Originally posted by Bennyleonard99
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Here is Dempsey denying he was poisoned, but this is December 1926.
He would change his mind come 1927 after hearing stories.
But to be fair this is Dempsey's attitude at first; the gracious loser. Not poisoned
New York Times December 1926
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 2 (AP).—Jack Dempsey denied here today that poisoned coffee had anything to do with his losing the heavyweight boxing crown to Gene Tunney several months ago.
"I probably had a little touch of ptomaine a week or so before the fight, but that hadn't anything to do with the result. I was perfectly all right when I went into the ring and knew what was going on all the time."
Captain Charles J. Mabbutt, who was chief of Dempsey's training camp, was quoted from Baltimore yesterday as saying that he, Dempsey and his trainer were made ill from poison placed in coffee cream on the Saturday preceding the fight.
"I can't imagine Mabbutt saying that," Dempsey added.
The story, credited to Captain Charles J. Mabbutt, that Jac': Dempsey was suffering from the effects of poison on the night he lost his world's heavyweight championship to Gene Tunney was further scouted yesterday in local boxing circles when John Broderick, a detective who had been one of Dempsey's personal bodyguards during the days preceding the fight, declared he was certain there was nothing to the report.
According to Broderick, he, Jack Smith, another detective; Jerry the Greek and Dempsey were the only four to have breakfast in Kerry Cottage in Atlantic City on the Saturday morning preceding the fight. All three, he said, were with the former champion constantly from that time on until Dempsey climbed through the ropes, and at no time during that period did Dempsey show any symptoms of having been poisoned.
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