Once They Fought...

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 19

Once They Fought...

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK. Three great boxers of the 1920s—Georges Carpentier, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney exchanged reminiscences at a reunion in New York yesterday. Carpentier, aged 72, who flew in from Paris for the meeting, threw his arms around the 70-year-old Dempsey and the 68-year-old Tunney. The Frenchman had been knocked out by both Americans more than 40 years ago. Dempsey recalled his world

heavy-weight championship bout with Carpentier on July 2, 1921, in New Jersey. Dempsey knocked out Carpentier in the fourth round, but the former American champion told how Carpentier hit him with a straight right that landed high on the cheekbone. “If he had hit me on the •chin, I think he would have knocked me out,” Dempsey said.

Tunney also recalled how he almost lost to Carpentier when the two met in New York in 1924—a fight which Tunney won with a fifteenth round knock-out.

“But Georges gave me a lot of punishment,” Tunney said. ‘l’m amazed that I didn’t go down.” Reporters asked Carpentier to appraise Cassius Clay, the current heavy-weight champion.

“A great fighter,” Carpentier said. “Not a great puncher, but a great boxer.” Asked if he thought he could beat Clay, Carpentier replied: “I could out-talk him —in my own language.”

Carpentier, Tunney and Dempsey were reunited for the purpose of an exhibition of paintings by the American artist, George Bellows, who did celebrated oil works of boxing bouts of the 1920'5.