TARANAKI BOXERS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 303, 7 December 1936, Page 2

TARANAKI BOXERS.

AMATEURS AT ELTHAM Three Excellent Preliminaries Staged. The rain which necessitated the postponement of the Jarvis-Hall boxing match at Eltham on Saturday tell .too late for the association to take advantage of its insurance, and there must have been a substantial loss on the day. The association insured for £lOO against 10 points of rain between 10.30 a.m. and 1.30 p.m., but the rain bid not start to fall until about 2 p.m. The gate-takings were about £BO, which would not anywhere near have covered expenses.

Despite the rain, .the tournament went, far enough to show that an open-air boxing carnival can be a great show. The ring, in front of the grandstand in the football ground at Tauinata Park, was surrounded with tiers of seats, every one a ring-side. Behind and above these, was the grandstand, and the spectators,, driven there to shelter from the rain, still had an excellent view of the contest. The amateur preliminaries were as good as the weather was bad. Three Taranaki boys all scored decisive wins over three Hawkes Bay visitors and showed that the standard of the sport in this province is steadily improving. The Taranaki men, L. Huzziff (Tariki), L. Pennington (Eltham), and T. Loveridge (Tariki), had two pleasing attributes in common —a)n ability to hit hard and a scorn of punishment.

• Cow-punching? Pennington, who beat the Waipukurau boy, J. McKay, still showed a little of itjiat crudeness which makes one suspect that he does more cow-punching than shadow-sparring out at Mangamingi, but he is a game ‘fighter and always .turns on enough heavy hitting to please .the crowd. Solidly made, Pennington can polish off his opponents easily enough, and only needs to polish himself to please the critics.

for Huzziff. Tariki’s L. Huzziff is the boxer that Pennington ought to develop in to. He has all thei characteristic coolness of his brother Peter, and is very pretty to 'Watch. He beat S. Smailes (Hawkes Bay) by a good margin in a hard-hitting contest. Smailes had a bad tendency to hit with open gloves, and Huzziff missed .too often. He should watch that he does not become a “one-big punch” man. The Best of Them. 1 When T, Loveridge beat F. Clarke (Hawkes Bay) the ring was dangerously slippery, but none the less the Tariki man managed to put up the brightest show of the day. Aggressive and clever, Loveridge had his man very groggy in the last round. In the Rough. C. Taylor (Alton) and G. Pepperell (Rahotu) fought a rugged opening bout for the South Taranaki man to win on points. The hitting was too inaccurate for good boxing, and if •they had been playing golf both would have been in the rough most of the time. However, fife gallery’ likes them there.