Time Off From Boxing
After the Firpo brawl, Dempsey did not defend his title for another three years. There was pressure from the public and the media for Dempsey to defend his title against black contender Harry Wills. There is disagreement among boxing historians as to whether Dempsey avoided Wills, though Dempsey claimed he was willing. When he originally won the title, however, he had said he would not fight black boxers. Instead of defending his title, Dempsey continued to earn money by boxing exhibitions, making movies and endorsing products. Dempsey also did a lot of traveling, spending and partying. During this time away from competitive fighting, Dempsey married actress Estelle Taylor and broke up with his long-time trainer/manager Jack "Doc" Kearns. This break-up did not go smoothly and Kearns repeatedly sued Dempsey for huge sums of money. He was also appointed to the executive of the Irish Worker League (IWL) in April 1924. The IWL was a Moscow backed communist movement founded by Irish labour leader, Jim Larkin, in Dublin.
Read more about this topic: Jack Dempsey
Famous quotes containing the words time and/or boxing:
“Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)