CARPENTIER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2294, 25 June 1921, Page 1

CARPENTIER.

HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER

(By Will Osborn.)

I have seen nearly all the great heavy-weights of the last forty years in action, and have tried, with some success, to understand why and how they have succeeded in the most nerve-racking of man-to-ninn games. Of those I have studied, Peter Jackson was the finest all-round boxer (Corbett coining second), and in spile of liis mahogany skin, as white a sportsman as ever climbed into the squared circle. Bob Fitzsimmons was the deadliest tighter of all, for when he was within striking distance after stalking his man with long, slithering paces and furious eyes, round after round, his lightning body blow seemed launched by a charge of spiritual T.NfT. Only Jeffries, that mountainous man, could endure the terrific impaei of the Fitzsimmons bodv-blow delivered on a shift.

But .Jeffries, in physique as well as in massive equanimity, was an Alp moulded like a man —and the hair grew on him like forests below the snow-line on the far-away .Matterhorn. He was 100 big to hurt. As for Jack Johnson at his best (when he smashed the mere shell of Jeffries at Reno), he was the most dangerqus glove-lighter in retreat I have ever watched. He was not so much a boxer as a-man-trap baited to catch soul as well as body —the body to be caught by enticing it subtly within reach of a sudden upper-cut, the power of which flickered out on the rosined floor; the soul to he snared by the ceaseless stream of soft, insulting’•jeers, vitriol in salad oil, which came from hi> blubber lips.

Unless it be Dempsey, whom I must lake on trust (American variety), we have no living heavyweight in sight who can compare with the world champion 1 have mimed either in the science of the game or in sheer fighting force. But Georges Carpenlicr, as an incarnation of the will-jo-victory, surpasses them all. Georges Carpentier is not, nor could, nor ever will be, a great boxer. When lie was a slender, white- faced pit boy, using the movements of a contortionist to evade an opponent’s onslaught, he looked like training on into a boxing genius of (he calibre of the Dixie Kid, or our own Jimmy "Wilde.

He has, it is true, that instinct for ring strategy and tactics which is the outcome of the unique experience of lighting his way up through all the weights. But the boxing of little men differs as much from the boxing of big men as batting on a fast pilch does from batting on a slow one —and the early promise of super-science has not been fulfilled since he entered the heavy-weight sphere, where power counts for more than puce and precision together. Nor is he a great fighter. lie was outfought, almost overwhelmed, by the bear-like Klaus and the pan-ther-like Papke, sheer rough-house lighters, who could not be kept out by the straightest straight left, and, once, inside, could jolt a man's inside out of him.

Yet in these hopeless battles Cavpentier’s unconquerable soul blazed gloriously through clouds of defeat, and Descamps, his familiar, had literally to pull him out of the ring.

Carpentier joyously confesses the debt of gratitude lie owes to Descamps. This is one of the friendships of the David and Jonathan type, which are not uncommon in The history of the ring—a place where men see one another in the. spiritual altogether, and spirit gravitates to kindred spirits more quickly than elsewhere. But. the chief lesson of it all is that boxing, like war, is three-parts a. spiritual issue. Carpcntier has the swordsman’s eye; lie proved it when he “.pinked” Beckett fatally in the latter’s first moment of carelessness.

But others have had the swordsman’s accurate sense of timing and distance. Carpcntier alone can use his spirit for a sword. He only is a soul in (ioz. gloves, whose character is a more glittering thing than his career.

Borne have hinted that Carpcntier was kept in cotton wool during the war —that he .saw no more of the game of games than did the American and British pugilists (wC can all name them) who were eager to fight anybody save Germans. Jt is a wretched libel. For the “mentions” of the famous boxer in “Orders of the Day” for valour as a fighting airman were many, and after Carpcntier won the Croix* de Guerre President Poincaire decorated him with the Medaille Militaire behind Verdun on November sth, 1916.

I have looked on every fight of the hundreds I have watched and described ay a clash of character, and again and again I have seen* the braver spirit victorious in spite of physical inferiority.

When I first saw " Carpenlicr in action at Paris the old, cold courage of the pallid ex-pilboy, a mere wisp of childhood, touched me-> to the heart. And his hook tells me how, in all his earlier fights against other and heavier boxers, no amount of pounding could ever break bis will to victory.

* His saying about Dempsey (“but ‘lie is only human!”)is in keeping with bis character and career. If the Carpentier-Dempsey battle ever comes off, my money goes on the French champion. Yes, I’d sooner lose on Carpentier than win on Dempsey. For J *ee in Carpentier, the more vividly for reading his life a gentleman unafraid, a type of the unconquerable valour of France, an heir to the joyous gallantry of Du Guesdin and Bayard, of the Musketeer* of Dumas, of the Napoleonic warriors, of the poilus who won Verdun while Carpentier himself Hew low over the long battle in his battle plane. Such souls are never defeated though they lly west over the brink of oveirng.