THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1919

WILLARD A PITIABLE SIGHT AS RESULT OF BATTERING HE RECEIVED FROM JACK DEMPSEY

(By Damon Runyon, Universal Service Staff Correspondent.) _ Toledo, Ohio, July 4. - Squatted on his stool in his corner, a bleeding, trem- bling, helpless bulk, Jess Willard, the Kansas giant, this afternoon relin- quished his title of heavyweight cham- pion of the world, just as the bell was about to toss him into the fourth round of a mangling at the paws of Jack Dempsey, the young Mountain Lion in human form from the Sangre Del Christo hills of Colorado. _ He was a sad sight as he sat there, this ponderous fellow, who four short years ago was acclaimed mightiest of men when he beat down old Black Jack Johnson. _ The right side of his face was a pulp where the fists of the Indian brown boy from the Centennial state had been landing for nine minutes with fearful force. The right eye of the champion was completely hidden behind that bloody smear. His left eye peered over a lump of flesh in grotesque fashion. _ The great, dough-like body of the giant was splotched with red patches. They were the aftermath of Demp- sey's gloves thumping there and giv- ing back a hollow sound as they thumped. _ At the feet of the Gargantuan pugil- istic was a dark spot which was slow- ly widening on the brown canvas as it was replenished by the drip-drip- drip of blood from the man's wounds. He was flecked with red from head to foot. The flesh on his enormous limbs shook like custard. _ He was like a man who had just been pulled from under the wreck of an automobile or railroad train or who had met with some other grave accident. He blinked the one eye through which he could still see day- light at the glaring sun, looking out over the heads of the crowd that had gathered to see something like this. ___ Dempsey Waits Impatiently. _ In the corner opposite him, tugging at the ropes like a pet terrier tug- ging at the leash and scratching his feet on the resined canvas with sin- ister impatience, was the saddle-col- ored demon who had ripped and pounded and slashed this tremendous fellow into this distressing state. _ It seemed incredible, and yet it was so. Another round was coming on. An- other round of mauling and maltreat- ment for the giant. The ox cannot beat the tiger. The bruised lips of the champion moved. He was mumbling some words. An instant later and he was no longer champion of the world. _ Walter Monohan, a sergeant in the United States Army, and Willard's chief second, bent his head close to the bleeding mouth to hear what he had to say. Then Monohan turned and tossed a towel into the ring. _ This towel was slightly spotted with blood. The rag rose no higher than the ring ropes and fell limply, but it represented the formal transfer of the heavyweight championship crown. It was surrender. _ It was Willard's order. Another in- stant passed until the crowd realized what had occurred, and then forty thousand persons went raving crazy for a moment. _ The towel had no sooner hit the ring floor than Willard was on his feet, walking over to meet the already ad- vancing Dempsey, with his gloved hand outstretched. One side of his face - the side which was not swollen - carried a strange smile. _ He had worn that same smile throughout the short fight. It was on the unmashed side of his face as he sat in his corner think what thoughts no one but Jess Willard knows. It was the strangest smile I have ever seen. It was a smile I shall not for- get if I live to be a thousand, and yet it was a smile I find hard to describe. It was a silly sort of a smile as of a simple fellow who cannot exactly understand what is happening to him. _ It first appeared when that brown man - a little man as compared to this preposterously big fellow - first leaped upon him in the opening round, claw- ing like some animal. It was there when the huge man sat in a neutral corner in the late stages of that round, his legs out straight before him and his enormous hairy torso up- right, as he sat in that position smil- ing that silly smile he was a most ridiculous spectacle. He was plainly completely dazed by the punches which had been pumped into his face and frame, and he reminded one of a drunken man sitting in an alley play- ing with his hands, or of a simpleton picking at a coverlid. ___Faulty Bell Fooled Crowd. _ Willard was almost knocked out in that first furious rush of the Colorado boy. In fact, everybody thought he was out, and that the fight was over. The faulty bell had tinkled, but few had heard it. Men rushed into the ring and confronted Dempsey. The new champion was leaving the ring when Ollie Pecord, the Toledo referee, who had kept him head well during the clamor made handlers understand that only the round was over. _ Then Jack Kearns, Dempsey's manager, drew him back to his corner. The ring was cleared. The crowd settled back and the bell tapped again. Out came Willard smiling that simple smile, his flabby legs shaking under every step that lifted his bulk forward and now, to the astonish- ment of everyone, the giant rallied. _ No one believed he could possibly weather that second round, but he pushed on