling Dempsey. His brilliant footwork, artful
clenching, and well-timed right hand leads and jabs
enabled Tunney to win all ten rounds on both judges'
cards. It was the first time a heavyweight
championship was won by decision and not a knockout.
Tunney was the heavyweight champion, and the fans
never loved Jack Dempsey more.

The rematch was held on September 22, 1927 at Soldier
Field in Chicago with 145, 000 fans in attendance.
Cavanaugh quotes fight promoter, Tex Rickard, telling
a sportswriter,

Kid, if the earth came up and the sky came down and
wiped out my first ten rows it would be the end of
everything because I got in those ten rows all the
world's wealth, all the world's big men,all the
world's brains and production talent. Just in them
ten rows, kid. And you and me never seen nothing like
it.

Tunney dominated Dempsey once again, but in round
seven Dempsey caught Tunney with a flurry of blows
that put him down. Tunney had righted himself to a
sitting position and grasped the middle rope with one
hand as the time-keeper counted to four. The ref,
however, had been screaming at Dempsey to go to a
neutral corner, starting his official count only after
four seconds had elapsed. Tunney seemed to become
aware at the ref's count of two, though six total
seconds had expired. He watched as the ref counted to
nine, then, according to Cavanaugh, "bounced to his
feet." He succeeded in weathering Dempsey's assault
for the rest of the round by dancing, clinching and
rocking Dempsey with left-right combinations of his
own. Tunney resumed boxing brilliantly, even knocking
Dempsey down in the eighth round with a perfect right
hand, and handily won the fight. In later interviews
Tunney always claimed he took the maximum amount of
time to clear his head in the "long-count" seventh
round but could have gotten up any time after the
ref's count of two. Dempsey, though bitter afterwards
about losing, later said about Tunney, "he took the
count, whatever it was, and that's what any smart
fighter would have done." Promoter Tex Rickard wrote
Tunney a check for $1,000,000 (Tunney's take was
actually slightly less but Tunney wrote Rickard a
personal check for the difference of $9554.46), which,
according to Cavanaugh, made Tunney the first athlete,
possibly the first person in history to get that sum
of money for one evening's work. Dempsey didn't fight
again. Tunney defended his title successfully with a
TKO of Tom Heeney in twelve rounds almost a year later
and retired. Months before his final fight, he held
500 students, professors, and reporters spellbound
discoursing on the ancient fight between Hector and
Ajax in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, citing
European scholars and critics, and amazing an audience
who had come to hear him talk about his career as a
fighter. He married heiress Polly Lauder and traveled
to Europe, where he took in the museums, the theater,
and the opera, and hobnobbed with F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, and H.G. Wells. He even carried on
a long correspondence with Irish playwright George
Bernard Shaw, with whom he shared a number of
interests, including boxing.

Though he taught his three sons to box, his four
children were mainly oblivious to Tunney's career as a
boxing champion since little memorabilia of his life a
as professional pugilist was kept in his home. He
went on to serve as the director of physical fitness
for the U.S. Navy from 1941-1945 and spent the rest of
his life in a variety of business ventures. He never
lost his love of the arts and read avidly, attended
the opera, and enjoyed the company of writers,
artists, and business tycoons. He was not immune to
family tragedy and triumph - his daughter Joan was
accused of murdering her husband and committed to a
hospital for the criminally insane. A son, John,
narrowly won a Congressional seat in California after
Jack Dempsey himself appeared in campaign rallies to
support the son of his old adversary. Cavanaugh
quotes Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray on
Tunney:

he was an austere man, pedantic, bookish, autocratic
and aloof. He always acted as if he were slumming in
pugilism. His fights were solo recitals. His
opponents were just pianos, canvasses, spear-carriers.
Something to practice his art on. He was the artist.
He was like no Irishman you ever saw, but he was the
greatest Irish athlete who ever lived. If you don't
think so, tell me who was.

Tunney died in 1978 at the age of 81. According to
Cavanaugh, Tunney's obituary ran 750 words on page 22
of the New York Times without a byline. Dempsey died
in 1983 and was front page news on the New York Times
with a 3,000 word obituary in the sports section.
Tunney's grave-marker noted his date of birth, date of
death, and his service in WWI and WWII. Nothing more.

Cavanaugh's biography is not necessarily neatly woven
- as in the Garment District in New York City in the
1920s, there are plenty of loose threads. But what a
great, great collection of anecdotes and quotes about
boxing and about the man they rarely called champ (and
his nemesis, Jack Dempsey, whom they did). The book,
footnoted and indexed, includes a selected
bibliography and the complete boxing records of both
Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey.

Tunney's self-made ascension from street to high
society is quite remarkable - a real "American" story
of success. And yet, the public could never relate to
Tunney's unusual combination of pugilistic and
literary erudition. Tunney was never quite a hero in
sports or otherwise. What comes through loud and
clear in Cavanaugh's book is that Tunney was a man of
great discipline, self-insight, courage, and personal
honor both in the ring and out. He didn't apologize
to anyone for who he was, where he came from, or who
he had become. I had to think through the "hero"
thing again. So I'm glad I read Cavanaugh's book.
Remarkable.




________________________

If you're a boxing fan, you MUST read TUNNEY: BOXING'S
BRAINIEST CHAMP AND HIS UPSET OF THE GREAT JACK
DEMPSY by Jack Cavanaugh . . . fans of other sports and
history buffs will enjoy it, too.

