Aging Bull

Jack Dempsey's 1940 'Comeback' Was a Sad and Mercifully Short Spectacle

Mort Kamins

Sport Illustrated

April 17, 1995

Whatever one might say about the current crop of heavyweights—or rather, the crop before Mike Tyson's recent release from prison—the sight of 26-year-old Michael Moorer crumbling to the canvas at the urging of George Foreman's 45-year-old right hand constituted a unique moment in boxing history. Goliath falls all the time, but it is usually a young, quick and clever David who brings him down, not some Methuselah of the ring. Until Foreman's 10th-round knockout of Moorer last November, attempts by aging champions to regain their former glories brought only memories of Joe Louis, slow and flabby, being taken apart by the clumsy but ferocious Rocky Marciano in 1951, or of Muhammad Ali, his lightning reflexes gone, absorbing hundreds of punches from Larry Holmes in 1980.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all the heavyweight-returning-from-retirement tales is one that has been largely forgotten. In 1940 Jack Dempsey was 45 years old and desperately in need of money. A notorious soft touch, he had spent, given away and been cheated out of the millions of dollars he had earned during his flamboyant boxing career. His restaurant in New York City would not become profitable for a few years. And among Dempsey's other troubles, he had separated from his third wife, Hannah Williams.

Enter Max Waxman, the fighter's fast-talking, pastrami-craving business manager. Waxman was keeping Dempsey afloat by booking personal appearances for him, mostly as a wrestling referee. One day in May, perhaps befogged by his own cigar smoke, Waxman concocted an extraordinary plan: The Manassa Mauler, the boxing hero of the Golden Age of Sport, would box again. Would the public buy it? Waxman figured it was worth a try.

One evening later that month, while Dempsey was refereeing a wrestling match in Atlanta, he got into an argument with a notorious mat villain, Clarence (Cowboy) Luttrell. The two exchanged words and swings, and a few days later, the fortyish Luttrell issued a challenge.

"I've licked tougher guys than Jack Dempsey," he bragged to a reporter. "There's never been a boxer who could beat a good wrestler. I want to be known as the guy who K.O.'d Dempsey."

The fight was booked for the night of July 1 at Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Park. "We'll try out the show here, boys," Waxman told Georgia sportswriters. "We might work our way up to a fight with Joe Louis [the reigning heavyweight champ]."

When Dempsey returned to Atlanta a few days before the match, thousands greeted him at Terminal Station. There followed a boisterous, police-escorted parade through town. On fight night a crowd of 12,000 showed up at the stadium. People cheered as the paunchy, 205-pound Dempsey, who hadn't trained a minute for the match, made his way to the ring. But the man who had drawn the first million-dollar gate, in 1921, and had packed Sesquicentennial Stadium in Philadelphia with 120,757 fans for his first bout with Gene Tunney, in 1926, now found that his corner stool was an empty beer crate.

The bout was as quick as it was brutal. Dempsey, his foot and hand speed gone, nonetheless pounded the clumsy 226-pound Luttrell to the canvas four times, battering his face into a bloody mask. Early in the second round, an exhausted Dempsey caught Luttrell flush on the jaw with a left hook, knocking him head over heels through the ropes and into the first row, where he struck his head on a camera case and lost consciousness (video). The crowd roared. Dempsey, gasping for breath, was exhilarated; he had earned only $4,000, but he had the old feeling. As for Luttrell, he woke up in the hospital an hour later, $800 richer.

Two weeks later, in Detroit's Fairgrounds Coliseum, Dempsey fought another wrestling villain, a young cop from Hartford named Bull Curry. "Dempsey thought he could make a few easy bucks fighting wrestlers," Curry recalled almost 40 years later in a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut. "I showed him he'd get himself hurt."

A professional ruffian, Curry had spent several years traveling around the country with third-rate carnivals, fighting all comers. He was neither intimidated by Dempsey's reputation nor inhibited by boxing rules. Despite having to fight with gloves, which he viewed as hindrances, he quickly turned the fight into a wrestling match. Early in the first round, he clamped a headlock on Dempsey until the former champ's face turned purple. The referee. Sam Hennessy, a dour, white-haired gentleman, finally pried the fighters apart, but Hennessy was overmatched.

Grunting and grimacing, Curry took a few punches and was able to cuff Jack's ear with one of his own swings. Near the end of the round, Curry grabbed Dempsey by the legs and jack-knifed both Dempsey and himself out of the ring and directly into the lap of John Hettche, chairman of the Michigan State Boxing Commission, which had sanctioned the exhibition. Hettche, after recovering his hat and his glasses, may have wondered at the madness he had helped let loose.

At 1:05 of the second round, Dempsey landed a vicious right to Curry's midsection. The wrestler, in agony, crumpled to the canvas and was counted out. But Curry got up almost immediately after the count and demanded to continue. He cursed the referee, shoved him aside, ran over to Dempsey's corner and smacked the boxer on the back, challenging him to keep fighting. The two men traded shoves and punches until Dempsey's handlers and the local police hustled the boxer out of the ring. Curry shouted insults at Dempsey as he left. The meager crowd—only 4,509 paid—jeered at the shabby burlesque.

