Jack Dempsey is probably the only heavyweight boxer (until, arguably, Muhammed Ali) to be quoted in a major textbook of English literature: The ABC's of Reading by Ezra Pound.
Loosely paraphrased, the anecdote runs that Dempsey was being interviewed for the Nth time, before the Tunney fight on how he would handle a so-called "scientific" boxer. He brushed off the comment by countering that he was tired of being characterized as ignorant, almost sub-human, and pointed out that he also enjoyed reading, and showed the reporter a book about Russian history with a bookmark stuck about three-quarters of the way through.
The reporter, undeterred, asked him why he wasn't reading a book having something to do with boxing, at which Dempsey cried, in frustration:
"I never was a Grand Duke!"