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Title: Dempsey-Firpo heavyweight championship fight

Description: The Dempsey-Firpo heavyweight championship fight at the Polo Grounds (80,000 attending with a gate of $1,188,603); Luis Angel Firpo (AKA: Wild Bull of the Pampas; 1894-1960), Argentine prizefighter and South American heavyweight champion, stands at right in the first round (after having been knocked down seven times in that round) to land a fierce right that sent his opponent through the ropes and out of the ring; the defending champion, Jack Dempsey (William Harrison Dempsey; AKA: Manassa Mauler; 1895-1983), American world heavyweight boxing champion, prizefighter and one of the greatest pugilists in American ring history, was reportedly (and illegally) helped by newsmen to get back into the ring, where, in the second round, Dempsey knocked out Firpo to win one of the most savagely fought championship bouts in boxing history; one description of Firpo in that second round, where he had already been knocked down by Dempsey: "He did not rise like a beaten man. The blood gushed from the battered lips, but the eyes behind the narrow lids were gleaming like the points of white-hot needles. His stout heart was still full of fight." Dempsey, however, was so much in a rage at having been knocked out of the ring in the previous round that his attack on Firpo was relentless in a series of powerful blows, a left and a right to the jaw finally sending the Argentine unconscious to the canvas; Firpo never complained about Dempsey got back into the ring in the first round since he had collected a huge fortune from the fight and immediately returned to Argentina where he bought several large ranches; athletes; bouts; boxers; boxing; champions; championship fights; contests; Jazz Age; matches; prizefighters;

Location: New York, New York, September 14, 1923

Keywords: prizefighting, pugilism, pugilists, Roaring Twenties