"Dempsey Talk"

Jack Dempsey, who writes "feature stories" for the Hearst press, expressed himself last week as follows: "All this talk around New York that I am afraid to fight Harry Wills is beginning to get on my nerves. . . . Just let me get in the ring with Harry Wills and I'll win in a round or two. They tell me that Wills has a habit of grabbing an opponent around the neck with his left hand and then, as he pulls him in, Harry hooks his right to the body. Well, let me tell Wills, that he'd better not try that trick on me. That style of fighting is my dish. When he puts that left around my neck to pull me in, I'll slip right around his back and do some pulling myself. Then watch me smash my left into the stomach."

The champion's statement was accompanied by a working diagram, made by pasting up two photographs, which showed him giving Wills the "left into the stomach" exactly as described.

The reaction of Paddy Mullins, manager of the Negro, was instantaneous. Said he: "It's all right for Dempsey to explain how he intends to dispose of Harry, but explaining and actual demonstration are two different things." Paddy added that he had been "refilling his fountain pen for four years" hoping that Jack Kearns (manager to Dempsey) would come to terms.

From St. Paul, Tom Gibbons (TIME, July 16) last week sent Champion Jack a challenge for another match. He was prompted to do this because he had read in a Hearst newspaper a Dempsey statement to the effect that he (Gibbons) was "too small and too old" for another fight.

In another special article last week, Dempsey gave his estimate of Luis Angel Firpo. "Luis Firpo never will win the world's championship from me. And the reason is that my frame is so constructed that I can take everything he can hand out."