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In this installment the writer relates the remainder of the Champion's unrecorded bouts and those he fought as a Marine, and starts a new series covering the twelve contests engaged in by Tunney during his first year of professional fighting.
THE LEATHERNECK reprints the series through the courtesy of THE EVENING WORLD (N.Y.)
SOME MONTHS before Gene Tunney had won the A. E. F. title in the light heavyweight class he had demonstrated his pugilistic worth in what was even more impressive fashion than his winning in the championship battle with Ted Jamison. And it is worth note that this same Jamison did very well professionally the following year in 10-round bouts with Harry Greb, Rob Roper, Jack Renault and others. But previous to his victory over Jamison, Tunney had outpointed Bob Martin, the man who was regarded as the greatest heavyweight in the ranks and who loomed as the coming heavyweight champion of the world.
"Fighting" Bob Martin of Albright, W. Va., certainly made a ring name for himself a little less than ten years ago, and it is hardly to be wondered at that he overshadowed Gene Tunney, for he had color, a sensational fighting style and a knockout wallop. And they won for him not only the A. E. F. heavy-weight crown but the inter-allied championship, which was battled for by the boxing representatives of eighteen nations from June 22 to July 6, 1919.
Starting at Camp Shelby he had rung up quite a string of K. O.'s, and in his bouts for the Welfare Organization in 1918 he had stopped all of his opponents in short order, with the exception of Sergt. Ray Smith, who held him to a four-round draw, and Gene Tunney, who outpointed him in a four-round encounter.
Fighting his way through the qualification rounds for the A. E. F. championships in that same year, "Fighting Bob" knocked out twenty-eight of his thirty-two opponents, and then hung up nine more K. O.'s in winning the inter-allied crown, for which he stopped Capt. Gordon Cougill of Australia in the first round of the final at Pershing Stadium. That same year he started off his professional career by knocking over his first nine opponents.
Tunney His Only Victor
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