Kearns, Jack
[John Leo McKernan]
Boxing
b. Aug. 17, 1882, Waterloo, MI
d. June 17, 1963
His family moved from Michigan to North Dakota and then to Seattle when he was young. At fifteen, John L. McKernan went to the Klondike region of Alaska, where he worked in saloons and met Herbert Hoover, Jack London, Tex Rickard, and Robert Service.
After playing semi-pro baseball for a time, he began boxing as a lightweight and welterweight under the ring name "Young Kid Kearns." Kearns spent a year in prison and then began working as a boxing manager and promoter, using the name "Jack Kearns."
In 1917, he met Jack Dempsey in a San Francisco bar. Dempsey had been boxing professionally for three years, mostly in small Western mining towns for small purses. Kearns taught him to box and kept him busy fighting, at first in San Francisco and then in the East.
Kearns also began a tireless publicity campaign for his fighter. It resulted in a heavyweight championship fight against Jess Willard, promoted by Kearns' old Klondike friend, Rickard. Willard was heavily favored, but Dempsey knocked Willard out in the 3rd round on July 4, 1919, at Toledo to win the title.
Rickard also promoted Dempsey's first defense, against Georges Carpentier of France, which brought boxing's first $1 million gate. Then Kearns went off on his own, persuading the town of Shelby, MT, to host Dempsey's fight against Tom Gibbons for a guarantee of $300,000. However, ticket sales brought only about $200,000 and Kearns took over the box office the day of the fight. After Dempsey won a 15-round decision, he and Kearns left with all the money, leaving Gibbons with nothing.
After Dempsey married actress Estelle Taylor in 1926, he dropped Kearns. However, Kearns had signed welterweight champion Mickey Walker and made a good deal of money during the next several years by matching Walker against heavier fighters.
At one time or another, he also handled Jackie Fields, Joey Maxim, Battling Nelson, Benny Leonard, and Abe Attell. His last champion was Archie Moore, the light heavyweight titlist who had two shots at the heavyweight crown.