Jack Dempsey vs Jess Willard

[BattlingNelson]

Some more pics from the fight:

[BattlingNelson]

And people claim today's fighters are better conditioned than the old-timers

Poet

Dempsey's trainingroutine is here below. It's stolen from another forum

"here's his daily routine, workout recommendations, and some more indepth information according to his fantastic book "Championship Fighting":

DAILY WORKOUT ROUTINE:
0600: Wake up, drink a hot cup of hot tea or broth (chicken or beef)
0630: Hit the road for your roadwork
0700: Go home, quick cool-down and shower, eat a breakfast of fruit juice, cereal, eggs, and milk/tea.
1230: Eat a lunch of lettuce and tomato on basil bread (with 2-3 slices of bacon), glass of milk or cup of tea. If you don't use bacon with the sandwich you can have a malted milk.
1800: Gymwork. Have a cup of hot tea with lemon before you work out.
1915: Workout completed, go home
1930: Eat dinner: half grapefruit or glass of fruit juice (or a cup or broth); a salad with olive oil and perhaps lemon juice; meat, boiled or broiled, never fried; steaks, chops, or chicken; stews are good for weight gain; baked potatoes are too; no pork, veal, lobster, shrimp, crab, or starchy foods like spaghetti. For dessert: stewed fruit, prunes, apriocots, pears, rhubarb, etc., and a cup of hot tea. NO PASTRIES.
2015: Relax for half an hour.
2045: Take a light 15-min walk.
2100: Go to bed.

Dempsey would sometimes either take only 1 day off a week or, if he felt like he was overtraining too much, he would actually take a week off during his pre-fight training.

Roadwork: Dempsey liked to run shorter distances than a lot of the other boxers in his era (some of those old timers would run 150 miles per week!). He mixed up 100m sprints and rounds of shadowboxing in with his runs. He recommends starting off with 1/2 mile each day for 7 days, then slowly working it up to 2 miles a day.

Gymwork: Here's a basic schedule he recommends for the aspiring fighter to get started.

**Shadowboxing, 2 rounds
**Sparring, 3 rounds
**Heavy bag, 2 rounds
**Speed bag, 3 rounds
**Rope skipping, 2-3 rounds
**Calisthenics, 2 rounds
**5 minute "sweat-out" in the sauna followed by a shower

Shadowboxing: He sees this as a very important part of your training, almost as important as sparring. Make sure you're using your footwork and actually fight an opponent. Wear your gloves when you shadowbox so you get even more of a workout from it.

Sparring: The most important exercise. Go hard on each other but don't kill each other. You are sparring to learn after all. Use protection when you need to.

Heavy Bag: Start off with 2-minute rounds and work your way up to 3-minute rounds. The first 60 seconds of each round he worked on bobbing and weaving followed by counter punches.

Speed Bag: A great exercise in his opinion. Again, start off with 2-minute rounds and work your way up to 3-minute rounds. Devote the first 60 seconds of speed bag work on the straight backhand combination (left straight-left backhand-right straight-right backhand). The rest of the round, hit hard with everything else.

Rope Skipping: Don't "hippity hop like a schoolgirl." Bounce off one foot then the other, it will be awkward at first but be patient and you'll reap big results.

Calisthenics: Situps with arms extended over your head (he preferred straight-legged, but bend your knees), twisting situps (go up, twist sharply to left then right, then go back down), back bridges, wall pulley work, pushups, medicine ball tosses against the stomach (though he recommends several months of situps before a beginner tries these), and a neck exercise where you turn your head to the side and jut your chin out past your shoulder, moving only your chin. He also did a lot of manual physical work (he was a miner at one point) and was a monster with pull-ups (sometimes doing up to 200 per day!). Sitting and standing forward and side bends were also used for his midsection.

Other Training Tidbits:
**He recommended using camphored ice on skinned knuckles right before bed.
**During his workout, you would often see him chewing on gum made out of pine tar. It was very sticky and thick, so boxers during that day used to chew lots of it in the hopes that it would give them a tougher chin.
**He would also bathe his hands and face in beef brine, as he felt it toughened up your skin like old leather. He was prone to cuts at times, so he began to "skin toughen" his face by rubbing around cut-prone areas with his thumbs vigorously (until it was raw but not bleeding) to develop calluses there."

