 Hello there, this is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another story from The Tumult and the Shouting. Hi there, this is Jimmy Powers. As we continue to read Grantland Rice's autobiography, The Tumult and the Shouting, we notice that considerable time is spent with Jack Dempsey. Granny, throughout his long and wonderful life, collected friendships of the greats, champions of the ring, the diamond, the fairway, and the gridiron. Granny saw Dempsey the first time in 1919 when the Manasse Moller slaughtered champion Jess Willard at Toledo. He was one of Granny's all-time favorites. Once again, we open The Tumult and Shouting to the chapter on Dempsey, and in first person, dwell for a moment on some of the promotional fireworks that Dempsey was connected with during the fabulous Golden Twenties. I've often heard champions like Rocky Marciano compared to Dempsey. In my opinion, Dempsey was a top boxer. He had to be to go 15 rounds with Tom Gibbons when Gibbons was hungry and able. The Dempsey Gibbons title match at Shelby, Montana, was in some ways Dempsey's most demanding fight. As a promoter's dream, both the Shelby fight and the Sharkey Stribbling fight at Miami Beach were Grade A nightmares. In 1923, Mike Collins, a fight manager of sorts out of St. Paul, had a string of fighters barnstorming through Montana. In the course of his meanderings, he ran into a man named Johnson, who, among other things, was mayor of Shelby and president of the local bank. With the talk flaring around fights, somebody had the glorious idea of staging a heavyweight championship fight right there in Shelby. It would cause a land boom. Collins called his pal Eddie Cain, Gibbons' manager back in St. Paul, and propositioned him. Listen, Mike, replied Cain, you get Dempsey out there, and Gibbons will fight him for nothing. All you got to do is pay Dempsey. What do you think of that? Next, they wired Kerns, Dempsey's manager, offering him $300,000 for Jack to defend his title against Tom Gibbons at Shelby on July 4. Kerns wired back, send $100,000 now, $100,000 in a month, and $100,000 before Dempsey steps into the ring, and it's a deal. The first $100,000 came easily enough, and seeing they meant business, Kerns and Dempsey headed west and set up training quarters at Great Falls, Montana, about 70 miles south of Shelby. Eddie Cain went directly to Shelby and set up Gibbons' training camp there. Late in June, I boarded a pullman in Chicago with a crowd of other riders, including Heywood Bruin, Damon Runyon, Byde Dudley, and Hugh Fullerton. We were off by way of the Great Northern to the wild and woolly west. Great Falls, we discovered, was a fair-sized town. Visiting Dempsey at his camp among the Cottonwoods, I found him in high humor. It was June 24 and Jack's 28th birthday. His dad was there, and so was his cousin, Don Chaffin. Don was a raw-boned husky from West Virginia and a paid-up life member of the famed Hatfield Clan. The camp mascot was a Cub Timberwolf. Jack was giving himself daily facials with some sort of bare grease that had toughened his face to the general texture of a boar's hide. It was Jack's first title defense in two years, but he looked to be in great shape. Even walking, he seemed to slither along, snake-like, his muscles glinting in the sun. I don't recall just what I expected from Shelby, the fight site, but I wasn't impressed. A town of perhaps 2,000, it was little more than a crossroad in the middle of a desert. Press headquarters and living accommodations were in one of the pullman cars, on a siding. Gibbons was training hard and looking forward to what I thought was certain annihilation. Mayor Johnson and friends were beginning to realize the facts of life. They were having a rough time scraping up that second $100,000 installment with still a third to follow. Kearns, meanwhile, remained adamant. In fact, officially, called off the fight seven times the night before the event. And evering to keep fresh bulletins pumping over the wires, Bruin, Runyon, and the rest of us had long since gone nuts. At the 12th hour, Kearns again reversed his field, decided to gamble on the gate take, and declared the fight was on. In a matter of minutes, Shelby's main drag erupted into a madhouse. Cowpokes with spike heels kicking up the alkali dust. Bought drinks for millionaires, and the millionaires mingled with Blackfoot Indians, many of whom were in full tribal dress. Drifters, motorists, high society, Hollywood stars, and sheepherders all were there, as well as Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt and one-eyed Connolly. I even spotted Mae Murray, peering at the revelry from the sanctuary of her own private car. The fight was scaled at $50 ringside, and the huge wooden bowl erected for the bout was built to hold some 50,000 customers. But the final count was a trickle over 7,000 when the main event finally went on. Dempsey and Gibbons went 15 rounds like two featherweights. I've never witnessed as much sheer speed in a heavyweight bout. At the finish, the decision was clearly Dempsey's, but Gibbons had remained dangerous all the way. Dempsey resorted to every boxing