When I was noodling around the other day to find a robot image for the piece about the automated 1929 department stores, I came across an illustration of Jack Dempsey squaring off with a life-size bucket of bolts. It was the window dressing of a 1934 Popular Mechanics article in which the former champion, retired by that point, explained that he would always be able to deliver a KO to AI. I don’t know; I think the “Manassa Mauler” would have been in trouble if a robot had hit him in his pretty, pretty nose. 

Anyhow, it booked artificial intelligence and boxing on the same card 35 years before the computerized Ali-Marciano fight. The piece’s opening:

“I CAN whip any mechanical robot that ever has or ever will be made. Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, maybe you will say it’s just the voice of a ‘has-been,’ but I assure you that neither is true.

I was talking over old times with my friend Captain W. H. Fawcett and during the course of conversation he remarked that undoubtedly mechanical ingenuity has done much to improve the work of many boxers.

‘That’s true,’ I answered, ‘but nothing mechanical will ever be able to whip an honest to goodness boxer. Even right now, despite the fact that I am definitely through with the ring as a fighter, I wouldn’t be afraid of any robot or mechanical man. I could tear it to pieces, bolt by bolt and scatter its brain wheels and cogs all over the canvas.’

The reason is simple: Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game. It is true enough that we have had some rare intellectual specimens in the higher frames of boxing glory, but I can truthfully say that no man ever attained genuine boxing recognition without real headwork.”