Word: dempsey
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Finally, a funeral ceremony was held; Rickard was praised, sung over, paraded through the streets and put into the ground, at Woodlawn Cemetery near Manhattan. Two nights later, in the exact centre of Madison Square Garden, there was a prizefight and a ceremony. The ceremony was simple: Jack Dempsey climbed through the ropes; the announcer, red-faced Joe Humphreys, made a gesture; the lights went down; a bugler played taps. Presently the lights went on and Jimmy McLarnin, of Vancouver, Wash., beat Joe Glick, Brooklyn tailor...
...Right afterward, Tunney retired, still heavyweight champion. Since it is regarded as essential that there should always be a World's Heavyweight Champion, it was necessary to discover immediately who this should be. On investigation, it appeared that there was no one good enough to fill the position adequately. Dempsey who, judged by the eminently suitable criterion of gate receipts, had never lost the heavyweight championship, was reconsidered for the honor. Frantic and slow elimination contests were held, meaning nothing. Tex Rickard, having made professional boxing into a sport more spectacular than any since the wild animal shows...
Accordingly, he went south to Miami Beach, Fla., where in some hope of booming his own and friends' real estate properties, he began arrangements for a bout between Jack Sharkey and Young Stribling, the winner to meet Jack Dempsey for the championship. Just before negotiations had crystallized into contracts, Tex Rickard died, bequeathing, to heirs unspecified in his will, a dreadful situation in the boxing business. Now there were two tasks of almost insurmountable difficulty to be encompassed. First, there must be found an heir for Tex Rickard's problems; next, an heir to Gene Tunney...
...elected president of this, would inherit the responsibilities, if not necessarily the talents, of Tex Richard. A much discussed candidate was Vice President William F. Carey, Wall Street contracting engineer, builder of the new Manhattan and Boston Madison Square Gardens, onetime Rickard Partner in Paraguayan cattle-ranchholdings. Jack Dempsey refused to consider it officially; before any announcement had been made by the Garden Corporation, William F. Carey entrained with Prizefighter Dempsey for Boston and persuaded Jack Sharkey, who had lapsed into his habitual recalcitrance, to sign papers for the Stribling fight. Then Dempsey went to Miami, arranged details...
However, for promoters to be successful, they must have something to promote and unless Promoter-Pugilist Dempsey should arrange a match between himself and the winner of the Sharkey-Stribling bout, there seemed to be no further work for Rickard's successor to do until a prospective heavyweight champion appeared. Of these, only one had shown the vaguest possibility of becoming satisfactory. This was Maximilian Siegfried Victor ("Mocks") Schmeling who was once the champion of Germany, who has fought twice in the U. S., who is 23 years old, who looks like Jack Dempsey and is being taught to fight...