Giant, bodiless heads have taken over! All of Birmingham cowers in terror!
On July 2, 1921 The Birmingham News went fight crazy. That's the very handsome Jack Dempsey in the left picture, and the puckishly rugged Georges Carpentier on the right. The far two right columns are completely dedicated to the fourth round knockout by Dempsey and all the pagentry that a sellout crowd of 91,600 saw in New Jersey.
It was "the battle of the century," proving that journalistic hyperbole has been around for a while. A columnist directly under the photographs points out that some think the recent fighting at Marne and Verdun were also significant, but no boxing promoter ever let the truth get in the way of a payday.
And a payday it was, the largest in sports history.
Three-quarters of the front page surrounds the Dempsey bout or the undercard. The day was so big that a brief on the front page of Babe Ruth crushing his 29th home run of the year also referenced the fight.
Elsewhere: there's a speculation piece about how Warren G. Harding would negotiate peace with Germany; things are quiet in Miami despite the kidnapping of a black preacher who'd been speaking about racial equality and almost 1,000 ex-soldiers were disenfranchised from a municipal vote in Mobile thanks to poll tax ruling from the state supreme court. Also, the "weather man" says the area may get rain. He has no name, but his friends call him Weather. Unless he's wrong. They don't print his name for those occasions; too crass.
Oh, the boxing match's payday? Dempsey got $300,000 no matter the outcome, Carpentier received $200,000. The gate was estimated at $1.5 million dollars, a number so outlandish they still used all the zeroes and commas. Biggest sports payday ever.