Sharkey Gets Chance to Lift Tunney’s Title

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 85, 1 July 1927, Page 10

Sharkey Gets Chance to Lift Tunney’s Title

Lithunian to Fight Dempsey in Eliminating Bout in July The cabled announcement that Jack Sharkey has been matched to fight Jack Dempsey on July 21, the winner to meet Gene Tunney for the world title, is the logical outcome of Dempsey’s avowed determination to come back, and Sharkey’s victory over Jim Maloney, the Boston fishmonger, in New York last month. While Rickard has been planning his championship campaign on a big scale, Sharkey has forged so rapidly to the front that to some extent he has forced Rickard’s hand. The veteran fight promoter was believed to have had an ambitious scheme of preliminaries for the big event of the pugilistic year next September, but Sharkey saved him the trouble —and possibly cost him a lot of dollars. The young Lithuanian dealt with Jimmy Maloney in such a tempestuous fashion that he had him beaten into a state of helplessness in four rounds, and in the fifth knocked him out for keeps. Had the fight dragged on to the full fifteen rounds Rickard would have had every justification for looking round for another 50,000 house, with the possibility of bringing Senor Paolino into the limelight. But Sharkey’s speedy dispatch of the championship claims of Maloney called for a readjustment of pugilistic values. The young Lithuanian proved himself a smart, shifty boxer with a handy punch. “If my theory that a man can’t stay out of the game, and hold to his ring value is true,” says an American boxing writer, “Sharkey ought to have more than an even chance against Dempsey. If Jack had gone back last year, as many thought after the Tunney fight, it is certainly reasonable to presume that the sliding process has continued. This being the case, Dempsey may present a more sorry spectacle this year than he did last September. In which event it will be the Lithuanian, .of Boston, who will have the pleasure of taking on Gene TunThis estimate of Dempsey may or mav not be correct. After next month it will be time enough then to write down the old champion as a “has-been.” It would be a more reasonable assumption to suppose that if Sharkey can beat Dempsey, he may cause Gene Tunney the loss of some of his beauty deep.