under a veritable barrage of hammerings, not only to the end of that round, but to the close of the third. It was only a question of time when he must collapsed, however. He almost fell when he went back to his corner at the close of the third round and stood for an instant before he sat down. It is doubtful if he could have withstood an- other round of punishment he had lived under in the nine minutes that had passed. In any event, he decided not to respond to the bell for the fourth. _ He was almost blind. He was welter of blood. He was weak and unable to de- fend himself. He fought through the second and third rounds with courage. He fought like a good fellow. Perhaps the acme of gameness might have been reached had he gone out to be knocked senseless in the fourth round, but the spectacle had already passed the stage sport. It had become sheer butchery. Willard decided wisely. And for all this he got $100,000 besides the thousands he has collected at his training camp, Lieut. Lockler, the aviator, changing planes in mid-air high above the heads of the crowd just before the fight, got nothing but the plaudits of the people. He couldn't even hear the plaudits. _ After it was over, Willard walked out unsteadily to meet his conqueror. He congratulated him after the time honored custom of beaten ring men and Dempsey showing his white teeth in a wide grin where before his face had been crinkled with sullen scowls, responded with a sort of condolence - what makes no dif- ference now - before delivering himself up to his friends. _ Then Willard lifted his ponderous bulk down from the ring and went into fistic oblivion, still smiling that strangely sim- ple smile, as they were raising the new champion high above the ring for all to see. The cheers that once rang in Wil- lards ear were now for the new king. The old pugilistic order had changed. ___Youth Had Been Served. _ Youth had been served. Once while sitting in his corner beneath a dingy old umbrella covered with advertising, be- fore the fight Dempsey smiled. He sighted "Tad," the cartoonist, sitting at the ringside and the beetling brows of the challenger softened as he relaxed his features. _ That was about the only time. His face was so set that many thought he was nervous. Over in the other corner, be- neath a neat new brown umbrella, Wil- lard fairly beamed on the crowd, nod- ding pleasantly to familiar faces in the audience and generally conducting him- self like a man at a function given in his honor. _ A few minutes later and he was stumbling about the ring like an ox in a stall, dull eyed and heavy limbed. It was a starling transition. _ Dempsey never even glanced at Wil- lard until they put up their hands. It is Dempseys way. When they stood to- gether in the center of the ring with their hands clasped for the benefit of the moving picture men. Jack did not look at his giant antagonist. Once he winked at a bunch of newspaper friends. _ Willard, on the other hand seemed pleasant and chatty. He seemed a friend- ly soul trying to make up to a morose neighbor. When they faced each other to listen to the instructions of Ollie Pecord, the referee. Dempsey stared at the floor. He scarcely seemed to be listening. Wil- lard was all attention and still very pleasant. _ The men returned to their corners and Dempsey continued to look everywhere but at Willard. Something went wrong with the bell. It was on Willard's side of the ring and it gave off a feverish light tinkle when Warren Barbour, the former amateur heavyweight champion, who was the official timekeeper, gave it a tug. _ Willard heard it and started to leave his corner. Then he saw that Dempsey was still leaning against the ropes op- posite him, his back to the ring and he realized that Jack had not heard. Willard glanced expectantly at the time- keeper. Barbour gave another yank and again the bell tinkled softly. Still Dempsey did not hear. He stood pawing his feet on the canvas and looking out over the crowd. _ From a seat nearby his camp jester, Max Kaplan, a fellow from Long Branch, N.J., where Dempsey used to train, was making an unearthly outcry. Jess nodded and smiled in a most polite manner and finally Dempsey turned as the bell tinkled and Jack understood that the fight was on. _ They advanced toward one another, Dempsey crouching slightly and his shoulders moving in the curious "shimmy" style which he has made his own. Willard was fairly upright. Wil- lard made the first lead. It landed light- ly. Dempsey paid no attention, but kept marching in. Willard dabbed at him slightly several times without much ef- fect. ___Dempsey Lands Blows Easily. _ Dempsey walked around, crouched and "shimmying" as if studying this strange monster before him. Then suddenly the Coloradoan began slashing out. Demp- sey hits without apparent direction. He sees a target in front of him and he begins hitting and keeps hitting and he hits with deadly force. He was half leaping as he hit at Willard's jaw, tow- ering about him. _ First the left hand, then the right went swishing upward. His first lead was for the broad white body spread so invitingly before him and his fists seemed to sink in as they landed. Then the attack