The ep39 Gene Tunney 2nd Installment

This is Jimmy Powers ready to bring you another story from the Tumal and the Shouting. Again, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from the Grant and Rice story, the Tumal and the Shouting.

Last time we took Jean Tunney straight from a bookkeeper's job in downtown New York to the heavyweight championship of the world. Today we take a second look at Tunney, the Tunney of the celebrated Long Count fight at Chicago in 1927.

So with a salute to the every young spirit of granny rice, I take up his autobiography, The Tumalt and The Shouting, and in first person, pick up the narrative. The second Dempsey Tummy fight in Chicago, exactly one year later, was pretty much a repetition of the first, except for that long count.

There's an old saying that champions never come back. They all but had to bury that old truism that night at Soldiers Field before 104,943 who had paid $2,658,660 to see the bomb go off. It was Tunny's first defense of his crown.

As for Dempsey, he'd chipped a lot of rust off his plates two months earlier against Jack Sharkey. There was never a more popular underdog than ex-Champ Dempsey going into the second TUNNY fight. With old timers, whether it be baseball players or fighters, the ability to hit goes last, and Dempsey could still hit.

At Chicago, it seemed that everybody and anybody short of President Coolidge was calling the shots and throwing coal on the fires of intrigue. The fight was made to order for Chicago a boom city that was busting its britches with prosperity and the honky talk that goes with it.