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"Supple and elastic and carrying the kick of a mule" is how one Salt Laker who knew Jack Dempsey described the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Although his "Manassa Mauler" nickname links him forever with his Colorado birthplace, Dempsey spent many more years in Utah than in Colorado. His parents moved from West Virginia after their conversion to Mormonism. After her marriage failed, Dempsey's mother settled in Utah. Mary Celia Dempsey remained a practicing Mormon until her death in 1946, while Dempsey himself is reported to have said, "I'm proud to be a Mormon, and ashamed to be the Jack Mormon that I am."

With rudimentary boxing training from his older brother Bernie, Dempsey began his career as a brawler, fighting for a share of the bets placed whenever his challenges were accepted by barroom patrons. His prospects improved when he began boxing in the Hippodrome Theatre club on 200 South in Salt Lake. He fought under the names Willie Dempsey and Kid Blackie for $5 per match. When he took the heavyweight title from Jess Willard in 1919 he should have earned thousands - but his manager, "Doc" Kearns, had bet Dempsey's purse on a first-round knockout, and the fight lasted three rounds.

"Those old boxers, they were very tough people," says Alejandro Cañez, 21, of Salt Lake. "It was raw - they had tiny gloves, or no gloves at all."

Cañez, by contrast, wore modern gloves, a mouth guard, and other protective gear during a recent sparring session at the Muay Thai Institute on Wilmington Avenue in Sugar House where he trains two hours a day, five or six days a week. "I like the hard work, and the competition," he says.

The game may not be as raw, but Cañez himself is tough. His sparring partners are heavier than Cañez is (he fights in the 178-pound cruiserweight division) and a few inches taller. He and his opponent lock eyes at the beginning of a round, and neither blinks nor flinches. Trainer Rick Montoya calls out directions. Cañez maneuvers around his opponent's longer arms, sometimes landing a blow, sometimes taking one himself, always moving, shifting smoothly between offensive and defensive actions.

Cañez, like his opponents, bore red marks on his chest and back at the end of the match, witness to the blows he had taken. Yet when teased about his ritual of crossing himself at the beginning of each round, he laughed. "I don't want to get hurt!"

Cañez knows about the old boxers like Dempsey and can discuss the techniques of living ones - he admires Oscar de la Hoya, and especially David Tua, whom he met when club owner Craig Lamanna brought Tua to Muay Thai to train for a time. Cañez would like to go professional himself someday, but for now concentrates on earning a national ranking by participating in amateur tournaments.

He competed in the Golden Gloves National Boxing Championships this spring, making it all the way to the quarterfinals in Grand Rapids, Mich. Cañez went further than any other Utahn in the competition, losing only to Azea Augustama, the eventual tournament champion and Haiti's delegate to the Beijing Olympics.

Boxing isn't Cañez's only sport. He enjoys basketball, played football at West High and competed for two years in Olympic weightlifting. At the Utah Summer Games in Cedar City in 2006, Cañez set a Utah record for the teen open snatch event, hoisting 93 kilograms (205 pounds).

He will fight, he says, as long as he enjoys the sport and can be competitive. When that time passes, he will go to school to train for something in the medical field.

Jack Dempsey is long gone from the streets and gyms of his adopted hometown, but his legacy of toughness and competition lives on in a new generation of athletes, like Alejandro Cañez.

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* ARDIS E. PARSHALL thanks Alan Zeitlin, Cañez's weightlifting coach, for an introduction to the young boxer. You can reach Parshall at AEParshall@aol.com.