shifted to higher ground, so to speak. Willard seemed to have no sense of loca- tion whatever as he tried to stave off the first rush of the challenger, which he had been told to expect and which had come just as predicted. _ Dempsey's fists fairly thudded against Jess' stomach, then suddenly a brown arm with a glove at the end shot upward to Willard's jaw and the cham- pion seemed to crumple up in the very middle. His gigantic body plumped to the floor. _ The crowd went stark mad. Hats flew into the air and the pine crater on the banks of Maumee Bay, where the men were fighting, erupted with a terrific vol- ume of human voices. But Willard was not down for good. He was on one knee, listening intently to Ollie Pecord as the referee counted. Willard knew what he was doing then all right. He asked the referee what the count was and got on his feet before nine as Pe- cord raised his voice to impart the in- formation, and now the wildcat was loose. Dempsey swarmed up to the gigantic form of the Kansasan. Now Willard was on the ropes, his great weight causing them to sag deeply. Now he was half under them. A haze had settled in his eyes. He had the look of a man gazing through a mist. Now you couldn't see the right eye at all. Now the blood began welling from cuts on his face and slowly trickling down his cheeks. _ Seven times the champion was down on the floor for the count in the first round. After that round he was not legally down again, according to Queens- berry lights. He brought up in the first round sitting in the neutral corner, smiling that simple smile, as I have re- lated, which was the moment the crowd thought the thing was all over.. Phila- delphia Jack O'Brien, the old dancing master of the fistic game, hopped briskly into the ring at the head of a big crowd of oncoming wild-eyed Dempsey enthusi- asts and was shaking Jack's hands and congratulating him when they pushed him aside so that the fight might go on. __ Willard Fought Back Feebly _ Some have suggested that Dempsey's leaving the ring might have constituted a technical infringement of the rules, but no one would have the nerve to advance such a technicality after that first round. It was obvious then that Willard was whipped. _ The big man tottered out for the sec- ond round. That is the only word which describes it, he tottered. Dempsey be- gan tearing at him again as eagerly as a wolf tearing at a wounded prey. Poor Jess fought back feebly. He could not keep the lighter man from slugging him to the ropes and then slugging him off the ropes again. He was battered all around the ring, but even so, some one suggested that Dempsey might be rest- ing. _ Willard seemed stronger after that round. It probably looked that way merely in comparison to the first, how- ever. He came out for the third round apparently desperate as he met Demp- sey's attack with both big hands flailing wildly. A right uppercut which Jack delivered with a hop upward brought the blood pouring from Willard's mouth to swell the stream which was leaking from his nose and from the cuts on his face. _ Dempsey wore a pair of white silk run- ning trunks. They were dyed crimson by the gore from Willard's wounds. Around the waist of the challenger was an American flag. The blue and white soon melted into the red. His brown body was splattered with Willard's blood and Willard himself was red from his blue silk trunks to the top of his head. _ It couldn't last that way long. The de- cent thing to do was to stop, and Wil- lard stopped it. He will be bitterly re- viled for quitting, but if boxing is de- signed to establish the better man, then this fight was over at the end of the first round. _ "I have no alibis to offer," said Wil- lard after the fight. "I am through with the ring forever. Dempsey is certainly a good boy. I have no excuses for the way I trained. I think it was the best way." _ In that many of the people who saw the fight today will differ with Willard. He was in good health as William Mul- doon has put it, but he was not in good condition for a battle. However, condi- tion cut little figure in the affair this afternoon. It is the law of the old game that a man cannot give away a stretch of years to a young opponent. They have all tried it and they have all failed.

MORE NEWS OF THE DAY:

_ _ _ _ (By Universal Service) _ New York, July 4. - The nationwide bomb plot said to have been planned for today failed to materialize. Not even the slightest disturbance marred the hottest independence day in many years. _ The police authorities of New York took extra precaution to prevent any outbreak. _ Thousands of policemen were sta- tioned about public buildings and the homes of public men and prominent citizens.

THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION JULY 5, 1919

THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION JULY 5, 1919

DEMPSET WINS JACK DEMPSEY NEW KING GREATEST HEAVYWEIGHT SINCE JEFFRIES WILLARD'S STYLE OF LOSING WILLARD"S WIFE SORRY OF DEFEAT...

WILLARD A PITIABLE SIGHT AS RESULT OF
BATTERING HE RECEIVED FROM JACK DEMPSEY
THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION, JULY 5, 1919
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