Gene
Tunney -vs- Jack Dempsey 1926
World
Heavyweight Championship
Philadelphia, PA
(Complete
Fight Reconstruction/speed correction/exposure/frame aspect/image matching)
The
Fight
I’ve
always wanted to see the complete 1926 Dempsey-Tunney fight film. The first of their two bouts was huge at the
time, but has since been overshadowed by the rematch and “The Long Count” the
following year. I wanted to see how the
first fight played out, especially how did Dempsey perform during the first
couple of rounds when he was still fresh, and still believing that he was
invincible? Did Tunney really overwhelm
Dempsey from the start or was it more competitive than what the newspapers
said? What does the surviving footage
reveal?
A couple
of years ago, film collector Tony Fosco told me he wasn’t sure that complete
footage of Tunney-Dempsey I still
existed. He claimed to have compiled
most of the rounds from various sources, but not all. Joe passed away before I saw his film. I have since spoken to Steve Lott of Big
Fights Inc, who said that only about 14 minutes exist of the 1926 fight. This particular 14 minutes is what most
people have seen over the last 70 years, from home movie shorts from Castle
Films to ESPN Classic television.
The Film
A few
months ago I obtained from a collector what was promised to be a copy of the
complete original 1926 film. The DVD
that arrived contained a copy of the original footage, but it was from a poor
washed out screen-copy that only showed rounds 1 through 6 (I’ve seen this copy
on Youtube already, which has filler footage tacked on after round 6.) The footage is poor, but it’s a good
reference. So I went back through my own
film collection and discovered several short versions of this famous fight
going back to when I started collecting films as a teenager. These were editions not only from Castle
Films, but Blackhawk Films, documentaries, Classic Sports, Newsreels and sports
compilations. As I went through each version,
I realized that most of the material was taken from the same original
theatrical fight film. However, no two
editions were exactly the same, suggesting that each version contained unique
footage.
The
Reconstruction
Over the
following week, I rounded up the footage I had and loaded everything into my
video editor. The various sources were
trimmed round by round, matching the best quality footage with the action in
the original master. Some clips showed
the entire round, some clips lasting only a few seconds. I quickly discovered that in the most common
editions of the fight (Castle Films, Official Films), the rounds were
completely out of order. For instance, rounds
described as 1 and 10, are actually portions of rounds 3, 5 and 9. These were also, incidentally, the worst
rounds for Dempsey. When the editing was
finished, I had partial or complete footage of every round (except for rounds
7-8 which were never issued).
** Note
that the picture quality jumps back and forth as the best quality footage is
inserted for that portion of the fight.
The
progression of the fight went mostly as the newspapers described it. Tunney was brilliant, and he controlled the
action from beginning to end. His
strategy was to throw an endless barrage of overhand rights to slow Dempsey
down. Then Tunney would pepper Dempsey
with jabs and combinations. When Jack rushed Gene to the ropes, Tunney would spin
Dempsey around and hold until the referee broke them. Tunney did this over and over again through the
entire fight, and Jack never had an answer.
What
about Dempsey? Did he really look like
an old tired fighter? Having not fought
in three years, Dempsey was rusty, but he was also unprepared. In the early rounds, when Jack was still
fresh, he showed flashes of his old style, and Gene struggled to control the
action. Tunney didn’t take full control
of the fight until the round 3. The
biggest myth about the fight is that Jack simply held on after the early rounds
and was close to being knocked out at the end.
The Dempsey I see in this film was outclassed, but he was game until the
very end, and even launched a rally before the final bell. Tunney was an absolute ironman. Gene had to be incredibly strong to do what
he did, fighting Dempsey at the same pace for 10 rounds. I believe that even in 1926, Gene Tunney was still
the only fighter in the division who would have beaten Dempsey.
I hope
you enjoy seeing this great fight, as much as I enjoyed restoring it.
