Gene tunney biography youtube christian

I tell you that the day is coming when the champions of the roped arena will be intellectual as well as physical giants. They will have the bodies of a Jeffries and the minds of an Edison or a Maxim or a Lombroso. Gene Tunney was 15 years old and just getting his feet wet in the ring when Gentleman Jim made that mind-boggling prediction, but certainly no other boxer has come closer to fulfilling it than the well-read, articulate and intelligent Tunney, who took the heavyweight title from Jack Dempsey in and successfully defended it twice before retiring to a life of ease and corporate success.

But rather than being revered for the qualities hymned by Corbett, Tunney was mocked as a highfaluting stuffed-shirt more at home in the ivory tower he constructed for himself than on the throne of Sullivan. Cavanaugh lives in Wilton, Connecticut. To his great surprise and delight, though, Tunney talked openly and candidly on the one-hour ride to Grand Central Station.

Gene Tunney was a great boxer, but did not do enough at heavyweight to be considered a great heavyweight.

In fact, Cavanaugh says, Tunney was no intellectual poseur. They came to visit him. In April, , while Tunney was heavyweight champion, he was invited to Yale University to talk about William Shakespeare to an English lit class. He arrived expecting an audience of about 40 students, but the crowd was 10 times that.

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He spoke knowledgeably about Shakespeare for an hour, Cavanaugh said, and the next day the New York Times ran a word piece about the event on its front page. Tunney started boxing around the age of 10, when his father gave him a pair of gloves and told him to learn how to use them because bullies were always picking on the slim youngster whose habit even then of carrying books around made him an inviting target.

At the CYO, Tunney started sparring with other kids and quickly realized that he had a natural talent for boxing. Before his military service, Tunney engaged in several pro fights strictly for the money, according to Cavanaugh. Gene then was a fighter, but his visits to the resin for 10 seconds made him change his style and he took to scientific boxing.

When he went to his manager, Doc Bagley, to complain about the lack of media interest, Bagley informed him that the standard operating procedure was to pay sportswriters under the table for their professional attention.