By John F. McKenna (McJack): The most amazing thing about the July 2, 1921 fight between heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his French challenger Georges Carpentier was not who won, but the amount of money that the live gate pulled in.
Dempsey ushered in the Golden Age of sports and of boxing when he annihilated big Jess Willard in spectacular fashion in three rounds on July 4, 1919. That fight pulled in a record breaking sum of $455,552 breaking the old record of $270,775 set in 1910 for the Jack Johnson – Jim Jeffries fight.
Promoter Tex Rickard was the promoter for both of the Dempsey fights as well as the Johnson – Jeffries fight. After signing Dempsey and Carpentier early in 1921 Rickard borrowed $250,000 to build a 91,000 seat stadium in Jersey City, NJ. The stadium took nine weeks to construct and covered an area of seven acres. The last row of bleachers rose to a height of 34 feet and was a distance of 312 feet from the ring.
Ticket prices ranged from $50 for ringside seats to $5.50 for bleacher level seats. When the final gross receipts were tabulated the amount was a staggering $1,789,238. Prior to the Dempsey – Carpentier fight a live gate of $1,000,000 was unthinkable. The fight and the amount of money that it pulled in was the lead story in the New York Times the morning after the fight.
The record live gate for the Dempsey – Carpentier fight was broken by the Dempsey Tunney fight in 1926 and then again by the 2nd Dempsey – Tunney fight. To put things in perspective, between the date of the first million dollar gate in 1921 and 1971 there were only eight million dollar gates.
Rickard as a promoter was an innovator and genius and years ahead of his time. He wrote the book on how to hype a fight. When his cash cow Dempsey was preparing to fight the tough Luis Angel Firpo from Argentina, Tex asked Jack to let the fight go a few rounds so that the paying customers got their moneys worth. Dempsey characteristically told Rickard to go to hell.
Rickard was at his very best in the lead up to the Dempsey – Carpentier fight. Carpentier was a World War I war hero and was wildly popular not only in his native France, but in America as well. Rickard exaggerated Carpentier’s fistic ability and by the day of the fight he succeeded in having the masses of people believe that he really had a chance against Dempsey. In reality Carpentier was a pretty good fighter, but in the late teens and the early 1920’s the “Manassa Mauler” as Jack was known by his fans, was unbeatable. The fighter that came out of Toledo, Ohio after pulverizing Jess Willard on July 4, 1919 was a tiger in the ring, snarling and growling as he approached his opponent. Carpentier never had a chance and he was demolished in four rounds.
The bigger story however, was that the mythical ceiling of the $1,000,000 dollar gate was broken and the roaring 20’s were in full swing.
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