The Long Count Fight: Tunney vs. Dempsey in 1927
The second fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, held on September 22, 1927, at Soldier Field in Chicago, is the most famous boxing match of the twentieth century — and one of the most controversial. The Long Count in the seventh round, when Tunney was knocked down but given extra time to recover because Dempsey failed to retreat to a neutral corner, has been debated by boxing fans, sportswriters, and legal scholars for nearly a century. The fight drew 104,943 fans to Soldier Field, the largest crowd ever to attend an outdoor sporting event in America at that point, and a $2.6 million gate — the largest in sports history. It was the high-water mark of the 1920s boxing boom, and the moment when Dempsey’s reign officially ended. The story of the Long Count is part of the broader Boxing Legends of the 1920s cluster and the larger 1920s Sports pillar, which traces how boxing, baseball, and the new mass media combined to create modern sports celebrity.
Gene Tunney: The Challenger
James Joseph “Gene” Tunney was born on May 25, 1897, in New York City, the son of Irish immigrants who had settled in Greenwich Village. He grew up in a tough neighborhood and took up boxing as a teenager, working his way through the amateur ranks to the 1920 U.S. Olympic team. He had been a U.S. light heavyweight representative at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, but lost in the first round. He turned professional in 1917 and built a record of unbeaten professional fights, developing a style that was the antithesis of Dempsey’s aggressive brawling — a thoughtful, scientific boxer who relied on a strong jab, footwork, and ring intelligence.
Tunney earned his shot at Dempsey’s heavyweight title on September 23, 1926, at Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial Stadium, a temporary arena built for the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition. The fight drew 120,557 fans — the largest crowd to attend a sporting event in America at that point — and grossed $1,895,433, the first million-dollar gate in boxing history. In a ten-round decision, Tunney out-boxed the older Dempsey, using his jab and his movement to avoid Dempsey’s power punches. Dempsey exercised his right to a rematch, demanding $1 million for the second fight, a sum that made the event a national sensation before a punch was thrown.
Soldier Field, September 22, 1927
The rematch was set for Soldier Field in Chicago, a stadium built in 1924 as a memorial to American soldiers of World War I. The fight drew 104,943 fans — only a few thousand fewer than the Dempsey-Tunney fight of the year before — and a gate of approximately $2.6 million, the largest in sports history at the time. (The previous record had been the $1.9 million Dempsey-Tunney gate from 1926.) More than 90,000 fans paid for tickets, with the rest in the press, the officials, and the dignitaries. The gate was the largest in any sport anywhere.
The fight was a ten-round decision — boxing rules at the time did not allow fifteen-round championship fights, which would not be standardized until 1983. Tunney was a slight favorite, having won the first fight convincingly, but the crowd was heavily pro-Dempsey, and the champion was determined to even the score.
The Seventh Round: The Long Count
The defining moment of the fight came in the seventh round. Dempsey, behind on points, landed a left hook to the head and a right hand to the body, dropping Tunney to the canvas. Under the rules of the time, a fighter who knocked down his opponent was required to retreat to the furthest neutral corner before the count could continue. Dempsey, however, stood over Tunney, apparently believing that Tunney was about to be counted out, and only after several seconds did he move to the neutral corner.
The delay forced Barry to pause his count. When Dempsey finally reached the neutral corner, Barry restarted the count from where he had left off — giving Tunney approximately 14 seconds total to recover rather than the standard 10. Tunney got up at the count of 9, having taken an extra 4-5 seconds, and went on to out-box Dempsey for the remaining three rounds, winning a unanimous ten-round decision. The sequence of the knockdown, the delay, the restart, and the recovery became known as the “Long Count,” and it has been the subject of endless debate ever since.
The question at the heart of the controversy: could Tunney have gotten up at the count of 10 without the extra time? Dempsey and his supporters said no — that Tunney had been badly hurt and that the extra seconds had been decisive. Tunney and his supporters said yes — that Tunney had been stalling deliberately and would have gotten up in time. The referee, Dave Barry, died in 1936 and never clarified his view of the count. The fight was the basis of the 1956 boxing movie “The Square Jungle.” The wider context of how the fight fit into the 1920s popular culture is told in the Boxing Legends of the 1920s and the Prohibition and Speakeasies cluster, which traces the parallel rise of the underground nightclubs where the fight was discussed in the days after.
The Aftermath
Tunney’s victory in the Long Count was the end of the Dempsey era. Tunney retired as heavyweight champion after the fight, having made a fortune and having married a wealthy socialite, Mary “Polly” Lauder, the daughter of a Standard Oil heir. He lived for another 51 years as a quiet, dignified public figure, serving as a U.S. Navy lieutenant in World War II at the age of 45. He died in 1978 at the age of 81. His family preserved his legacy carefully, donating the Long Count belt (which Tunney wore during the fight) and other memorabilia to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1950s.
Dempsey, for his part, never fought for the title again. He knocked out Jack Sharkey in July 1927 — a fight covered in his main biography — and then retired for good. The 1927 Long Count fight was the last of his career as a serious contender. He lived another 56 years, becoming one of the most beloved elder statesmen of American sports, and his reputation survived the loss. The wider story of how Dempsey’s career was managed is told in the Jack Dempsey Heavyweight Champion page, which traces his seven-year reign and his role as the first great sports celebrity of the 20th century.
The Legacy of the Long Count
The 1927 Long Count fight is the most famous single round in boxing history. It is studied in film schools (for its use of slow-motion replay, which was new in 1927), in journalism schools (for the press coverage that surrounded it), and in law schools (for the rules of boxing that the incident tested). The “long count” has entered the boxing vocabulary as a permanent term, and the 1927 fight is referenced in everything from novels to sporting almanacs.
The fight was also a watershed in the commercial history of American sports. The $2.6 million gate, the 104,943 fans, the radio audience, the newspaper coverage, the newsreel footage shown in movie theaters across the country — all of it established the model for the modern sports mega-event. The story of how the Dempsey-Tunney rematch was promoted and covered is told in the Boxing Legends of the 1920s, which traces the rise of the boxing business in the 1920s.
For the sport of boxing, the Long Count was both a high point and a turning point. The 1930s and 1940s would see a different style of fighter — the scientific boxer, the defensive master, the patient tactician — and the Joe Louis era would represent a different kind of celebrity. The Long Count was the last great fight of the 1920s, and it remains the fight that historians reach for when they want to explain what 1920s boxing was all about.