Luis Firpo

Luis Ángel Firpo (born October 11, 1894 in Junín , Argentina, † August 7, 1960 ) was an Argentine heavyweight boxer who is known to this day for his world championship fight against Jack Dempsey .

Career

Georges Bellows: Dempsey and Firpo . The scene from the first round can be seen when Firpo knocked his opponent Dempsey out of the ring.

Firpo was 1.89 m tall and weighed 100 kg, which was quite tall for the times and made him an above average puncher. In the beginning he only defeated easy opponents ( windfalls ) and lost a few times until he knocked out ex-challenger Bill Brennan and ex-world champion Jess Willard in the USA in 1923 . Since he was very charismatic and could sell well, Dempsey's promoter was happy to let him challenge the world champion as a “pampas animal”. But the fight wasn't quite as easy as expected. When Firpo knocked the champ out of the ring in the first round, journalists in the audience helped him to return to the ring against the rules, and Dempsey won by knockout in the next round . This very compact fight was generally imaginative, and George Bellows painted a famous picture of the Ring Battle. That Firpo was more of a hype job than a real serious fighter was shown in his fight against the colored Harry Wills against whom he somehow got by, but had no chance at all.

Being extremely intelligent and enterprising, Firpo kept his money together and retired as a rich man in his homeland. In Latin America he remained extremely popular and even in El Salvador a football club named itself after him with CD Luis Ángel Firpo .

In 2005, the novel Segundos afuerades ( Eng . Seconds, 2007) by the Argentine author Martín Kohan , the fight between Firpo and Dempsey plays an important role.

Web links

• Information and match statistics on BoxRec.com