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Show Pfi TN THE recent gathering of old-A old-A time stars for war bonds and Red Cross collections, the matter of the Dempsey - Firpo fight has been brought up more than once as the leading chapter of all brief sporting thrills. Even this far away from thej battle areas it is somewhat astonisn-mg astonisn-mg to see the number of letters you receive from servicemen all over the world about this spectacular spectacu-lar whirlpool. j To help clear up any further arguments, ar-guments, here are a few of the j more important de- -ttr9 "! taiis that took place: J 1. Tex Rickard had t : a series of chills and V v. ' fevers In the belief ,. that Dempsey would i-SSxfc.v- stop Firpo in the first v v- round before a Mil- -a V lion Dollar Gate. Fir-' Fir-' s PO, to Rickard, was v . a complete flop as a fighting machine. 6m ... He begged Dempsey Dempsey t0 carry Firpo at least three rounds to satisfy the big crowd. Dempsey refused re-fused to make any commitment. 2. Dempsey took the fight in a deadly serious way, knowing that Firpo could still punch. In a visit to Dempsey's training camp with Bob Edgren, we told Dempsey what Bill Brennan had told us: "This Firpo guy throws rocks at you. You think you are out of reach by three feet and he hits you with a rubber arm, or a rock." This Is what happened in the first round. 3. Dempsey went out to win not in the. first round but with the first punch. 1 "I knew the fellow was dangerous, but also wide open," Dempsey told me. "In the first, I threw a left hook at him that would have ended the fight in less than 12 seconds. But I was overanxious. I just missed and then a rock hit me on the chin and I hardly remember what happened hap-pened through the next three minutes. min-utes. "Firpo weighed 220 pounds, and 1 can say now this was the hardest punch I ever took in any fight. I know I wasn't fighting for any million mil-lion dollars or for the championship. I was trying to keep from getting killed. Foul him? Maybe I did. 1 just socked him every time I saw him, before he could sock me again." 'Out of the Ring' Episode We keep getting letters about Dempsey falling on top of our typewriter. This never happened. Just before be-fore the fight started we moved over three seats. Jack Lawrence took the seat we had just vacated. Dempsey came through the ropes on top of Jack Lawrence. There was no effort made to shove Dempsey Demp-sey back into the ring. There was only the protective effort anyone makes with his hands when 192 pounds Is about to land on your head and neck or your typewriter. The punch that drove Dempsey through the ropes was nothing like the punch that left Jack dazed in the first ten seconds. It was a half lunge and a half swing. It caught Dempsey off balance. But Dempsey was another man when the second round opened. In defense of Firpo it might be said that he could hardly have been expected ex-pected to have a clear head after what happened to him through the Grst round. In that first round the floor had become "old home week" to him. I've forgotten now just how many times Jack had knocked Firpo down. But there were times when the Wild Bull of the Pampas was bouncing around like a huge rubber ball. He had taken plenty on his own by the time he catapulted Dempsey through the ropes. Never Met Again The strangest part of this Demp-sey-Firpo episode is that Rickard never matched them again. After what happened in their first meeting, meet-ing, here was at least a $2,500,000 or a $3,000,000 show, an all-time record. rec-ord. Apparently there was no desire de-sire on the part of Rickard, Dempsey, Demp-sey, Kearns or Firpo to bring about a repeat engagement. Maybe it was just as well. The second might have been a record flop. As the case stood, the two crushing crush-ing punchers gave the fight game Its greatest four minutes of raw melodrama melo-drama with a million dollars, and a heavyweight title worth millions more, spinning around the roulette wheel of fate at a dizzy pace. And out of 70,000 or 80,000. probably prob-ably less than 2,000 saw just what happened. Hippest Sport Show Zeke Eonura writes me "Dear Grant I've been around quite a bit, as yon know. Rut for the last word in sporting color, give me North Africa. I know you've heard about the Arab Bowl for football foot-ball including a camel race and a donkey race scarlet-clad Arab troops parading between halves crack paratroopers bailing out "Now we are getting ready for our army North-African baseball round-up. This is the place today where the world goes by. |
