Jack Dempsey (1) TKO2 Jack Sharkey (9)
Jack Dempsey continued his rampage through The Roaring Twenties Heavyweight Extravaganza, demolishing Jack Sharkey in less than two rounds.
Sharkey managed to distinguish himself from Dempsey's first three victims of the tournament by actually winning the first round.
Sharkey ducked Dempsey's first swing of the night and answered with a hard uppercut. After Dempsey took control with a left hook to the body and a pair of rights to the head, the fighters bonked heads midway through, with a mouse forming under Dempsey's left eye.
Sharkey boxed smartly over the final minute of the first, jabbing to the head and body to set up a crushing right uppercut that forced The Manassa Mauler to take a step back for the first time in four tournament fights.
Apparently miffed at having lost a round after dispatching his first three opponents in less than eight combined one-sided rounds, Dempsey came out firing in the second.
Sharkey landed another uppercut in the early going, but Dempsey shook this one off and drilled home two hooks to the body that shook Sharkey and one up top that seemed to paralyze him.
From there, Sharkey was little more than a stationary target, with only Dempsey's rabid aggression and a resultant warning from the referee (for hitting with an open glove), allowing things to go on as long as they did.
Another downstairs-upstairs series of hooks wobbled Sharkey. A right uppercut left the underdog defenseless near the ropes, his left eye swelling grotesquely, and a flush right cross nearly drove him through them.
With only the middle strand keeping Sharkey off the floor, referee Telis Assimenios had no choice but to intervene, stopping the carnage at 2:30 of the second round.
The win earned Dempsey a semifinal meeting with fourth-seeded Max Schmeling.