![]() ![]() ![]() He was a great fighter, more tactician than slugger, and his most famous fight - arguably the most famous heavyweight fight in history - took place here on Sept. The usually incisive Paul Gallico once wrote, “I think Tunney has hurt his own game with his cultural nonsense.” He was often derided by sports writers more accustomed to fighters whose reading habits began and ended with comic books. He went pro in 1915 and became heavyweight champion by defeating Jack Dempsey in Philadelphia in 1926. He boxed a bit as a boy and more seriously while serving with the Marine Corps during World War I. His father was a stevedore given to violent outbursts, which Gene did his best to escape by reading. Tunney was one of the seven children and the eldest son of Irish immigrants, raised in a shabby section of Greenwich Village in New York City. ![]() Shaw was shocked to see his hero knocked silly by Gene Tunney who, Shaw would quickly discover, bore a striking resemblance to his fictional creation Cashel Byron. He was captivated by the handsome French fighter and though the fight lasted only 74 seconds, he raved that “geniuses like Carpentier too few and far between.”įast forward five years and you’d find Shaw watching newsreel footage of Carpentier’s bout at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. Shaw had boxed in his youth and in 1919 covered for The Nation magazine the heavyweight title bout between France’s Georges Carpentier and Britain’s Joe Beckett in London. ![]()
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