Shelby, MT, July 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- One hundred and three years after Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons fought for the heavyweight championship of the world under the blazing Fourth of July sun in Shelby, Montana, Fight for Glory Press is bringing one of America’s wildest true stories back into the spotlight.
Timed to the July 4 anniversary of the legendary Dempsey-Gibbons prizefight—and as the nation moves toward its America250 celebration—Dr. Gerard Gibbons, grandson of heavyweight challenger Tommy Gibbons, announces the Amazon-exclusive availability of the oversized, full-color, lushly illustrated print on demand edition of SHELBY 1923: The Dempsey-Gibbons Fight for Glory and a Little Montana Town’s Impossible Dream (ISBN: 979-8218274771, ASIN: B0CLYNZL5S).
Exhaustively researched, exuberantly written, and richly illustrated with hundreds of rare and archival images, SHELBY 1923 tells the full, soul-stirring story of how a little Montana boomtown dared to promote a million-dollar heavyweight championship fight—and in doing so became the center of the sporting world, the target of national ridicule, and the setting for one of the most improbable American adventures ever staged.
“An impossible dream. A million-dollar prizefight. A battle of life and death.” That is the heart of SHELBY 1923.
At the center of the book is Tommy Gibbons, the always-smiling boxing maestro known to sportswriters as “The Happy Warrior.” A master technician, devoted husband, father, and former World War I boxing instructor, Tommy enters the Shelby ring not merely chasing a title, but fighting for his family’s future and the medical care his beloved wife, Helen, desperately needs.
Across from him stands Jack Dempsey, the most feared fighter alive—the “Manassa Mauler,” a champion of murderous force and mythic menace. Behind Dempsey looms the champ’s famously ruthless manager, Jack Kearns, often called “The Beelzebub of Boxing,” whose hardball schemes and financial demands help turn Shelby’s dream into a civic gamble of almost biblical proportions.
New York Daily News, July 4, 1923: the Dempsey-Gibbons tale of the tape.
For more than a century, Shelby’s unforgettable Fourth of July fight has been known by many names: “The Heavyweight Disaster,” “The Battle of the Badlands,” “The Fight That Won’t Stay Dead,” and, most pungently, “The Sack of Shelby.” But in Dr. Gibbons’ telling, the saga becomes something larger than catastrophe. It becomes a story of courage, sacrifice, love, ambition, community, and the oldest of American passions: chasing a dream against impossible odds.
“In many ways, the story of Shelby, Montana in 1923 reads like fiction,” Dr. Gibbons says. “But told in full, it yields greater surprises, richer mysteries, and deeper magic than anyone could possibly imagine. How do I know? As a kid, I heard the story first hand from my dad, who at age 6, was seated ringside with legendary Blackfeet Chief Curly Bear. It’s a memory I can’t forget! This true-good story honors underdogs with noble hearts and big dreams who risk everything to become more than they were. Some would call that the American Dream.”
Tommy Gibbons with family and Blackfeet Chief Curly Bear in Shelby, Montana.
The July 4 anniversary campaign also serves as a major bridge to the fall 2026 launch of the broader FIGHT FOR GLORY literary franchise, a sweeping narrative nonfiction saga chronicling the lives, battles, brotherhood, and American odyssey of Mike “The St. Paul Phantom” Gibbons and Tommy “The Happy Warrior” Gibbons.
The franchise begins in earnest on September 15, 2026, with the publication of THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM: The Gibbons Brothers’ Fight for Glory, Volume I, now available for presale. A richly researched narrative history in the tradition of Laura Hillenbrand and Erik Larson, THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM resurrects the story of two Irish American brothers from St. Paul who rose from poverty and outlaw prize rings to become two of the most celebrated fighters of the early twentieth century—“the Shining Knights of the Ring.”
