One hundred years ago Friday, on July 2, 1921, Georges Carpentier left a makeshift boxing arena in Jersey City with a broken nose, a fractured thumb and a swollen eye thanks to Jack Dempsey, who knocked him out in the fourth round of their heavyweight championship bout. Carpentier recalled shortly after the conclusion of the carnage, “I went down and out when the hardest blow I ever felt caught me over the heart.”
If anybody emerged from the bout in worse shape, it was likely J.O. Smith, who would be partially blind for several days and had burns on his hands serious enough that he had to go to the hospital.