Heavyweight Champion Jack Sharkey, 91, Dies : Boxing: He was the oldest surviving fighter to hold the title, won in 1932 with a 15-round decision over Max Schmeling.

Jack Sharkey, the oldest living former heavyweight boxing champion, died Wednesday at the age of 91.

Sharkey died of respiratory arrest at Beverly Hospital.

Sharkey fought in the golden days of boxing, logging 55 professional fights against such opponents as Joe Louis, Jack Delaney, Jack Dempsey, Mike McTigue, Tommy Loughran, Max Schmeling and Primo Carnera. His record was 38-13-3 with one no decision.

He won the championship June 21, 1932 in a 15-round decision over Schmeling and lost it to Carnera the next year.

But Sharkey described the highlight of his career as his July 21, 1927 bout in New York’s Yankee Stadium against Dempsey, which he lost.

“I turned to the referee to complain I was getting hit low and I got hit with a haymaker,” Sharkey remembered later. “That was that. I was out on the canvas.”

Dempsey was at the end of his career, although he fought one more fight, losing to Gene Tunney in an effort to regain the heavyweight crown.

“You came out of a fight with Dempsey full of welts and bruises and every bone aching,” Sharkey said when Dempsey died May 31, 1983.

In a comeback at 34, Sharkey fought Joe Louis on Aug. 18, 1936 and was knocked out in the third round.

“Louis? A great fighter and a great hitter,” he said. “But he was a methodical, punishing type of boxer who built up to a terrific explosion.”

After his loss to Louis, Sharkey retired from the ring to open a restaurant in Boston and pursue his love of fishing. He also refereed wrestling and boxing matches in the United States and Canada and entertained troops in North Africa during World War II.

Born Oct. 26, 1902 in Binghamton, N.Y., Sharkey began his professional boxing career in 1924 in Boston.

Named Joseph Paul Zukauskas by his Lithuanian immigrant parents, he changed his name in order to fight.

“I wanted to get into the game in Boston back in the ‘20s, and I told them my name,” he said in 1967 when he turned 65. “So they told me to do better than that.”

Sharkey borrowed Dempsey’s first name and the last name of Tom Sharkey, another boxer he admired.

In 1929, he knocked out Loughran in the third round to win the vacant American heavyweight title. After knocking out Phil Scott in three rounds in Miami, Sharkey then fought Schmeling in 1930 in Yankee Stadium for the vacant world heavyweight title after Tunney had retired.

That time, the German won, becoming the only fighter to win the world heavyweight championship on a foul.

But Sharkey beat two top heavyweights in 1931, Mickey Walker and Carnera, and got another shot at the title.

This time Sharkey beat Schmeling on a decision in a bout that went the full 15 rounds at the Garden Bowl in New York.

In his next bout, on June 29, 1933, he lost the title to Carnera on a knockout in the sixth round.

He was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest living heavyweight boxing champion.

Sharkey and his late wife, Dorothy, moved from suburban Boston to Epping, N.H., in the 1950s.

A funeral mass was scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Epping, N.H. Burial was to be private.