At the center of THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM stands Mike Gibbons, the elusive middleweight genius revered as one of boxing’s most brilliant tacticians. Known across the sporting world as “The St. Paul Phantom,” Mike helped transform prizefighting from a brutal spectacle into a high-stakes chess match of strategy, defense, timing, and ring intelligence. Mentored by legendary Black champions Jack Johnson, Sam Langford, and Joe Gans, Mike rose from clandestine rooftop brawls in St. Paul’s immigrant districts to the bright lights of Madison Square Garden and international championship bouts in Havana, Sydney, and London.
Yet the book’s power reaches far beyond the ring. THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM is a family saga, immigrant odyssey, war story, love story, and portrait of America at the dawn of the modern age. Across its pages move Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, Nellie Bly, Tex Rickard, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, Heywood Broun, Jack Dempsey, Jack Kearns, and the sportswriters, showmen, soldiers, reformers, gamblers, suffragettes, and dreamers who shaped a new American century.
Set against the rise of celebrity culture, sports journalism, radio, film, jazz, organized crime, World War I, and the 1918 influenza pandemic, the book captures the turbulent tableaux of a nation changing before its own eyes.
“This is more than a sports biography,” Gibbons says. “It’s a quintessential American story about family, reinvention, belief, and the fight to become something greater than circumstance. Mike and Tommy lived at the fault line where the immigrant world of the nineteenth century gave way to the modern age. Their story speaks powerfully to the world we’re living in right now.”
That resonance is especially powerful as America prepares for its 250th anniversary. In the FIGHT FOR GLORY books, the American story is not presented as clean myth or simple triumph. It is a crowded, vivid, unruly human drama—built by immigrants and veterans, Native communities and frontier towns, newspaper men and working families, fighters and mothers, saints and sinners, underdogs and impossible dreamers.
“America250 is a moment to remember not only the famous names we already know,” Gibbons says, “but also the forgotten people and places that reveal who we really are. Shelby, Montana belongs in that story. So do Mike and Tommy Gibbons. Their lives remind us that America has always been a fight for dignity, family, courage, and glory.”
The special Amazon-exclusive, oversized, full-color, print on demand edition of SHELBY 1923 offers readers a lavish visual gateway into that world. Originally created as a fully illustrated keepsake and coffee table edition, the book features rare and never-before-seen images curated from the Gibbons family archive and from galleries, libraries, museums, and historical collections around the world.
The new black-and-white paperback and ebook edition of SHELBY 1923 will re-launch on October 27, 2026, making the story available to a wider readership for the first time in a more affordable trade format. An audiobook edition is also planned.
Fans of Seabiscuit, Rocky, Cinderella Man, Dances with Wolves, The Boys in the Boat, The Great Gatsby, Legends of the Fall, and the great Jazz Age writers will find in SHELBY 1923 and THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM a thrilling, cinematic saga of ambition, sacrifice, violence, grace, comedy, heartbreak, and resurrection.
Critics have already praised the books’ scope and emotional power. Biography.com called SHELBY 1923 “an absolute knockout” and “a cinematic roller coaster that reads like ROCKY in the Wild West.” The U.S. Review of Books praised THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM as “an electrifying and inspiring rendition of the American Dream.” Publishers Weekly noted the book’s “spirited novelistic life” and “distinctly cinematic feel,” while Kirkus Reviews called it “a truly engaging family history and celebration of boxing in the early 20th century.”
For Dr. Gibbons, the work is history, inheritance and family legacy.
“A century ago, the Gibbons family fell deeply in love with Montana,” he says. “It became, in many ways, our family’s second home. We played there. We worked there. My mother and father met, fell in love, and married there. To us, the people of Shelby are not just part of boxing history. They are family.”
The Amazon-exclusive full-color edition of SHELBY 1923 is available now. THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM is available for presale and publishes September 15, 2026. The new black-and-white paperback, ebook and audiobook edition of SHELBY 1923 launches October 27, 2026.
For more information, visit www.FightForGloryStory.com.
About SHELBY 1923
Shelby 1923: The Dempsey-Gibbons Fight for Glory and a Little Montana Town’s Impossible Dream reveals the complete story of Montana’s extraordinary courage and character in pursuing the impossible dream of a million-dollar prizefight between heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and challenger Tommy Gibbons. Set in Shelby, Montana on July 4, 1923, the book captures one of the most unlikely adventures in American sports history—a saga of cowboys, bootleggers, bankers, Blackfeet leaders, movie stars, sportswriters, war veterans, con artists, dreamers, disasters, and one unforgettable fight for glory.
About THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM
Publishing September 15, 2026, THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM: The Gibbons Brothers’ Fight for Glory, Volume I launches the FIGHT FOR GLORY trilogy. The book follows Mike and Tommy Gibbons from the immigrant neighborhoods of St. Paul into the outlaw prize rings, newspaper rooms, vaudeville stages, training camps, and championship arenas of early twentieth-century America. Richly illustrated and deeply researched, it is a cinematic story of brotherhood, reinvention, family, faith, war, pandemic, love, and the American Dream.
About the FIGHT FOR GLORY Franchise
FIGHT FOR GLORY is a multi-book narrative nonfiction franchise from Dr. Gerard Gibbons and Fight for Glory Publications, chronicling the lives, legacy, and larger American world of Mike and Tommy Gibbons. Blending sports history, family saga, cultural history, and cinematic storytelling, the series is being developed for literary publication as well as streaming and theatrical adaptation.
About Dr. Gerard Gibbons
Dr. Gerard Gibbons is a nonfiction author, historian, filmmaker, multimedia producer, and the grandson of heavyweight challenger Tommy Gibbons. After more than 30 years as an award-winning filmmaker, director, brand strategist, and storyteller, he turned his attention to his own family legacy and the never-before-told true story of his legendary prizefighting great-uncle and grandfather, Mike and Tommy Gibbons. He is CEO of Fight for Glory, LLC, and steward of the Gibbons family archive.
Advance Praise for SHELBY 1923
“An absolute knockout! A cinematic roller coaster that reads like ROCKY in the Wild West!”
— Biography.com
“A timeless, ‘true-good story’ most urgently needed in today’s world!”
— Aaron Flint, Montana PBS & Montana Talks syndicated radio
“Beautifully authored and spectacular in its layout, Shelby 1923 is a triumph… a story of pathos and struggle, crushed hope and resurrection, that stands as one of the most valuable books in all of prizefighting literature.”
— Kelly Nicholson, author/historian
“This extraordinary book chronicles the championship match that will always top the list of prizefighting’s most unlikely adventures. But it’s also about that oldest of American passions: chasing a dream.”
— Paul Beston, New York City Journal
Advance Praise for THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM
“An electrifying and inspiring rendition of the American Dream.”
— The U.S. Review of Books
“The kind of true story Hollywood spends years looking for.”
— Paul Tamasy, Oscar-nominated writer-producer of The Fighter
“Moving and engaging… written with zeal, exuberance, and a novelist’s eye for detail and characterization.”
— BlueInk Review
“An epic American odyssey laced with unforgettable characters, epic slugfests, and fascinating historical cameos. Masterful and riveting!”
— Self-Publishing Review
“A truly engaging family history and celebration of boxing in the early 20th century… A stirring story with expert pacing and character development.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Gibbons brings spirited novelistic life to an intensely personal, dramatic, and highly entertaining family story that captures the epic sweep of immigration and the Golden Age of Boxing, boasting a distinctly cinematic feel.”
— Publishers Weekly
Book Information
Title: SHELBY 1923: The Dempsey-Gibbons Fight for Glory and a Little Montana Town’s Impossible Dream
Special Edition: Oversized, full-color illustrated edition
Availability: Amazon exclusive
New Trade Edition: Black-and-white paperback and ebook publishing October 27, 2026
Title: THE ST. PAUL PHANTOM: The Gibbons Brothers’ Fight for Glory, Volume I
Publisher: Fight for Glory Publications
Availability: Presale now open
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Formats: Hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook
Media Contact
For interviews, review copies, media requests, and speaking engagements:
ToddAaronJensen@gmail.com / 818-209-8975
www.FightForGloryStory.com
Media materials, book covers, sample pages, author photos, and press clippings are available upon request.
