The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1927. £lll A SECOND!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 158, 24 September 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1927. £lll A SECOND!

AT one time the brightest star in the soaring ambition of young Americans was the presidency of the United fatates, a position to be regarded as the attainment of the greatest prize offered by the world’s democracy. But that was before business took charge of bruisers and placed the rewards of prizefighting among the pinnacles of finance. There is greater fame, and infinitely more money, for successful pugilists than for presidents to-day; Tunney, not Coolidge, is the American ideal — or idol —and the vision of the presidential chair is blotted out by the roped-in platform whereon gladiators of the glove smash each other for millions of dollars. Over 150,000 persons paid £560,000 between them to see the Tunney-Dempsey fight, and of this amount the victor received £200,000 and the vanquished £85,000. Dempsey may he f»mewhat chagrined by his defeat, but £85,000 should be a great comfort to him in the declining years of his pugilism. As for the promoter of the bout, the enterprising Mr. Tex Rickard, he should be quite comfortably circumstanced after adding something like £200,000 to the little he has already saved from the profits of staging prize-fights. Yesterday’s fight for the world’s championship occupied ten rounds of three minutes each, or thirty minutes of punching time. For his share in the entertainment, Tunney receives a million-dollar cheque, which works out at £6,663 13s 4d a minute, or £lll a second. And it was not all working-time either. Judging by the report of the contest, quite a considerable portion of it consisted of clinching, during which the boxers rested —and Tunney was down for nine seconds at one period, which meant that he was paid £999 for holding a stop-work meeting with himself. Presidential salaries pale by comparison. That great wardog, Hindenburg, received less money in a year for directing armies equipped with naked steel than the pugilistic champion received in a minute for patting the face of his opponent with padded gloves. As President of Germany, he receives much less. The President of the United States draws a yearly salary of 75,000 dollars, with a travelling allowance of 25,000 dollars. Tunney drew ten times that total in half-an-hour, and the loser more than four times as much. Mr. Coates, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who receives the beggarly pittance of £2,000 a year, may well shake his head in pained astonishment at these figures—and wish he had gone in for pugilism instead of politics. It is interesting to know that when the butcher, Stock, defeated Broughton for the championship of England in the early part of the 18th century, he received £6OO, then considered to be a fortune for a prize-fighter. Now even the Charlie Chaplins and the Harold Lloyds of the film world are eclipsed by boxers in the matter of remuneration. Men who have enriched humanity by the good works of religion, of literature and art, of science, of mechanics, of medical discovery—men who have gladdened the soul, healed the body and made the world a better place, educationally, socially, industrially and in health and comfort—have worked unknown and died unsung, seldom rich and sometimes in abject poverty. Yet bruisers make huge fortunes in a few minutes, and the thuds of their blows resound throughout the world. “It’s a mad world, my masters”—“Box on!”