Jack Dempsey: “Nobody owes anybody a living, but everybody is entitled to a chance. I was a miner and I was a cowboy but mostly I was a hobo. I fought wherever I could, in school halls, outside saloons, any place they were putting up a purse. I once walked thirty miles across the desert to a town called Goldfield in Nevada so I could fight for twenty dollars.
“I got beat a lot. I improved, but I remember the beatings I took. Once got beat so bad they had to take me out of the ring in a wheelbarrow. I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great.
“I took out other guys quick. That much is true. I got more one round knockouts than anybody, sixty knockouts in the first round. I beat a good Heavyweight in New Orleans once in fourteen seconds. I knocked out Fred Fulton, six-foot-four, 250 pounds, in nineteen seconds. How come? Not because I was a killer, other way round, I was always afraid that l’d be the one who was killed. Get them quick and you live to fight another day.”
