Tom Heeney

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Tom Heeney

Thomas Heeney (May 18, 1898 – June 15, 1984), commonly called Tom Heeney, was a professional heavyweight

Heavyweight

Heavyweight is a division, or boxing weight classes, in boxing. Fighters who weigh over 200 pounds are considered heavyweights by the major professional boxing organizations: the International Boxing Organization, the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, and the World Boxing Organization....
boxer

Boxing

Boxing is a combat sport where two participants, generally of similar human weight, fight each other with their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee and is typically engaged in during a series of one to three-minute intervals called rounds....
, best known for unsuccessfully challenging champion Gene Tunney

Gene Tunney

James Joseph "Gene" Tunney was the List of Heavyweight Champions from 1926-1928 who defeated Jack Dempsey twice, first in 1926 and then in 1927....
for the heavyweight championship of the world in New York City on 26 July, 1928.

Heeney was born in Gisborne, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous Islands of New Zealand, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands....
, and worked as a plumber until he left New Zealand. He was a strong swimmer and was awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Humane Society of New Zealand in 1918 for helping rescue two women from the sea off Waikanae Beach, Gisborne.

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Encyclopedia

Thomas Heeney (May 18, 1898 – June 15, 1984), commonly called Tom Heeney, was a professional heavyweight

Heavyweight

Boxing

Gene Tunney

New Zealand

Welterweight

Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system....
champion in 1914 and middleweight

Middleweight

Middleweight is a division, or Boxing weight classes, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s....
champion from 1919 to 1924. He became a professional boxer when he fought Bill Bartlett in Gisborne in 1920. In October 1920, Heeney became the New Zealand heavyweight champion when he beat Albert Pooley of Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area or Greater Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban areas of New Zealand with over 1.3 million residents, percent of the country's population....
on points. Heeney was also a rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union is a competitive outdoor contact sport, played with an oval ball, by two teams of 15 players. It is one of the two main codes of rugby football, the other being rugby league....
player and played for the Hawke's Bay — Poverty Bay team against the Springboks

South Africa national rugby union team

The South Africa national rugby union team , are the current holders of the Rugby World Cup and are currently ranked number 2 in the IRB World Rankings....
in 1921. He boxed in Australia

Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
and won the Australian heavyweight champion title in 1922, and fought in England

England

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
in 1924.

Heeney went to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
in 1926. He beat Jim Maloney, Johnny Risko and Jim Delaney and eventually ranked fourth among the world's heavyweight boxers. After fighting Jack Sharkey

Jack Sharkey

Jack Sharkey was an American List of Heavyweight Champions. He was of Lithuanian descent.Born in an era when prizefighters, actors and others in the public spotlight adopted an "American-sounding" pseudonym, Joseph Paul Zukauskas took the family name of a popular retired Ireland boxer and future Hall of Famer, Thomas Sharkey ....
, later a heavyweight world champion, in 1928 for the right to fight Tunney, on July 26, 1928, Heeney fought Gene Tunney at Yankee Stadium

Yankee Stadium

The original Yankee Stadium is a stadium located in The Bronx in New York City, New York. It served as the home baseball park of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1923 in baseball to 1973 in baseball and after extensive renovations, from 1976 in baseball to 2008 in baseball....
, New York City, for the world heavyweight championship title. Heeney entered the boxing ring wearing a Maori

Maori

The Maori are the indigenous people Polynesian people of Aotearoa . The group probably arrived in south-western Polynesia in several waves at some time before 1300....
cloak that was given to him by Heni Materoa, the widow of Sir James Carroll

James Carroll (New Zealand politician)

Sir James Carroll, Order of St Michael and St George , known to Maori as Timi Kara, was a New Zealand politician of Irish and Ngati Kahungunu descent....
. The referee, Ed Forbes, stopped the scheduled 15 round fight in the 11th round, and Tunney won. It was said of Heeney:

His gritty performance in this fight would have been considered by many observers to have justified his sobriquet of The Hard Rock from Down Under given by renowned writer and journalist, Damon Runyon.

A week after his defeat, Tom married Marion Dunn, an American. Heeney became an American citizen and boxed until 1933, accomplishing a fighting record of 69 professional bouts, 37 wins, 22 losses, eight draws, one no-decision, and one no-contest.

He owned a bar in Miami, Florida

Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
, after he retired from boxing. He served with the United States Navy Civil Engineer Corps in World War II. He coached boxing and refereed armed forces bouts in the South Pacific. He often fished with his friend, the famous writer Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story author, and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, France, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation"....
. Heeney's wife, Marion, died in 1980. They had no children.

Heeney was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame

New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame

The New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame is an organisation commemorating New Zealand's greatest sporting triumphs. It was inaugurated as part of the New Zealand sesquicentenary celebrations in 1990....
in 1996.

Tom Heeney

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