Gene Tunney Print, Vintage Boxing Poster, USA Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

GENE TUNNEY — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Gene Tunney, 1926-1928.

Gene Tunney decided he was going to beat Jack Dempsey years before he was allowed anywhere near him, and then did the work.

He watched film. He interviewed men Dempsey had beaten. He worked out that Dempsey's whole method depended on getting inside and staying there, and that the counter was to move backwards while punching, which almost nobody could do well. So he practised moving backwards while punching until he could.

On 23 September 1926, in front of a hundred and twenty thousand people in Philadelphia rain, he outboxed Dempsey for ten rounds and took the world heavyweight title.

The rematch a year later, at Soldier Field in Chicago, drew over a hundred thousand people and produced the most argued-about seven seconds in the sport.

In the seventh round Dempsey caught him and put him down. Under a new rule, the referee could not begin the count until the man who scored the knockdown had gone to a neutral corner. Dempsey, whose entire career had been fought under the old convention of standing over a fallen opponent, did not go.

By the time the count started, an estimated four or five seconds had passed. Tunney rose at nine. He had been on the canvas for about fourteen seconds.

He then boxed the remaining rounds cleanly and won on points. Dempsey never disputed the decision, only the rule.

The argument has run for nearly a century, and both positions are defensible: the rule was in the contract and Dempsey ignored it, and Tunney was down longer than ten seconds.

What gets forgotten is the rest of him. He was the only man Harry Greb ever beat after losing to him. He retired in 1928 as undefeated heavyweight champion after one more defence, aged thirty-one, with his faculties intact.

He married an heiress, lectured on Shakespeare at Yale, and served as a director of a naval fitness programme in the Second World War.

He understood the thing most fighters never learn, which is when to stop.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.