Jack Dempsey

The World’s Greatest Puncher 

- Jason Korol

WITH ALL DUE RESPECT to Ayn Rand, who was Jack Dempsey? Frankly, it’s a Jeet Kune Do tragedy that more of us don’t know who he was and, more importantly, what impact he had on the Little Dragon and Jeet Kune Do.

If you watch footage of Lee pulverising the heavy bag in his backyard—beating it like it owed him money—you’ll notice a very distinctive manner in the way he threw his punches. Well, that is after you recover from the shock of seeing a man so small punch harder than many people can kick!

How did he do that? Well that’s the question. He wasn’t always doing it that way. In fact, after his legendary and very frustrating fight with Wong Jak Man, Lee correctly reasoned that he needed more hitting power. That altercation with Wong, after all, went on for way too long, even though Lee threw something like a gazillion punches. Licking his tactical/ technical wounds afterwards, he knew he needed more power.

And that’s where our man comes in—Jack Dempsey.

First, it’s important to understand that Bruce Lee was both a man of ideas and action. He wanted results and he knew that the best way to get them was to find men that had already got them. So, do you want punching power? Who better to learn from than a fighter they called the “The Manassa Mauler”? Seriously. You don’t get that monicker by slapping like a sissy—especially in the heavyweight division.

So, how good was Dempsey? Well, he was the Heavyweight Champion from 1919-1926. In his career, he won 51 times by KO (records vary because of the shoddy nature of some of his early fights). The thing is, of those 51 KOs, 25 were in the first round. He was a menacing, snarling, two-fisted, panther-quick destruction machine. No less a fighter than Mike Tyson tried to pattern himself after Dempsey.