[StarshipTrooper]

Dempsey's trainingroutine is here below. It's stolen from another forum

"here's his daily routine, workout recommendations, and some more indepth information according to his fantastic book "Championship Fighting":

DAILY WORKOUT ROUTINE:
0600: Wake up, drink a hot cup of hot tea or broth (chicken or beef)
0630: Hit the road for your roadwork
0700: Go home, quick cool-down and shower, eat a breakfast of fruit juice, cereal, eggs, and milk/tea.
1230: Eat a lunch of lettuce and tomato on basil bread (with 2-3 slices of bacon), glass of milk or cup of tea. If you don't use bacon with the sandwich you can have a malted milk.
1800: Gymwork. Have a cup of hot tea with lemon before you work out.
1915: Workout completed, go home
1930: Eat dinner: half grapefruit or glass of fruit juice (or a cup or broth); a salad with olive oil and perhaps lemon juice; meat, boiled or broiled, never fried; steaks, chops, or chicken; stews are good for weight gain; baked potatoes are too; no pork, veal, lobster, shrimp, crab, or starchy foods like spaghetti. For dessert: stewed fruit, prunes, apriocots, pears, rhubarb, etc., and a cup of hot tea. NO PASTRIES.
2015: Relax for half an hour.
2045: Take a light 15-min walk.
2100: Go to bed.

Dempsey would sometimes either take only 1 day off a week or, if he felt like he was overtraining too much, he would actually take a week off during his pre-fight training.

Roadwork: Dempsey liked to run shorter distances than a lot of the other boxers in his era (some of those old timers would run 150 miles per week!). He mixed up 100m sprints and rounds of shadowboxing in with his runs. He recommends starting off with 1/2 mile each day for 7 days, then slowly working it up to 2 miles a day.

Gymwork: Here's a basic schedule he recommends for the aspiring fighter to get started.

**Shadowboxing, 2 rounds
**Sparring, 3 rounds
**Heavy bag, 2 rounds
**Speed bag, 3 rounds
**Rope skipping, 2-3 rounds
**Calisthenics, 2 rounds
**5 minute "sweat-out" in the sauna followed by a shower

Shadowboxing: He sees this as a very important part of your training, almost as important as sparring. Make sure you're using your footwork and actually fight an opponent. Wear your gloves when you shadowbox so you get even more of a workout from it.

Sparring: The most important exercise. Go hard on each other but don't kill each other. You are sparring to learn after all. Use protection when you need to.

Heavy Bag: Start off with 2-minute rounds and work your way up to 3-minute rounds. The first 60 seconds of each round he worked on bobbing and weaving followed by counter punches.

Speed Bag: A great exercise in his opinion. Again, start off with 2-minute rounds and work your way up to 3-minute rounds. Devote the first 60 seconds of speed bag work on the straight backhand combination (left straight-left backhand-right straight-right backhand). The rest of the round, hit hard with everything else.

Rope Skipping: Don't "hippity hop like a schoolgirl." Bounce off one foot then the other, it will be awkward at first but be patient and you'll reap big results.

Calisthenics: Situps with arms extended over your head (he preferred straight-legged, but bend your knees), twisting situps (go up, twist sharply to left then right, then go back down), back bridges, wall pulley work, pushups, medicine ball tosses against the stomach (though he recommends several months of situps before a beginner tries these), and a neck exercise where you turn your head to the side and jut your chin out past your shoulder, moving only your chin. He also did a lot of manual physical work (he was a miner at one point) and was a monster with pull-ups (sometimes doing up to 200 per day!). Sitting and standing forward and side bends were also used for his midsection.

Other Training Tidbits:
**He recommended using camphored ice on skinned knuckles right before bed.
**During his workout, you would often see him chewing on gum made out of pine tar. It was very sticky and thick, so boxers during that day used to chew lots of it in the hopes that it would give them a tougher chin.
**He would also bathe his hands and face in beef brine, as he felt it toughened up your skin like old leather. He was prone to cuts at times, so he began to "skin toughen" his face by rubbing around cut-prone areas with his thumbs vigorously (until it was raw but not bleeding) to develop calluses there."

Shows how little has change really as far as how fighters prepare for a fight at least as far as what is done (I don't think the intensity is as great now). So much for a good bit of the "modern training" argument.

PS. Great find Battling!

Poet

[Miburo]

From newspaper accounts I would say that destinction goes to Ad Wolgast stopping Battling Nelson in 40 brutal rounds.

Perhaps, but you don't go 40 rounds by fighting at a furious pace. You do it by a great deal of clinching, engaging sparingly, and conserving energy in general, making it a test of stamina (which is how Wolgast apparently won, by staying away and boxing the busier Nelson). The fight you reference was stopped on cuts with only one knockdown, coming in the 22nd round.

In contrast, Dempsey knocked Willard down 7 times in the first round, leaving him with horrific injuries.