trick he knew, and as the bout unfolded, it was apparent he knew plenty. But he couldn't nail the scowling, stabbing Gibbons, who fought the fight of his life and for nothing. He never hurt me really after the first round, Gibbons said, but Lord, how that fellow can hit. It was in the first round Dempsey shot a straight right punch. I saw it but couldn't duck it entirely and took it on the top of my forehead. That's the thickest part of a man's skull, but grant, I didn't come out of the days until the fourth round. I'd like to fight him back again for money, continued Gibbons, but don't let anybody ever tell you Dempsey can't box. Prize fights have been used ever since Shelby as real estate promotions. And here's another that had everybody crazy, but for a different reason. This one was the Jack Sharkey versus Young Stribbling fight at Miami Beach in February 1929. It was blueprinted to boost Miami Beach. Once the preliminaries were underway, a ruptured appendix killed Tex Rickard. When Rickard passed away, Bill Carey, one of the head men of Madison Square Garden, was handed the assignment of promoting, and Dempsey was pressed into service as Rickard stand in. A booster of professional hockey in New York, Carey was the ice game's best friend. But as a fight promoter, Carey knew as much as an elephant knows about contract bridge. He began spending money so fast and with such a lavish hand that Dempsey soon saw there would be nothing left for him. So Jack agreed to work for nothing. I was afraid I would have to pick up the check, he remarked. All correspondence plus droves who didn't know a typewriter from a milk can were admitted free to the day and night revels. Carey had leased Carl Fisher's mansion right on the beach at the head of Lincoln Road, and as I recall, several writers were wounded in the rush for rooms overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Four hotels were utilized to handle 435 newsmen from all over the world. For nearly seven solid weeks, it resembled New Year's Eve in Babylon. Everybody within 50 miles of the beach became one of Carey's free loaders. Headquarters for the press gang became headquarters for everything, with the beach itself serving as the front lawn. How many cases of liquor were consumed, I don't know, but I do know that was one of the thirstiest mobs ever. And the majority of the imbibers had no connection whatsoever with the fight. Back in New York, Bill McGeehan, the Tribune sports editor and one of the best ever, decided to come down and investigate. Bill had been roasting Carey daily in his column. When he arrived, Bill expected Carey to have him tossed out. I introduced them, Mr. Carey, Mr. McGeehan. Carey beamed his welcome through his milk bottle lenses. And by the way, Mr. McGeehan, he said, what business are you in? That was the only time I ever saw McGeehan stopped cold. He fled the camp. He refused to write a word. The actual fight should have made big money, $200,000 at least, but it lost. Sharky won when he too might well have lost. He told me later, Stribbling hit me with a full ride over the heart. It hurt a lot. I fell in to grab him. He beat me to it by grabbing me first and holding on until I was ready to go on. Had our positions been reversed, I would have murdered him. Stribbling could have been a great fighter. He was dead game, but out of the ring. He was seldom as game in the ring during a tough fight. Yet he would drive a shaky aircraft in front of a hurricane or a motorcycle through a heavy wall. I have seen him do it. He was killed on that motorcycle. Much of the glory of the ring, if you can call it that, rides with fighters, those lion-hearted men big and little, who never wore the crown, or if they did, only for a fleeting instant. Harry Greb, pound for pound, perhaps the greatest fighter ever, had been a headliner for more than 10 years and was well on the downgrade when he finally got a shot at the world middleweight crown in 1923. One year, I know it was 1919, Greb fought 42 bouts. Greb fought anything, anywhere, anytime for fun or money. Even Dempsey, when Jack was on the way up, wanted no part of Greb. Jeff Smith, another middleweight, never did get a crack at the crown. But 200 of Jeff's fights are recorded in that Fleischer's famed ring record book, but he fought at least 600 bouts all over the world, accepting all kinds of cockeyed decisions just to get rematches. And more important, keep meat on the table. Yes, when Jeff Smith finally did get his shot at that champ, it was always after the glitter had gone, when the one-time number one boy had lost his title. These and those hard-lock athletes like them remind me of a stanza from an old verse of mine entitled, From the Camp of the Beaton. I have learned something worth far more than victory brings to men. Battered and beaten, bruised and sore, I can still come back again. Crowded back in the hard, tough race, I've found that I have the heart to look raw failure in the face and train for another start. Now, once again, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed closing another chapter from the tumult and the shouting. So long until next time.