A New Aristocracy of the Ringside

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 206, 19 November 1927, Page 10

A New Aristocracy of the Ringside

Changed Days in Pugilism

fJMTERE is only one aristocracy in the i United States according to Tex j Rickard, and that consists of those j who attend world’s championship ; fights. Mr. Rickard’s patriotic hope j that this Brahmin caste would smash : all records for prize-ring patronage at ; the Dempsey-Tunney fight last September were more than realised —Tex raked in a golden harvest aggregating 2,800.000 dollars. Tex Rickard has been the leading prizefight promoter of the country for 21 years. The most striking development during that era has been, in the language of Mr. Rickard, "the improvement of the customer”—that is, the moral and social betterment of the spectators, especially the ringside spectators, of the heavyweight title bouts. In that 21 years the promoter has seen i the customer rise from the lowest to j the highest class of society. As Mr. Rickard traces the brilliant progress of the fight fan, it is as inspiring as the climb of Hogarth’s industrious apprentice to the Lord Mayorship of London. THEN AND NOW Twenty-one years ago the promoter staged his first great fight—the GansNelson conflict. Customers came by the box-carload from all sections of the country. All over the West gaols were broken by fight lovers in their anxiety to attend this great battle. Yeggmen put their soup and can-open-ers in storage. Up and down the Pacific Coast the sailors were denied their customary ration of knock-out drops because the shanghaiers were on the way to Goldfield. The presence of a reformed pickpocket at the ringside raised the moral average. First offenders were treated as sissies. Men of no police record were reported present, but generally concealed behind lilac goggles, pulled-down hats and turned-up duster collars. Twenty-one years later Mr. Rickard surveyed the customers at the Dempsey-Sharkey fight at the Yankee Stadiftm. His eye lighted on bankers, clergymen, divas, transatlantic fliers, noblemen, judges, home-run kings, society matrons, jazz kings, debutantes, film stars, bootleggers, statesmen, night club hostesses —the flower of modern civilisation. His list of ringside ticket purchasers included super-stars like Tom Mix, industrial captains like Charles M. Schwab, heroes like Byrd and Chamberlin, prima donnas like Galli-Curci, distinguished visitors like the Maharajah of Ratjam. social arbiters like Clarence Mackay, financiers like Charles IT. Sabin, legislators like Senator Walsh, of Massachusetts. Illustrious Patronage

The promoter was proud of his customers. He felt the gratification of a teacher whose pupils had made their mark in the world. It was a most impressive reunion of the alumni of the Rickard school of hard knocks. It was true that some of the 80,000 present had not yet become artists, financiers, maharajahs, but many of them had not attended all the big fights of the last 3 9 years. Rickard was satisfied. No other educator could claim an equal number of the great and famous as his proteges. And the promoter was especially pleased with the brilliant showing of his co-ed customers, tie introduced this sport to them at the Jeffries-John-son fight at Reno. At that time Rickard segregated his customers and concentrated the women under a little coop on a distant rim of the pine amphitheatre in order to keep their ears as remote as possible from the ringside language. Heavily veiled women with leg-of-mutton sleeves and champagne-glass figures crept up a secret staircase to their far-off observation tower. That was in 1910. Had they lifted their veils, it would have been seen that some used face powder—fatal evidence that they were lost ladies. Little sharp

(2 ONE IS THE DAY OF THE BEETLE-BROWED ROYSTFRW ING PUG . GONE ARE THE PICTURESQUELY GARBED DANDIES OF THE OLD-TIME PRIZE-RING. TO-DAY. BOXING IS .4 HIGHLY LUCRATIVE BUSINESS. PURSUED AS .4. PROFESSION BY CULTURED YOUNG BUSINESS MEN WHO VARY A WORK-OUT WITH THE GLOVES BY WRITING ANOTHER CHAPTER ON PHILOSOPHY. IN LIKE MANNER. THERE HAS ARISEN A NEW ARISTOCRACY OF THE RINGSIDE. IN A STRIKING ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK "TIMES," ALVER JOHNSTON DEALS WITH THIS NEW TREND.

cries came from the coop from time to , time as hard blows were struck or ; rough words spoken. Since that time the lady customer has improved even more than the men. She doesn't have to be segregated. She speaks the ringside idiom with anybody. IN THE OLD DAYS Corbett and Choynski had to slink , off to a barge to hold their famous j battle. Old-timers remember when ■ pugilism was practiced only in barns and cornfields, in cellars and back ' rooms. At one time most of the pro- . fessional fighting in the country was done on islands in the Mississippi. The world’s championship match between Tom Allen and Ben Hogan was balked when the St. Louis police seized a fleet 1 of steamers about to embark under | sealed orders for a river island. Poor Ed. Baldwin, the Irish giant, was sent to gaol for eighteen months for fighting in the cemetery of a Massachusetts town while the customers watched from tombstones. New Y'ork is particular as to the manner in which insensibility is produced in its battlers. Fists are regularly inspected before each combat to prevent the concealment of small articles of ironmongery in the tape in which the hands of the boxers are wrapped. The practice of reinforcing the fists with bits of metal has become obsolete among the boxers themselves, however, according to Mr. I Kearns, the former manager of Dempsey. Scrap iron, lie reports, gives good satisfaction for a round or two. 1 raising egg-size lumps on the adversary’s face at every contact. But, according to this authority, after the second round the arms become weary and refuse to lift the junk-freighted fists, leaving one’ at the mercy of an opponent. A PUBLIC SERVICE Under the New York rulings, prizefighting is neither a sport nor a business, but a public service. The Boxing Commission orders men to fight as a matter of the common good and the general welfare. Prize-fighters are classed with medicine as something a humane Government is bound to supply at cost, or less than cost, to the poor. There has been still another great improvement and that is in the type of men in the ring to-day. Formerly their social and intellectual standing was low. To-day many are recruited from the learned professions. Monte Munn is a Nebraska Assemblyman. Martin O’Grady is a Detroit lawyer. Wiry Wade is a short-story writer. Tiger Flowers is a Georgia theologian. Years ago Bendigo and ITogan left the ring to become preachers, but Flowers combines the two callings. He preaches during intervals between fights. Even in actual combat he constantly utters petitions for divine strength and guidance for his right and left. Dave Shade, Sully Montgomery and many others are former college athletes. The grandson of a Justice of the United i States Supreme Court recently made his debut in the ring. Fidel La Barba, the ; flyweight champion, is a medical stud- ■ ent. Gene Tunney owns a book and • has been photographed in the act of reading it. THE DAYS OF THE CORINTHIANS | The ring has had periods of splendour ; and periods of eclipse in the past. 5 Almost exactly two centuries ago, when • the modern era of pugilism began, the ’ science was held in high esteem. James 5 Figg, the first champion, had royal • patronage. George 11. not only went to Figg’s Amphitheatre himself, but con--7 sidered it respectable enough to take “ his favourite mistress there. " The greatest social distinction ever

conferred on the game occurred in 1790, when the Prince of Wales acted as a second for Lord Barrymore. Between rounds the noble fighter sat on the royal knee. This was an amateur battle, it is true, but is was a bareknuckle grudge fight, held in public-, and it is considered a golden day in ring annals. But perhaps the greatest tribute ever paid to boxing was received at the hands of Bishop Manning, whose published plans for the Sports’ Bay in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine call for a stained-glass portrayal of a ring battle.