LIVES OF GREAT BOXERS

Chronicle (Levin), 24 September 1946, Page 6

LIVES OF GREAT BOXERS

(Continued) The bell rang for the first round and Carpentier went straight into action, naturally out for an early victory. Tunney, cairn and unemotional, slowly defeated the Frenchman with a powerful defence, which in time took toil of the devasting attacks as Carpentier's battery of punches began to weaken. Slowly the pace began to deteriorate and Tunney's long left, which kept poking into Carpentier's face, troubled the Frenchman. Tunney opened a gash over the French fighter's eye and for most of the remaining rounds this was Tunney's target. In the tenth ypund Georges was sent crashing to the canvas four times. Carpentier, although fighting a losing battle, would not be so shanfed as to give in. Desperately he fell into clinches, attempting to avoid those swinging fists, but the.re was no chance of escape from Tunney, The end finally came in the fifteenth round when aiter a short hard solar plexus punch had floored Carpentier, the referee awarded the bout to Gene 011 a T.K.O. decision.

A year later Gene defeated Tommy Gibbons in twelve rounds in New York, and by this win he was next to Dempsey, whom he later challenged. Dempsey, who was too busy rnaking money in Hollywood, ignored this challenge for nearly a year, and this probably cost Jack his title for just as Williard had imagined that he w'as invincible so did Dempsey. Tunney had made a study of Dempsey from the day he had dreamed of winning the title, and when the match was fixed he engaged as sparring partners all the men he could find who had boxed the champion, and from i each of them he gained still further knowledge. Dempsey forgot that nearly three years from the ring had softened him, while Gene, keeping in perfect shape for the fight of his life, was as fit as any man could be. The Manassa Mauler, who entered the ring at Philadelphia to defend his title, was a Dempsey whom the old fight fans failed to recognise. Weighed down with matrimonial and financial troubles, Dempsey had changed in appearance, as well as in condition. He had a nose synthetic grafted on to an old pimch-splayed model, and he was but a shadow of the killer I of old. Instead of tearing into his

opponent in his two-fisted fashion Dempsey advanced slowly anc cautiously, waiting to see whai Tunney would do. Dempsey's minc was all of a whirl. He began tc think what kind of a fighter wa; this Tunney. This thought troublec him, but he soon knew after th fighting started. (To be Concluded)