Fight For Glory Revives Dempsey-Gibbons Fight

On July 4, 1923, the small prairie town of Shelby, Mont., staged one of the most astonishing sporting spectacles in American history: the heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons.

Now, 103 years later, as the nation begins its America250 celebrations, Shelby’s unforgettable place in boxing, Montana and American history returns to the spotlight with the oversized, full-color collector’s edition of SHELBY 1923: The Dempsey-Gibbons Fight for Glory and a Little Montana Town’s Impossible Dream.

Written by Dr. Gerard Gibbons, grandson of heavyweight challenger Tommy Gibbons, SHELBY 1923 tells the true story of the Montana boomtown that risked everything to host a million-dollar prizefight — and the underdog fighter whose courage helped turn a near-disaster into legend.

The book is published by Fight for Glory Publications.

“Shelby’s story belongs not only to boxing history, but to Montana history and American history,” said Dr. Gibbons. “In 1923, this little town took a wild, impossible swing at greatness. The result was dramatic, painful, funny, heartbreaking, and unforgettable. That spirit — the willingness to dream bigger than circumstances should allow — is exactly the kind of story America250 should celebrate.”

More than a boxing book, SHELBY 1923 is the story of a Montana town transformed almost overnight into a Jazz Age frontier spectacle. Cowboys, oilmen, Blackfeet leaders, bootleggers, movie stars, con men, sportswriters, gamblers, military veterans, dreamers, and fight fans all converged on Shelby for a Fourth of July event that briefly made the town the center of the sporting world.

At the core of the drama stood Tommy Gibbons, “The Happy Warrior,” a World War I boxing instructor, husband, father and heavyweight contender. While preparing to face the ferocious Jack Dempsey and Dempsey’s ruthless manager, Jack Kearns, Gibbons was also racing home between training sessions to care for his gravely ill wife.

The result is a Montana story filled with impossible odds, frontier ambition, comic chaos, civic pride, and genuine human courage. The book has been described as “Rocky in the Wild West” and “a timeless ‘true-good story’ most urgently needed in today’s world.” The July 4 full-color edition also marks the next stage of the broader Fight For Glory literary franchise, which brings to life the untold multi-generational saga of the Gibbons boxing family and the colorful figures who shaped America’s Golden Age of Boxing.

Together, the books trace an American story of immigration, family, war, pandemic, prizefighting, faith, ambition, and reinvention through the lives of brothers Mike and Tommy Gibbons — two of the most celebrated boxing figures of the early 20th century. They were often referred to as “the Shining Knights of Boxing.”

For Montana readers, SHELBY 1923 o rs a vivid return to one of the state’s most remarkable — and still under-appreciated — moments on the national stage. For readers of narrative nonfi ction, sports history, and American history, the book delivers a cinematic true story in the tradition of Seabiscuit, Cinderella Man and The Boys in the Boat.