It is the tale of Gene Tunney, the poetry-quoting fighter, who
always was overshadowed by Dempsey--even though he
beat him twice . . . but what made the book so enjoyable
was that it featured tales of many other fighters of
the era, including the amazing Harry Greb who fought
for several years with just one eye . . . in addition, it
gave me a greater appreciation of the role played by
sports (and boxing in particular) in the 1920s and 30s.

I also got a kick out of finding the story behind such
famous quotes as the following:

* Even Flynn seemed surprised at the knockout. "Well, it was this
way," he explained some years after his most notable victory. "I hit
him with a one-two. But just put it down that I didn't exactly knock
Dempsey out. He just forgot to duck."

* As he had feared, Dempsey was called on to say a few words. Though
he had already appeared in movies and on the vaudeville stage, Dempsey
was not comfortable speaking in public. But he handled himself well and
seemed to win over his audience. "I feel like the Irishman who was asked
to do something special for the guests at a very fancy affair," Dempsey
said to the assembled guests. "The Irishman said, 'I can't sing, I can't
dance, and I can't tell a story. But I will tell you what I will do. I'll fight
anybody in the house.' "

* Several days after the fight, Dempsey apologized to Firpo for hitting
him as soon as he got up, claiming he was so dazed he didn't know
what he was doing. To which Firpo, likable and with a wry sense of
humor--and whose varied business interests would make him one
of the richest men in South America-replied, "There were three of
us in the ring, Jack, so if you didn't know what you were doing,
why didn't you hit the referee?"

I was most impressed by the author's thorough job of
research . . . only the ending of the book left me a bit disappointed,
in that it didn't contain very much information about Tunney's life
after he left the ring . . . that was probably because he was
such a private individual; however, he was one great fighter that
might now finally get some credit that failed to come his way
when he was active in the ring.

Great history behind Tunney and Dempsey. The reader ends up liking/admiring both guys. Never heard of Harry Greb either and enjoyed learning about him. Only complaint is that Cavanaugh doesn't go into enough detail after the second fight in Chicago. I would have enjoyed reading more about their lives after their boxing careers.

I'd have to rank this right behind Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit" as the second-best sports book I've ever read. That's because author Jack Cavanaugh paints such vivid pictures of the principal characters that you get really involved with these boxers. You care about what happens to Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey. They were both incredibly-fascinating people who wound up fighting each other twice in front of the biggest sporting crowds (to this day!) in American hisotry. Both, at various times, were Heavyweight Champions of the world.

Tunney remains to this day the most unique boxing champion in history, a man who preferred reading to boxing, a man who got more of a thrill lecturing at Yale University about Shakespeare than winning the prestigious pugilistic crown. As for Dempsey, well....to me, it's hard to think of a more colorful good guy-bad guy-superstar in sports history, along with the likes of Babe Ruth and Wilt Chamberlain. The book is about Gene Tunney, but it's just as much about Dempsey and both men come off as likable guys, even though they were very different.

What makes this book special, although, was Cavanaugh's fascinating portraits of other men, like promoter Tex Rickard, manager "Doc" Kearns, and a host of memorable boxers like Benny Leonard, "Battling Levinsky," and my new hero - Harry Greb. Cavanaugh's accounts of Greb, a boxer few people have heard of, are still haunting me days after finishing this book.

This is truly a book I was sad to see end. I could have kept reading these amazing stories of these colorful people in the "Roaring Twenties" for weeks on end. I'm not even a big boxing fan, but I'm more of a fan now, thanks to Mr. Cavanaugh's exceptional book.

This was one of the best sports books I have ever read. Extremely well done.

r.tuchman

Thoroughly enjoyed this book about one of boxing's most enigmatic and humble champions. Excellent and insightful. Loved it!!

Excellent well written biography. The author not only goes into great detail about Tunney, inside and outside the ring, but also gives us great insight into the lives and careers of his most formidable opponents, Jack Dempsey and the Harry Greb. This book is a must read for any boxing fan.

Just like Cinderella Man was about both Max Baer and James Braddick,
"Tunney" is really about both Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey.

If you are a fan of sports history read this book, its very well
written and a great story. Both Tunney and Dempseys were champions in and
out of the ring. Very impressive men.

Best part of the book was hearing about the two muggers who tried
to rob Dempsey when he was well into his 60's, and he flattened'em.

This is a fascinating book and I loved every minute of it. But it meanders all over the place. It adequately covers Gene Tunney's youth in Greenwich Village, NY and how he got so good at defending himself from bullies that he ended up fighting for money. You learn about his stint in the Marines, and his burgeoning love for books and reading. You are at ringside for many of his early fights, including the wars with his early trainer and later with Harry Greb and Jack Dempsey.

But the book spends just as muchtime covering Dempsey's life. It also meanders into how Jewish people and Irish people got into boxing. It was fascinating because Cavanaugh is such an engaging writer. But I kept wondering "When will we get back to talking about Tunney? And why does Cavanaugh only devote 30 pages to the last 50 years of Tunney's (and Dempsey's) life? And why does he forget to mention their "dance" in the ring commemorating the 30th anniversary of their celebrated rematch?

These criticisms are more than enough to knock the book down a star or two. But Cavanaugh's gift for storytelling makes the book such a compulsive read that I had to give it 5 stars. Recommended for all boxing fans.