PURSES FOR BOXING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5180, 19 September 1927, Page 3

PURSES FOR BOXING.

LARGE SUMS PAID TO DEMPSEY.

COMPARISON WITH EARLIER DAYS

Money is not everything in prizefighting in America (states a writer in “The Dominion”) for although Mr Jack Dempsey had just previously cashed in a quite satisfactory cheque for about £lOO,OOO, it is said that he wept salt tears when Mr Gene Tunney —now Lieutenant Gene Tunney—defeated him a year ago. In his seven years as world’s heavy-weight champion Mr Dempsey had received round about £400,000 for lass than 3% hours in the ring. This sum, however, does not include any extras, such as moving picture rights, etc. Now, according to a news message, he is due to collect between £85,000' and £90,000 for a return match against his late vanquisher.

At last year’s Dempsey-Tunney fight, at Philadelphia, there were about 130,000 spectators present. The gate receipts ran very close on to £400,000. Of this sum Mr Dempsey pocketed about £150 ! ,000, and Mr Tunney £40,000. The balance, about fifty per cent of the total, less expenses, went to the- happy promoters of the great event. The financial preliminaries to these famed encounters seem nowadays to be more thrilling than the battles themselves. Last year’s fight was over in thirty minutes. The financial and legal battles beforehand had lasted for months. The price of seats ranged from 25s to £6, and the average figure paid wotks out at about £3 per head -of the 130,000 spectators, present. This was at the rate of two shillings a minute for each' minute the fight lasted. The million dollars, in English money £200,000, to be paid to Mr Tunney for the coming battle, is the high-water mark yet touched by pugilistic finance, which now ranks in importance ,with railway mergers, bank consolidations', trust reorganisations, and the like. Beside the contestant's and the promoters, the lawyers usually have a handsome cut out of the proceeds, for most American States and cities have laws hampering to big fights, and the legal battle to secure a site conveniently accessible from the large centres of population swallows up money. Philadelphia, the Quaker City, wast selected for the last fight, as its laws are easier than most —though they lay it down that the fight must not exceed ten rounds —and there was also a big exhibition on in that city last year.

The financial advance of the heavyweight championship will be realised when it is recalled that when John L. Sullivan won the title in 1890 the sum at stake was £5OO. When Corbett beat Sullivan to a pulp at New Orleans in 1892 they fought for £2OOO a side and a purse of S5OO0I—the 1 —the winner to take all. That was the end of prize-fighting in the heavy-weight classi for now the champion gets a fixed guarantee, win, lose, or draw, and takes no financial chances. The high respectability now attained by the science of pugilism is well evidenced by the fact that whereas Mr Tunney at the time of meeting Mr Dempsey was in the ranks of the United States Marines, the Navy Board immediately following his victory investigated his career, and instantaneously discovered that he possessed the requisite qualifications for promotion to a lieutemancy. If Lieutenant Tunney > again defeats the famed ex-champion there is no knowing but what he may even find himself Major Tunney, or perhaps ©ven Colonel Tunney.

John L. Sullivan was estimated to have made altogether in his pugilistic career somewhere about £200,000, but it is said that most of this vanished in champagne. The modern champion manages to get all the champagne he requires for nourishment from the income on his investments without entrenching on the capital sum. The financial side of the profession, however, was very crude in Sullivan’s time.