Dempsey is Ready for Gene Tunney

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 127, 19 August 1927, Page 10

Dempsey is Ready for Gene Tunney

If He Wins, Champion Will Keep on Fighting Seen by interviewers after his fight •with Jack Sharkey last month, Jack Dempsey was back in “civvies, looking little the worse for the fight. A slight swelling round both eyes bore witness to where Sharkey had got home, but otherwise the ex-champion was practically unmarked. He reeled off the following statement about his future plans: NOT RETIRING If I beat Gene Tunney, will I retire? Not exactly. I guess I will not quit fighting until they carry me out of the ring feet first. There has been some talk that I would quit fighting if I ever succeeded in winning the heavyweight championship again, but I have no idea of doing that. I guess as long as I am going good I’ll keep on fighting. However, I know I will have a job on my hands with Tunney, and there will be time enough to think of retiring when I have finished with that fight. DIDN’T FOUL SHARKEY There is nothing that I can add to what I have already said about the fouls claimed by Jack Sharkey. I hit him fairly in the pit of the stomach, under the heart, and I felt my fist sink in. When he dropped his hand I started a left hook. I had been waiting and working for that all through the fight. That was my plan all the way. I had been working on his stomach because we (Flynn and I) had decided that was the best way to best Sharkey. From the second round on I had been hitting him in the stomach and I could feel him weakening every time I hit him. WOULD BE SAP I would have been a sap to have hit Sharkey low. A blow below the belt does not hurt a man. It does not even slow him up. A lot of times in boxing we hit each other below the belt accidentally, but unless a man is trying to take an easy way out and claim a foul he says nothing about it. But in the seventh round I hit Sharkey where it hurt. 1 hit him with a. right just under his ribs and 1 could feel the fist sink in. He dropped his guard and I brought up the left and down he went. I had been waiting for that moment all along'. I do not mean to say anything to indicate that Sharkey is not a good boxer. He is just that; he is busy all the time. He stung me plenty in that first round and kept popping me with a curious cork-screw left that hurt some. Sharkey hit me under first one eye and then the other, and as he hit he seemed to twist his glove. GLOVE SEEMS TO SPIN That’s how I got cut under the eyes. I Lis glovo seemed to spin as it landed. Bur. it just happened that Sharkey was made to order for me. He is just my style. I would like to fight him again. As the fifht went on I grew stronger and Sharkey seemed easier and easier. I simply carried out the plan of fighting we had mapped out beforehand and it worked to perfection. I am told that the people of the south were behind me. That is fine: I appreciate that. It helps a lot whether the crowd is there at the ringside yelling or is far away wishing you luck.

I will get home about Tuesday, and as soon as I get word from Rickard about the Tunney fight I’ll start training.