I know that we don’t pay him much homage here on No Mas, but I can’t imagine that there is a more No Masian athlete in all of history than Gene Tunney. A Shakespeare-quoting fearless practitioner of the sweet science who twice slew the Tyson of his time and then walked away from the ring as if he hadn’t a care in the world to marry a billionairess? Christ, I can’t think of a way that I would rather be described, despite my utter ineptitude at boxing, memorizing Shakespeare, marrying billionairesses and knowing when I’ve had enough of a good thing.

Seventy-nine years ago today, Tunney fought his last professional bout. It was contested at Yankee Stadium, and his opponent was one Tom Heeney, a bag of potatoes from New Zealand destined to become the answer to a trivia question – “Who is the only man to face Gene Tunney in the ring after Jack Dempsey?”

The Manassa Mauler’s spirit hovered over this bout, for although Tunney had outpointed Dempsey for the second time less than a year beforehand, the public had never warmed to the high-falutin’ former Marine (Shakespeare-quoting never being noted as a big icebreaker amongst the pugilistic set). Meanwhile even in defeat Dempsey remained one of the oversized icons of the Jazz Age. When Dempsey attended a Heeney sparring session (one that featured a young sparring partner from Jersey by the name of Jim Braddock) and pronounced Heeney the favorite against Tunney, word began to circulate that Dempsey would be Heeney’s second in the fight, one that stoked a to-that-point unspectacular amount of hype surrounding the affair.

Come fight night, with the Dempsey rumors still swirling (Jack was indeed in attendance, but only as a spectator), the crowd at Yankee Stadium reached a disappointing 45,000, not exactly a banner gate for a heavyweight title fight at that time, but not bad for a fight that even Tex Rickard’s family must have known was a embarrassment to the spirit of competition. Tunney, one of the great technicians ever to ply his trade in the heavyweight ranks, gave Heeney a beating that sounds like it was remarkably similar to the one that Floyd gave Gatti. The bout ended by TKO in the 11th, and Tunney announced his retirement a few days later, claiming that there was no compelling opponent worth his while (which was undoubtedly true) and that he wasn’t interested in sitting around and waiting for one.

The truth of the matter evidently had more to do with a promise that he had made to a woman. Unbeknownst to the world, he was already engaged to Polly Lauder, a socialite from Greenwich who was the heir to the Carnegie fortune. Upon accepting his proposal, she had made him promise that the Heeney fight, his final contractual obligation to Tex Rickard, would be his last. And so it was. By all accounts, Tunney lived happily ever after as a miserable sort of bastard, rich as hell, pretentious, a stalwart pal of George Bernard Shaw, and thoroughly uninterested in boxing or sport of any kind for that matter.