Gene Tunney The Fighting Marine

Gene Tunney History

Blood and Oath pays homage to the world’s most iconic throwback.

His good looks made him a heartthrob globally, you would think he was moulded by Hollywood rather than some sweaty, gritty dark gym in the inner cities.

Gene Tunney fought some 68 official professional fights, losing only one, to Harry Greb, while fighting as a light heavyweight. He fought many other fights whose scoring was unofficial, judged by newspaper reporters. He also lost none of these “newspaper decisions.” He reported that he lost a second fight during World War I, a 10-round decision, to Tommy Loughran, as a Marine before he began his professional boxing career. Gene Tunney was regarded as an extremely skilful boxer who excelled in defence. In addition to beating Dempsey, the most famous fighter of his era, Gene Tunney defeated Tommy Gibbons, Georges Carpentier and many other fine boxers.

Already the U.S. Expeditionary Forces champion, Gene Tunney spent the winter of 1921 as a lumberjack in northern Ontario for the J. R. Booth Company of Ottawa, without revealing he was a champion boxer. He explained this as “wanting the solitude and the strenuous labours of the woods to help condition himself for the career that appeared before him.”^[1]

Gene Tunney also had a brief acting career, starring in the movie The Fighting Marine in 1926. Unfortunately, no prints of this film are known to exist.

A highly technical boxer, Gene Tunney had a five-fight rivalry with Harry Greb in which he won three, drew once, and lost once. He also knocked out Georges Carpentier and defeated Jack Dempsey twice; first in 1926 and again in 1927. Gene Tunney’s successful title defence against Jack Dempsey remains one of the most famous bouts in boxing history and is known as The Long Count Fight. He retired undefeated as a heavyweight after his victory over Tom Heeney in 1928, after which Tunney was named Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine.

He was elected as Ring Magazine’s first-ever Fighter of the Year in 1928 and later elected to the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1980, the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990 and the United States Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.