[StarshipTrooper]

Perhaps, but you don't go 40 rounds by fighting at a furious pace. You do it by a great deal of clinching, engaging sparingly, and conserving energy in general, making it a test of stamina (which is how Wolgast apparently won, by staying away and boxing the busier Nelson).

There's film of it too. They say Nelson averaged 80 punches thrown a round, which is incredible for a 40 round fight.

Well, if in fact Nelson WAS throwing 80 punches a round then that isn't "engaging sparringly" and there wouldn't be much time for "clinching" and "conserving energy".

Poet

[Miburo]

Well, if in fact Nelson WAS throwing 80 punches a round then that isn't "engaging sparringly" and there wouldn't be much time for "clinching" and "conserving energy".

Poet

And he lost too - my point. I don't imagine many of those punches were connecting, especially by the second half.

[BattlingNelson]

Perhaps, but you don't go 40 rounds by fighting at a furious pace. You do it by a great deal of clinching, engaging sparingly, and conserving energy in general, making it a test of stamina (which is how Wolgast apparently won, by staying away and boxing the busier Nelson). The fight you reference was stopped on cuts with only one knockdown, coming in the 22nd round.

In contrast, Dempsey knocked Willard down 7 times in the first round, leaving him with horrific injuries.

I will go as far as saying that Willard probably took the worst one-sided beating ever.

I'm currently reading some newspaper accounts of the Wolgast-Nelson fight. I might make a thread about it at some time. Brutal gory stuff.

[Sugarj]

Firstly GJC, great article......thoroughly enjoyed it. Only aspect it didn't delve into was the possibility that the iron implement was inside the glove, rather than held in his palm.


As for Dempsey's training regime, did anyone else feel that half an hours morning road work and an evenings hour and a quarter workout seems not as much as expected for a championship fighter? I'm discounting the light walk before bed. He obviously had great fitness, so whatever works!

[TheGreatA]

And he lost too - my point. I don't imagine many of those punches were connecting, especially by the second half.

Wolgast was indeed landing the heavier punches in between Nelson's relentless attack.

Here you can see a very short clip of the Nelson-Wolgast fight:

http://www.geocities.com/jcbunnell/m...onQTvideo.html

It's the last round of the fight.

"The Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast lightweight championship held on Feb 22, 1910 was called “for concentrated viciousness... the most savage bout I have ever seen” wrote W.O. McGeehan in the New York Herald Tribune.

Michael Hunnicut agrees, saying it is “the best fight I have ever seen on film.” They fought to the 42nd round. Nelson, a swarmer, like Ricky Hatton, averaged 85 punches a round. He threw 90 in the 30th round.

They slowed in the 39th. Nelson, the loser, threw 70. These guys threw just as many punches-a-round as one sees in a 12-rounder today, but they did it for over 40! "

http://coxscorner.tripod.com/myth.html

There's also this:

"The Willie Ritchie-Joe Rivers July 4, 1913 lightweight championship match, featured a whopping 95 punches-a-round from Ritchie -- 3-5 punch combinations – before stopping Rivers in the 11th – clear evidence, he could match the intensity of anybody currently. "

I'll have this fight uploaded soon.

[BattlingNelson]

Wolgast was indeed landing the heavier punches in between Nelson's relentless attack.

Here you can see a very short clip of the Nelson-Wolgast fight:

http://www.geocities.com/jcbunnell/m...onQTvideo.html

It's the last round of the fight.

"The Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast lightweight championship held on Feb 22, 1910 was called “for concentrated viciousness... the most savage bout I have ever seen” wrote W.O. McGeehan in the New York Herald Tribune.

Michael Hunnicut agrees, saying it is “the best fight I have ever seen on film.” They fought to the 42nd round. Nelson, a swarmer, like Ricky Hatton, averaged 85 punches a round. He threw 90 in the 30th round.

They slowed in the 39th. Nelson, the loser, threw 70. These guys threw just as many punches-a-round as one sees in a 12-rounder today, but they did it for over 40! "

http://coxscorner.tripod.com/myth.html

There's also this:

"The Willie Ritchie-Joe Rivers July 4, 1913 lightweight championship match, featured a whopping 95 punches-a-round from Ritchie -- 3-5 punch combinations – before stopping Rivers in the 11th – clear evidence, he could match the intensity of anybody currently. "

I'll have this fight uploaded soon.

Amazing punch-stats. Hardly believeable.

If I'm not mistaken the clip of the Wolgast-Nelson fight is from the same site that features the famous double KD of Wolgast and Rivers(?). I cannot see the clip today and I don't know why

Sitenote TGA: How do you put more than 4 images into a post?