> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.grumpybuck.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# On This Date: Dempsey, Miske, and the First Title Fight on the Radio (Sept. 6, 1920)
- URL: https://www.grumpybuck.com/on-this-date-dempsey-miske-and-the-first-title-fight-on-the-radio-sept-6-1920/
- Published: 2026-09-06T13:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:58:49.000Z
- Author: Brad Riddell
- Tags: Sports History, On This Date, Boxing

On this date in 1920 — Labor Day — Jack Dempsey defended his heavyweight title for the first time, knocking out Billy Miske in the third round at a wooden arena in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Two things make this fight worth remembering a century later. One is a technological first with an asterisk. The other is one of the kindest, saddest secrets in the history of the sport.

![Dempsey and Miske at Floyd Fitzsimmons's arena, Benton Harbor, Sept. 6, 1920. A small surviving print, shown as-is.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/dm-dempsey-miske-fight-1920-small.jpg)

Dempsey and Miske at Floyd Fitzsimmons's arena, Benton Harbor, Sept. 6, 1920\. A small surviving print, shown as-is.

## The Broadcast That Wasn't Quite a Broadcast

Radio was two weeks old in Detroit — the Detroit News' experimental station 8MK, ancestor of WWJ, had signed on Aug. 20 — and on Sept. 6 it did something no station had done: it carried a heavyweight championship fight. Sort of. There was no announcer at ringside. Telegraph wires brought round-by-round returns from Benton Harbor to the Detroit studio, where they were read out over the air, the knockout flashed to listeners within about 30 seconds of it happening. A bulletin service, not a blow-by-blow — but the **first prizefight ever carried over radio**, seven months before KDKA aired the first true live sports broadcast and ten months before the Dempsey-Carpentier fight reached 300,000 listeners and invented sports media as we know it. Every fight broadcast, every call, every "down goes Frazier" traces back to a man in Detroit reading telegrams into a microphone on this date.

![“Dempsey Wins With Knockout in Third Round” — Harry Bullion, Detroit Free Press, Sept. 7, 1920. The Free Press covered it by wire; its rival, the News, had read it over the air the night before.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/clip-dm-freepress-dempsey-wins-ko-third-1920-09-07.jpg)

“Dempsey Wins With Knockout in Third Round” — Harry Bullion, Detroit Free Press, Sept. 7, 1920\. The Free Press covered it by wire; its rival, the News, had read it over the air the night before.

## The Fix That Was Actually a Gift

Now the real story. Billy Miske of St. Paul was one of the best heavyweights alive — he'd fought Dempsey twice in 1918, no-decision bouts widely scored as draws, and many at ringside thought Miske had the better of the first one. He was also dying. Diagnosed with Bright's disease — chronic kidney failure — around 1918 and given roughly five years, Miske told almost no one. Not the boxing commissions. For years, not even his wife, Marie.

![Billy Miske, 1920. Library of Congress. He was already two years into a five-year diagnosis.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/dm-miske-portrait-1920.jpg)

Billy Miske, 1920\. Library of Congress. He was already two years into a five-year diagnosis.

By 1920 the illness and a failed automobile dealership had wiped him out, and Miske went to his old rival with the truth about his debts, if not his kidneys: he was broke, and he needed a payday. Dempsey — with every reason to pick a safer, healthier first defense — gave his friend the title shot. Miske's purse ran to roughly $25,000, real money in 1920\. Dempsey ended it in 3 rounds; it was the only knockout loss of Miske's hundred-fight career, and as Dempsey later told it, he saw no reason to let a hurting man take punishment any longer than necessary.

![Dempsey sparring, 1920. Bain News Service, Library of Congress.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/dm-dempsey-in-ring-bain.jpg)

Dempsey sparring, 1920\. Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

## The Last Fight

The coda belongs among the great sports stories, period. By late 1923, Miske was too sick to train — too sick, some days, to leave the house — and broke again, with three kids and Christmas coming. He begged his manager, Jack Reddy, for one more fight. Reddy refused; he was afraid Miske would die in the ring. Miske, reportedly: he'd rather that than waste away in a chair. On Nov. 7, 1923, with almost no training, Billy Miske knocked out Bill Brennan — a legitimate contender — in 4 rounds in Omaha. He took his roughly $2,400 home to St. Paul and spent it on Christmas: presents for the kids, and a piano for Marie.

Billy Miske died on New Year's Day, 1924\. He was 29\. The man boxing remembers as an answer to a radio trivia question spent his last healthy breath buying his family one perfect Christmas — and the champion who gave him that first big payday knew exactly what he was doing.

On this date in 1920: three rounds in Benton Harbor, a telegraph line to Detroit, and two tough men being better to each other than the fight game ever required.

**What's the greatest act of sportsmanship you know? Comments below.**