GENE TUNNEY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5259, 2 April 1928, Page 4

GENE TUNNEY.

TOO INTELLECTUAL TO PLEASEi. AN AMERICAN WRITER’S' VIEWS. Trig fact that Tunney is not so popular a champion as, he ought to be is a problem that ope man alone may solve, and! that man is Tunney himself, says a wniter in the New York Tribune. Corbett made himseif popular, but it would seem that Tunney is not capable of attending the clambakes of Tim Foley or chewing gum in the down town cabarets; Nine out of ten men hated Corbe,tt because he was good looking, dashing, clever, intelligent, and had crumbled a great idol in Sullivan, and about the same percentage dislike Tunney because ‘he has a kno.wledge of literature, music, and arts, and so persistently advertises them. It is stated that Tunney had a sincere love for books before lie displayed a tendency to pugilism and athletics. The tale is told of how Gene, when a boy, made a friend of a great doctor, and practically lived? in thq libnary of the medical expert, briowsing over the books that lined the shelves. He then took up religion under the Christian Brothers, and it was plain that he was heading for the priesthood. What it was that made Tunney doubt his quatificatior.s for such a vocation is something that pnobably will never be known. Why fate should have; chosen such a boy to turn- to pugilism in his manhood is even more puzzling. Gene is stated: to have carried these ideals of his boyhood, this pity of belief, and penchant for books, as a part of himself right into his pugilistic life. Fate could make Gene Tunney a pugilist, but it woujld seem that pugilism could not change Gene Tunney.