Nonpareil Dempsey

John Edward Kelly, better known to the fight public as “Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey, was born on 15 December 1862 in County Kildare, Ireland, and spent his fighting life in America, based out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He stood 5ft 8in, orthodox. Although he is sometimes mislabelled years later as a heavyweight because of the toughness of the men he faced, the work he did that mattered was at middleweight, where he became boxing’s first widely recognised world champion in that division. In a period when “championship” claims were stitched together from reputation, newspaper verdicts, and who would actually fight whom, Dempsey’s nickname, “Nonpareil”, was not advertising copy so much as a reflection of how rarely anyone could live with his pace and accuracy for long.

There is no reliable amateur record to lean on, and that is true of most men of his time, but the best-sourced accounts agree he had a strong grounding as a wrestler before he committed himself to prizefighting. He turned professional in 1883, when boxing was still half outlawed and regularly disrupted. His debut tells you plenty about the era: on 3 September 1883, he was matched with Harry Force; the police intervened at Blissville; the affair was shifted to Coney Island and left unfinished, logged as a no-contest. From there, he boxed constantly around New York and the eastern circuit, mixing short-glove bouts, exhibitions, and the longer “finish fight” culture that still clung to the sport. He fought with a technician’s head in a time that often rewarded the bruiser, quick enough to change his look according to the man in front of him, and nimble enough to make bigger, rougher fighters miss and pay.

On 30 July, 1884, Dempsey beat George Fulljames on Staten Island to stake his claim to the world middleweight title, a claim that later record-keepers recognise as the start of his championship reign. Those early years show a pattern that runs through his whole ledger: he was prepared to fight, and to fight under whatever rules were available, in whatever venues could be secured. A standout of the period, because it captures both the farce and the ferocity of nineteenth-century boxing, is his bout with John Reagan on 13 December, 1887, promoted as a middleweight championship contest with a belt at stake, fought under London Prize Ring conditions with tight gloves, staged on the shore of Long Island Sound, then shifted when the tide rose, and finally halted after 44 rounds when the other corner threw in the sponge. It was crude theatre, but it was also a measure of Dempsey’s durability and composure over absurd distance.

His first truly damaging blemish came not from being outboxed, but from an argument over what was permissible. On 27 August, 1889, at the California Athletic Club in San Francisco, George LaBlanche knocked him out in the 32nd round with the notorious “pivot blow”, and Dempsey’s unbeaten run was over. Even then, the title picture stayed muddied, because LaBlanche was heavier on the night, and contemporary and later accounts treated that as grounds for Dempsey to be regarded as still champion at the agreed middleweight limit. What is not in dispute is that Dempsey carried on campaigning at the top level: on 18 February 1890, again at the California A.C. in San Francisco, he stopped Billy McCarthy in the 28th round in a bout billed for the world 158lb middleweight title, underlining that the LaBlanche loss had not removed him from the championship class.

The reign ended the hard way. On 14 January, 1891, at the Olympic Club in New Orleans, Bob Fitzsimmons took the world middleweight title from him, stopping him in the 13th round of a finish fight. BoxRec notes Dempsey had been out of the ring for two years and was giving away a startling amount of weight, and the contest is often remembered as the night Fitzsimmons proved himself the stronger, fresher finisher over the long haul. Dempsey fought on sporadically, beating Billy Keough in Portland on 28 February, 1893, drawing again with McCarthy in New Orleans on 5 September, 1894, and then losing to Tommy Ryan at Coney Island on 18 January, 1895, as illness hollowed him out. He died in Portland, Oregon, in early November 1895, aged 32, with sources differing by a day on whether it was 1 November or 2 November, and he was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery. His final professional totals are recorded in the region of 69 bouts with newspaper decisions included, and a widely cited mark of 52 wins, 3 losses and 11 draws, a reminder that even his statistics, like the sport around him, were forged in a time before neat accounting. He was later inducted into The Ring’s Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and his adopted surname travelled on, most famously when the later heavyweight champion William Harrison Dempsey took “Jack Dempsey” as his own ring name in tribute.