"I won his respect, I'll tell you that," Curry claimed years later. "That's all I wanted to prove." Still, Curry always thought he had been given a raw deal. "I was on my feet when they all jumped into the ring," he said. "I wasn't knocked out." Asked why the fight was stopped, Curry said, "They knew Dempsey would get hurt, let's put it that way. I'm the guy who ended his career."

Curry may not have ended Dempsey's comeback—there would be one more fight—but he certainly hastened its conclusion. There was no more talk of meeting Joe Louis, and if Waxman still floated trial balloons, including a possible bout with the Chilean contender Arturo Godoy, they were immediately deflated. Meanwhile, 62-year-old Jack Johnson, who had been heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915 issued a challenge to Dempsey, and a Los Angeles promoter offered Dempsey a match with the former wrestler Ed (Strangler) Lewis, who was 50 and weighed 290. Bob Dumby, a New York sportswriter and a Dempsey admirer, spoke for many others: "Already he has sold a magnificent fistic birthright for a cheap mess of small-time pottage."

The last serving of pottage was offered on July 29 in Charlotte. Dempsey's opponent was another wrestler, who had been known as the Purple Flash until someone pulled his mask off in the ring. Now he was merely Ellis Bashara, who had been a star lineman for the Oklahoma Sooners from 1927 to '31. Bashara registered a flabby 209 pounds at the weigh-in and promised that he would behave himself in the ring.

Among the 6,500 or so at Charlotte's Memorial Stadium was Grady Cole, then a popular local radio personality who was also the chairman of North Carolina's boxing commission. Cole remembered the night well. "There was a real threat of rain," he said in an interview in 1979. "The promoter, Jim Crockett, stopped one of the preliminary bouts after two rounds, even though it was supposed to go six. Nobody complained, though. Hell, we were all there to see Dempsey."

Cole, who had boxed a little himself, remembers the fight as an easy one for Dempsey. Former lightweight champion Benny Leonard had been hired to referee, but he had little to do that night. Bashara was bloodied early and went down three times in the first round. At the start of the second round. Dempsey flattened his opponent for good.

"Jack could still hit a ton," Cole said, "but his legs were gone."Happily, the grotesque image of a wheezing middle-aged man clubbing wrestlers has faded. What remain vivid are pictures of the young tiger of the Western minefields using his flashing fists to destroy Jess Willard. Georges Carpentier and Luis Firpo—images of the Manassa Mauler, the greatest fighter of sport's Golden Age.

As for Bashara, he had no alibis. "That Dempsey has a lulu of a right," he said after the fight. "You don't see it coming, but you sure know when it arrives."

Four days later Dempsey quietly announced that his comeback was over. Surely he and Waxman realized that to continue would permanently tarnish Dempsey's still-brilliant name.

Happily, the grotesque image of a wheezing middle-aged man clubbing wrestlers has faded. What remain vivid are pictures of the young tiger of the Western minefields using his flashing fists to destroy Jess Willard. Georges Carpentier and Luis Firpo—images of the Manassa Mauler, the greatest fighter of sport's Golden Age.

Beats Luttrell With Knockout

Former Champion Wins in Second Round of Scheduled 10-Rounder

By Associated Press

ATLANTA, July 1.- Jack Dempsey, the former world heavyweight champion of the ring, knocked out a husky wrestler, Clarence (Cowboy) Luttrell of Texas in the second round of their scheduled 10-round fight tonight.

Dempsey, weighing 205 pound, battered down the 224-pound Luttrell after one minute and 58 seconds of the second frame. The former champion, while showing none of the old fire and dynamite that carried him to the heavyweight crown, badly beat the awkward and clumsy wrestler who was almost out at the bell that ended the first round.

Luttrell hung on almost from the opening gong as Dempsey cut his face to ribbons. After Luttrell had gone down for counts of seven and eight in the second round, Dempsey moved up and cut loose with a looping left that caught Luttrell flush on the chin and knocked him all the way out of the ring.

The Texas bad man, who challenged the one-time Manassa Mauler to settle things with the six ounce gloves after Dempsey had clashed with him in refereeing a wrestling match, failed to get up off the ground and had to be carried to his dressing room.

Dempsey, who lost a four-round decision to King Levinsky in Chicago in 1933 in a move toward returning to the game, handed Luttrell a sound and painful beating. Ringside observers could get that Dempsey had no opposition.

Luttrell failed to connect with a single punishing blow. Almost from the start Dempsey kept him crowded into a neutral corner and battered him down with rights and lefts against which the wrestler threw up no defense.

Luttrell, extremely clumsy, had no direction with any blows he attempted to swing at the 45-year old Dempsey. Jack opened a bad cut under Luttrell's eye in the first round and the wrestler took a bad butchering as he cowed against the ropes, defenseless.

Dempsey had no snap to his punches nor did he show speed. He didn't have to. The affair was witnessed by what promoters claimed as a crowd of close to 12,000.

The fight did not last long enough to provide a test of what the popular former champion might be expected to do if he should continue his return to the ring.