TRADITION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 11

TRADITION

They were a council of four—Jim, Jack, Tom and Jimmy—pensioners on the bounty of a kindly government. On floe dt.ys, they sat on a bench in Cathedral Square. When it rained, they held their caucus in the tramsieiter. Their topics of conversation covered a wide range of subjects. Jimmy, the eldest, the doyen of these sages, was a veteran of ancient vars, a man who, apparently, was widely travelled, and who seemed to know too much of boxing for his wisdom, to be second-hand. According to Jimmy, boxing-skill ™ras now a lost art. Ring generalship had been relegated to the limbo i’f forgotten things. Degraded by preed, the game had lost its glamour, and champions now were but pawns in the game of managerial wits. IVhere now were such ring-men as lilgg, Belcher, Mendoza, and John L. Sullivan? Where, to-day, a Bob Fitzsimmons? Where a Griffo? How would one of the modern dandies fare in opposition to the Tipton Slasher? "heir lack of skill and of fortitude was deplcrable. By the curtailing of rounds, the game had been emasculated. Decades ago, it had passed the ; enith of its glory, and had been waning ever since, until to-day it was sunk in the mire of commercialism, It was rumoured that referees nowadays wore white pants! Could milk lopplsiiness go further! Why, often, in the old days, even the grass of the sntirs ring floor had been soaked with the blood of heroes. White pants, indeed! These modern lolly-fed lads wore padded gloves! Surrender followed a nosebleed. The “softies”, at 30 years of age, were "all in.” Wn.lt about Joe Gass! That he-man, in his prime at the age of 4i>, had fought a draw with the redoubtable Jem Mace, and again, nearly a score of years later, he had beaten the great: Paddy Ryan fn 87 rounds. Nowadays, puny pugs sparred bloodlessly for four, six, or 10 rounds, and called themselves prize-fighters! They pushed each other with pillows, while ringside orchestras played sobbing lullabies. They earned (?) fortunes for fighting (?), while lesser swindlers went to gaol, for false pretences. Glutted with wealth, sated with adulation, the mincing dandies, after a couple of years, retired to have their features remodelled. In Jimmy’s day, a broken nose was a badge of honour. A pug was proud of his cauli-flower-ear. There had been no "decisions” to dispute; fights had been "to a finish.” Ah, those were the days! Imagine Tunney opposed to Keenan or Morrissey! Those two had fought for hours and probably would have been fighting yet, had not the blood-sickened crowd “rusbed” the ring. "Deaf” Burke and Andy Bowen had fought so hard and so long that the3 r had out-lasted the fainting spectators, who had been carried away in “stretchers." One of the O’Briens had been hnocked down, and there having been

no chicken-hearted police to interfere, he had arisen, to be flattened 158 times more. Then at last, with all of his ribs broken., both eyes swollen shut, he had located his opponent by feeling for him with his fractured right hand, and hc:d won by knocking him out cold with his left. And Kid Lavigne! Man! O man! Now, the: - e was, a man-killer! Nina stone two of human dynamite! Jimmy was getting excited. “What diil hei do! Knocked down a thousand times he sprang from the floor like a sky-rocket! Whupp!” Suiting the action to the word Jimmy leaped to his feet. He fell beck gasping. “Loosen his collar,” said Tom, sympathetically. “This fight game'll be the death of him yet!”